to call at the University. Quite a number accepted the invitation, and
in addition to being shown through the buildings, we were entertained
by the students, under the supervision of the President and
Professors, with hymns, songs and plantation music, with explanation
by the President of the course of studies and progress of the
students. At the close of the reception, it fell to my lot to
acknowledge the civility shown us, which I did in the following words:

In behalf of visitors from the Raymond Excursion, it gives me great
pleasure to express to the officers and students of Straight
University our thanks for the interesting reception we have received
at their hands. We have come from a long way off, for sight-seeing,
and the study of the country, but here we find something more than the
wild mountains, and desolate plains, and border towns, that are to
make up so much of the interest of our journey. Through institutions
like this, a problem suggested to me in one of your streets will find
solution. I visited the Republican State Convention in session, to
see ex-Governor Kellogg, whom I had known in his boyhood among the
Green Mountains, and who was one of {pg 212} the officers of the
convention. While there I listened to several speeches from colored
men, which, for clearness of thought and pathos of oratory, would have
done credit to any public speaker in the country. I have since
learned, with great pleasure, that several of these gentlemen were
graduates of this University. On leaving the convention, when scarcely
a block away, I met a well-dressed gentleman, and naturally fell into
conversation about the convention. The gentleman claimed to have
inherited the blood of Boston, but had lived twenty years in New
Orleans. With respect to the convention, he said: "I tell you, sir,
the white people here will never consent to be governed by a lot of
ignorant Negroes, like those in that convention!" I have thought on