The intellectual atmosphere, moral and social, surrounding our race, has been so uncongenial that some of our people have been trying to get out of it, and go over to the enemy, and from the ranks of the white race view in silence our moral, intellectual and social woes. I call them _hot house Negroes_. Let me say to those members of our race who are trying to escape the ills that afflict us by flight, that they cannot escape, you have but to carry your yellow face across the border and they will put you where they put the blackest Negro. As the productiveness of the soil is increased by cultivation, so is the productiveness of races increased by the cultivation of head and heart. By cultivation alone can the productiveness of races be increased. The mind is strengthened by being continually fed upon the best and noblest thoughts; the ideas thus received become transformed by the subtle alchemy of thought, are ever transformed into new and nobler products. The heart is enriched and strengthened, and the moral nature is feed upon the purest and noblest sentiments. So, however, unproductive we may have been in the past if we will faithfully cultivate head and heart, the historian will soon place us among the productive races of mankind. Good soil will count for nothing unless good seed is sown; the good seed to be sown in the human soil are moral, spiritual and intellectual truths. None of the inferior kind will do, the very best must be sought and from the highest sources. Too many of these kind of seeds cannot be sown. The boy or girl that has moral, spiritual and intellectual truths planted in mind and heart will stand like some mighty tree of the forest, deep rooted, strong against life's storm, wide branching, a shelter, a protection, a cool refreshing shade, high towering, looming up, being forever in the presence of the loftiest thoughts and sentiments of the soul. But good seed cannot have a prosperous growth if weeds are permitted in their midst. They will choke out and forever hinder the healthiest growth.
The weeds of the mind and heart are ignorance, superstition and vice. I appeal to my young friends, let not these rank and poisonous weeds choke and forever destroy the development and growth of the good seed which by parents, preceptors and ministers are being sown in your minds. When considering your future, first resolve to be virtuous, next resolve to be educated, then as to what part you shall play in the world, trust God, and if you persevere, he will open the door. It has been true in the past that races much cultivated have like the overworked soils worn out, at least they have ceased to be productive. The Jew in four thousand years has borne us nothing but the spiritual idea. Egypt gave us life and like her mummies and pyramads laid down to sleep in the silence of the centuries. Greece gave us culture, but the traveler along the shore of time finds only her immortal literature and the broken remains of those creations which once spoke to the world, "in forms of love and awe." The Rome of the Cæsars has left her throne of power, which form her seven hills once ruled the world; but the plow shear of civilization is just entering the Negro race, it is indeed in the language of Bishop Turner, "the boy race of the world." What, under proper cultivation, this race will produce, the historian of the future must record, but we believe with his natural musical talent, the Negro will cause sweeter harmonies and prettier melodies to vibrate on the air than ever enraptured the human soul. Eloquent of speech, he will plead the cause of God and the welfare of mankind with such tones of power that neither the Rostrum nor the Forum ever heard. His deep emotional nature will be the foe of tyranny and oppression, and as a vehicle of religious truth will carry the triumphs of the King of Kings into the seats of pride and power, and over the dark and barren regions of the globe. The morning stars are paling, because the moral, intellectual, and spiritual night of the Negro is passing away.