The closing paper was on the “Moral Progress of the Race,” by Hon. Dugdale.  He said:  “The moral progress of the race was not all he could desire, yet he could not help feeling that, compared with other races, the outlook was not hopeless.  I am so sorry to see, however, that in some States there is an undue proportion of colored people in prisons.”

“I think,” answered Professor Langhorne, of Georgia, “that this is owing to a partial administration of law in meting out punishment to colored offenders.  I know red-handed murderers who walk in this Republic unwhipped of justice, and I have seen a colored woman sentenced to prison for weeks for stealing twenty-five cents.  I knew a colored girl who was executed for murder when only a child in years.  And it was through the intervention of a friend of mine, one of the bravest young men of the South, that a boy of fifteen was saved from the gallows.”

“When I look,” said Mr. Forest, “at the slow growth of modern civilization—­the ages which have been consumed in reaching our present altitude, and see how we have outgrown slavery, feudalism, and religious persecutions, I cannot despair of the future of the race.”

“Just now,” said Dr. Latimer, “we have the fearful grinding and friction which comes in the course of an adjustment of the new machinery of freedom in the old ruts of slavery.  But I am optimistic enough to believe that there will yet be a far higher and better Christian civilization than our country has ever known.”

“And in that civilization I believe the negro is to be an important factor,” said Rev. Cantnor.

“I believe it also,” said Miss Delany, hopefully, “and this thought has been a blessed inspiration to my life.  When I come in contact with Christless prejudices, I feel that my life is too much a part of the Divine plan, and invested with too much intrinsic worth, for me to be the least humiliated by indignities that beggarly souls can inflict.  I feel more pitiful than resentful to those who do not know how much they miss by living mean, ignoble lives.”

“My heart,” said Iola, “is full of hope for the future.  Pain and suffering are the crucibles out of which come gold more fine than the pavements of heaven, and gems more precious than the foundations of the Holy City.”

“If,” said Mrs. Leroy, “pain and suffering are factors in human development, surely we have not been counted too worthless to suffer.”

“And is there,” continued Iola, “a path which we have trodden in this country, unless it be the path of sin, into which Jesus Christ has not put His feet and left it luminous with the light of His steps?  Has the negro been poor and homeless?  The birds of the air had nests and the foxes had holes, but the Son of man had not where to lay His head.  Has our name been a synonym for contempt?  ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’  Have we been despised and trodden under foot?  Christ was despised