The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-11-12
AND THAT ACCOUNTS FOR IT'S
PRIVACY IN LETTERS, ART,
AND COMMERCE..
A NEGRO SANG IN DR.. LORIMERs CHOIR
The Schools and Colleges are Open to the Neg
roes upon Equal Terms, and Often
They Are Made
Fayorites.
To the Editor:

Few North Carolinians visit Boston.
1t is not in our commercial or educa
tiOnal beat, and the radical differences
Of opinion between these people and
ours on various subjects, have not made
us break our necks Ito worship at the
shrines of her great men. went to
hear the great DIR. Lorimer Ga Kentucky
Ian .by BIRTH preach Sunday. The sermon
was great, but we could not half way
listen to it for looking at negro man
of the missing link variety who sat in
the choir. The few of them who are
in the schools here are general favorites,
we are informed At one of the great
est schools in New England, at the din
ner table last week, we saw negro
girl sitting between a yonng white man
and a young white woman, mOnopolizing
the conversation of both.
But Notwithstanding these radical diff
ferences of opinion on q social question,
when we travel through this poor rocky
State. and see the large number of great
schools, built upon the basis of a splen-
did public school system, we no longer
wonder at their great superiority over
us Internationally and commercially
When we think of Harvard, Tufts, AM
herst Wellesley, Smith, Williams, Mt.
Holyoke, and score of other colleges
for both sexes with their thousands upon
thousands of students, the vast public
libraries of every hamlet, village, town
and city; the splendid public and private
schools, both literary and technical, we
may expect to see trained heads and
trained hands; we may expect to see
manufactures, commerce, and we need
not wonder at the fact any longer that
Massachusetts has given us the best we
have in literature and mental culture.
We looked over the books on sale by a
news boy upon the cars a day or two
since, and found not a single book which
was not standard literature Laboring
men, clerks, railroad men have q good
book at hand and spend all their leisure
moments reading. Do we wonder that
Boston and its vicinity have produced
Longfellow. Holmes. Lowell, Emerson,
Prescott, Motley and scores of others
scarcely less brilliant in the world of
letters?
We went to the old State House yester-
day. We found it full of STATUES, por
traits and mementoes Of the Ohses,
Adamses, Franklin, Hancock, Winthrop,
Endicott, Washington. Webster, Paul
Revere, Warren and others. All over
the city, in every public place, stand
monuments to ner great colonial and rev
dictionary periods. We saw Hundred
monuments today in Charlestown. in
Cambridge. Bedford, Lexington and Con
cord. keeping alive the traditions cole
brated in song and stony, OF those who
made the first 3rmed resistance 70 King
George III.
If out of such soil, and breathing such
an atmosphere. great men in literature,
art. science, politics, and war did moi
arise, it would be unreasonable and gn-
natural
The taste of the people is evident in
the pictures which adorn the walls of
the homes of the unpretentious classes.
They may be nothing but primes. but
they are the prints of masterpieces; the
pieces of sculpture may be only plaster,
blpt they are copies of masterpieces.
With these before the eye, we shall not
be surprised to learn that the beautiful
statue of the Minute Man. at Concord
Bridge was the work of a Concord boy,
Mr. French. 1t was Mr. Beecher who
said fifty years ago: 1--WE must educate
or we must perish" This is what our
State must do. or Massachusetts, and
other States will continue to produce the
poets. the philosophers, the painters and
the sculptors. In the future as in the
past the glorious deeds of our heroic
ancestry will remain unwrftten and I'M
sung, the inches in our State Capitol will
remain untitled, and the public institu-
tons of our State and gardens of our
cities will still be destitute of the elo-
quent voices of bronze and marble to
point out to orr youth that, "The path
of Duty is the Way to Glory"
Prof Goodwin and | stood today in
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord.
Within a radius of fifty feet slept all
that was mortal of Thoreau, Hawthorne,
Emerson and Louisa NJ Alcott. But
what an impress their immortal books
have made upon humanity! To the north
of us the Minute Man" stood guard
over Concord Bridge, and the 'old
Manse" near by, with its sacred assoc
cations of Hawthorne and Emerson
dozeN in the mellow sunlight. On the
Lexington road to the south of us the
stately home of Emerson, the Orchard
House" home of Little Women" and
the 'Wayside." home of Hawthorne.
surrounded with halo of sacred MEM
cries Of the great souls who once occu-
pied them, added inspiration to the
scene Near the banks of the Charles
only q few miles away, in Sweet Au-
burn" sleep the bodies of Lowell, Long
fellow, Ag'assiz and scores of others
known in science and in literature as
the immOrtals. Would that every SON
and daughter of our dear old North State
could drink deep the Inspiration that
comes from these sacred surroundings.
SO much of our history remains UNI
written, so much needs rescuing from
the mists of tradition, so many great
heroes need to be perpetuated on can
Vac and hronzo and -. ,,,a,,.-