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WHAT TO READ

BOOKS.

Holm, J.J.--"Race Assimilation; or, The Fading Leopard's Spots." J.L. Nichols & Co., Atlanta, Ga. 
Johnston, Sir H.H.--"Opening Up of Africa." Williams & Norgate, London.
Kaler, James Otis--"With Sherman to the Sea: a Boy's Story of Gen. Sherman's Famous March and Capture of Savannah." A.L. Burt Company.
McBryde, J. McLaren--"Brer Rabbit in the Folk-tales of the Negro and Other Races." Sewanee (Tenn.) University Press.
This is a study of the rabbit and the fox and the other creatures made famous in Joel Chandler Harris' books in the folk-lore not only of the South but of other countries.
"The Photographic History of the Civil War; Thousands of Scenes Photographed, 1861-65, with Text by Many Special Authorities." Edited by F. Trevelyan Miller. New York Review of Reviews Company.
"Whittier's Correspondence from the Oak Knoll Collections, 1830-92." Edited by J. Albree, Salem, Mass. Essex Book and Print Club.

PERIODICALS.

"A Distinguished Negro." Outlook, June 24.
"Dick." Major A.R.H. Ranson. Harper's, July.
"Equality: A Study in Social Philosophy." Robert Gunn Davis. The Westminster Review, June.
"Forty Years of Freedom: The Progress of the American Negro Since the Civil War." W.E.B. DuBois. Missionary Review, June.
"In Love-Lady Court." L. Frank Tooker. Everybody's, July.
"Recent Geographic Advances in Africa." A.W. Greely. National Geographic Magazine, April.
"The Direct Election of Senators." Coe I. Crawford. Independent, June 22.
"The Indelible Stain." Independent, june 22.
"The Man Farthest Down: Child Labor and the Sulphur Mines." Booker T. Washington. Outlook, June 17.
"The Man Farthest Down: The Women Who Work in Europe." Booker. T Washington. Outlook, July 1.
"The Unlimited Franchise." Max Eastman. Atlantic, July.
"Thomas Wentworth Higginson." Edwin D. Mead. New England Magazine, May.
"What the Orient Can Teach Us." Clarence Poe. World's work, July. 
"Wreckers  of the Florida Keys." George Harding. Harpers. July. 

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

"Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe." By Charles Edward and Lyman Beecher Stowe. Houghton-Mifflin Co., Boston. Illustrated. $1.50.

The "Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by her son, Charles Edward Stowe, and her grandson, Lyman Beecher Stowe, is a volume of unusual interest. The publication of this biography marks the centenary of the remarkable little woman "as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff," who amid the difficulties of continued poverty and ill-health brought into the world and reared a family of seven children, yet found time to write thirty books in addition to "short stories, essays, letters of travel and magazine articles well-nigh innumerable."

Those of us who as children wept over "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and wondered if it could be "really true" are both pleased and saddened to learn the stories of the real Legree, Eliza and Topsy. Here, too, we find an account of absorbing interest--an account of the incidents and events in the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe that aroused in her the burning indignation against "man's inhumanity to man" which could not rest until it had written itself down in an epoch-making protest against the institution of chattel slavery. The sense of having a mission on the world was a dominant characteristic of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Accordingly, in her writings we find "the artist dominated by the preacher and reformer. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was to her a sermon hurled against a great moral evil."

The influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Reply to the Address from the Women of England" upon public opinion in both America and Europe was prodigious. A tribute to the influence of the former was President Lincoln's greeting to Mrs. Stowe on meeting her for the first time: "So you're the little who wrote the book that made this great war!"

The American public is less familiar with "The Reply to the Address from the Women of England," yet its influence brought about results hardly second in importance to those produced by "Uncle Tom's Cabin" itself. This reply "did much to prevent armed intervention (by England) in behalf of the Confederacy, and it was one of the great influences that changed the sentiment of the English people toward the Confederacy."

Thus to a frail overburdened Yankee woman with a steadfast moral purpose we Americans, both black and white, owe our gratitude for the freedom and the union that exist to-day in these United States.


Dr. Chas. A. Eastman, the Sioux Indian, in his new book, "The Soul of the Indian," says:

"Long before I ever heard of Christ, or saw a white man, I had learned from an untutored woman the essence of morality. With the help of dear Nature herself, she taught me things simple but of mighty import. I knew God. I perceived what goodness is. I saw and loved what is really beautiful. Civilization has not taught me anything better.


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"As a child, I understood how to give; I have forgotten that grace since I became civilized. I lived the natural life, whereas now I live the artificial. Any pretty pebble was valuable to me then; every growing tree an object of reverence. Now I worship with the white man before a painted landscape whos value is estimated in dollars! Thus the Indian is reconstructed, as the natural rocks are ground to powder, and made into artificial blocks which may be build into the walls of modern society."

The very rare tenth book of the "History of the Ethiopians," by Heliodorus, printed in 1552, was one of the treasures of the recent Hoe sale in New York City. It was bought by Walter M. Hill, of Chicago, for $5,000.

EXCAVATIONS IN ETHIOPIA.

THE CRISIS has from time to time mentioned the remarkable explorations on the site of the ancient Ethiopian city of Meroe, the capital of the great black empire of the eastern Soudan. For more than one hundred years the pyramids of Meroe have been known, but only within the last three years have explorers known that a great city lay buried under the sand not far from them. Professor Garstang, who has been in charge of the work of uncovering Meroe, has just returned from Africa with many treasures and a description of a wonderful civilization.

Great temples, royal palaces, public buildings and splendid tombs have been rescued from the desert. The result shows that the black men were in close relation to Greece as well as Egypt. A magnificent temple in the Greek style has been uncovered. The architecture, the explorers say, in the construction of its columns, as well as in the elegance of their forms, recalls the best Greek works of antiquity and not at all the styles common upon the Nile. The sanctuary is in the middle and raised above the level of the rest of the temple. It was approached by a number of steps in black stone. Its floor and its walls were originally covered with glazed tiles, blue and yellow. A number are still in position. Round the sanctuary was a kind of corridor exposed to view on the outside, to show the processions and the ceremonies of the priests.

In the tombs vases of a special and rare kind were recovered, made of thin pottery decorated with paintings in colors. The subjects were animals, trees or natural features, or with designs stamped upon the clay. In addition to pottery vessels there were in these tombs a variety of objects not merely funerary in character. 

In obedience to primitive instinct the dead man was laid to sleep on his bed in his subterranean chamber, surrounded by the things which would be to him the most useful on his awakening. The soldier had his weapons, sword, lance, dagger, etc., all of iron; the huntsman his bow and arrows--even the dogs were sometimes scarified with him. The women had equally their beads and their jewels.

Professor Garstang thinks he has found evidences of human sacrifices. The Ethiopians apparently were reluctant to take life, their worse criminals being told to commit suicide so that blood guilt might not rest on an executioner, and the matter of the human sacrifices is not yet settled.

Well-preserved remains have been found of the period of great splendor, six or seven hundred years B.C., when the Ethiopians conquered Egypt. There are also relics of Roman influence, and among the art treasures is a beautiful head which is placed at the end of the first century B.C. The eyes are of alabaster, with the iris and pupil inlaid, while the eyelashes are in bronze. It is twice life size. It is possible that this head represents Germanicus, who is known from the Annals of Tacitus to have made a voyage by the Nile to Assouan.


The National Religious Training School, Durham, N.C.
Offers special training to young men and women as Settlement Workers, Association Secretaries, Missionaries, Literary and Other Branches.

The following departments are now in successful operation:

Commercial, Literary, Music, Theological Religious Training and Industrial

FALL TERM OPENS OCTOBER 12

SUMMER SCHOOL.

The Summer School and Chautauqua opened July 5, 1911, and closes August 14.

The attractions and advantages offered in the Summer School are unsurpassed in the country for colored young men and women.

Applications should be sent in at an early date.

Loan Scholarships have been established for deserving young men and women.

For further information address

The President, National Religious Training School, Durham, N.C.