disciplined and educated force and brutality--the
Bluchers and Marlboroughs. We scarcely believe
this, however, and we know that any young man,
whether he be poor or black, or both, may enter
any first-class college in America and find warm
sympathetic friends, both among students and
faculty, if he but prove himself to be possessed
of some good qualities . . . . If the Smiths,
Flippers, and Williamses in their honorable school
-boy careers can not meet social as well as
intellectual recognition while at West Point, let
them study on and acquit themselves like men, for
they will meet, out in the world, a worthy reception
among men of worth, who have put by the prejudices
of race and the shackles of ignorance. Emerson says
somewhere that "Solitude, the nurse of Genius, is the
foe of mediocrity." If our young men of ability have
the stuff in them to make men out of, they need not
fear "to be let alone" for a while; they will
ultimately come to the surface and attain worthy
recognition.'

"That is plain, practical talk. We like it. It
has the ring of the true metal. It shows that
the writer has faith in the ultimate triumph of
manhood. It is another form for expressing a firm
belief that real worth will find a reward. Never
has any bond people emerged from slavery into a
condition full of such grand opportunities and
splendid possibilities as those which are within