This being true, I repeat that not to make proper provision for the high education of the talented tenth man of the colored people is a prodigious mistake. It is to dwarf the tree that has in it the potency of a grand oak. Industrial education is good for the nine; the common English branches are good for the nine; but that tenth man ought to have the best opportunities for making the most of himself for humanity and God.
The powers of this talented tenth man are often latent; unsuspected by others and even by their possessor, and are evoked only under favorable conditions, sometimes comparatively late in the youthful period of life. In a symmetrical course of study calculated to bring into exercise every mental faculty, somewhere, as by a touchstone, the particular aptitude of the pupil may be discovered, the secret springs of power be opened; and the man, having discovered himself, leaps forward to pre-eminence among his fellows. Scores of such men and women are among the students in the schools for the colored people of the South. A mere common education will not disclose their uncommon powers; they need the test of the best. And somewhere, at several central points at least, provision should be made for the higher education of the talented tenth as well as ordinary education for the other nine.
The great need of the colored people of the South is wise leadership along all lines of development; men of large and comprehensive views acquired by contact and communion with the world's great thinkers; such men are needed to-day even more than nine times as many with a little more practical knowledge concerning the use of the saw, the jack-plane and the blacksmith's forge. In our educational work for the colored people, therefore, proper provision should be made for the talented tenth.--Dr. Morehouse in The Independent.
ALASKA MISSION.
The following sentences from a personal letter of Miss Anna L. Dawes state a profound truth in terse and impressive form:
"If any one is willing to go up there and live with those Eskimos, I think the rest of us may well enough agree to help. Indeed, nothing has been so good for me for some time as his (Mr. Lopp's) visit. It not only makes our Christianity (mine at least) look like a mustard seed, but makes you wonder whether it isn't a dead seed at that! I have been to hear Mr. Moody to-day, but he didn't begin to give me such "conviction of sin" as the urgent and eager interest Mr. Lopp[pg 184] showed in going back to his people up there. I wonder just what the Lord does think of us all--some of us, anyway?"
Mr. Lopp, whom Miss Dawes refers to, is pleading for funds to make it possible to open the mission among the Eskimos. The American Missionary Association was obliged to discontinue it for a year on account of the straitened condition of the treasury. We are now making every effort to gather funds outside of the current income of the Association, that there may be at least one Christian mission conducted by Congregationalists in this great northern mission field. Mr. Lopp's plea for "his people" and abandon of self-sacrifice both on the part of himself and his wife, impress every one, as they did Miss Dawes.
This is the only mission of the Congregational denomination in Alaska. No other denomination plans to occupy this station if given up by the American Missionary Association. The work requires about five hundred dollars more than has been subscribed, and this must be in hand by the first of June, when it is necessary for Mr. Lopp to sail, if he goes this year.