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There are those who object to the constitutional rights of the Negro, and some who object to his Christian privileges, lest his recognition as a man shall lead to “social equality,” whatever this may mean.  The following from a leading Negro paper, i.e., edited by a Negro for a Negro constituency, is a testimony as to what is and what is not the Negro’s idea of “recognition”: 

“That the Negroes in recognizing constitutional rights are at the same time seeking an arbitrary social equality with any other race is erroneous.  From the time of emancipation, the colored people have had no disposition to force a social alliance with the whites.  The colored citizens have all their civil and political rights, and these rights they demand.  When honored colored men or women enter a first-class hotel or restaurant, or seek a decent stateroom on a steamer, they do not enter these places because they are seeking social contact with the whites, but because they demand their just privileges for their personal protection and comfort.”

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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

Of the illustrious ones who laid the foundations for the liberation of the slave, the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe leads all the rest.

What America’s greatest woman did towards making freedom possible, our devoted and consecrated women teachers have been carrying out these thirty years to the full Christian conclusion.  Those who read the records of the closing days of our schools in this present August number of THE MISSIONARY will be reminded how these faithful teachers are still engaged completing the unfinished work of their greater sister.

Next to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” perhaps the book which has the truest stamp of the genius of Mrs. Stowe is her “Old Town Folks.”  In her incomparable description of “School Days in Cloudland,” in which she shows how her sympathies went out to the people of every nation and tongue who are oppressed, she compares the influences of education in New England with a country without schoolhouses, saying:  “Look at Spain at this hour and look back at New England at the time of which I write, and compare the Spanish peasantry with the yeomen of New England.  If Spain had had not a single cathedral, if her Murillos had all been sunk in the sea, and if she had had, for a hundred years past, a set of schoolmasters and ministers working together as I have described Mr. Avery and Mr. Rossiter as working, would not Spain be infinitely better off for this life at least?  That is the point that I humbly present to the consideration of the public.”

This point which Mrs. Stowe presents to the consideration of the public, is the one to which her younger sisters are faithfully directing their faith and their works among a people who up to Mrs. Stowe’s day never saw a schoolhouse.