only three illustrations. One is found in his report to President Johnson in 1865. A second is an article printed in McClure's Magazine in 1903, under the title, “Can the South Solve the Race Problem?” A third instance of the sanity of his views was given some of us when a conference of the leaders of the Negro race was, a few months before his death, held in this building, to which our good friend, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, kindly brought him. None will forget how, for nearly an hour, he lifted us, as it were, into a new world, while there came from his lips such words of advice, caution, and encouragement as only he could speak.
But he has passed from earth. My race, the Indian race, American life as a whole are the poorer. There never was a time when such men were more needed than at present. My own belief is that one such character encourages and makes possible in time many other characters of like strength and helpfulness. I do not despair. One great life makes possible many great lives. We need at present, when the question of races is occupying the attention of the world as has seldom been done, as never before, it seems to me, men of clear, calm view, and with the courage of their convictions. I am not discouraged as to present conditions, nor as to the future. It is good to be permitted to live in an age when great, serious, and perplexing problems are to be solved. It is good to live in an age when unfortunate and backward races are to be helped, when great and fundamental questions are to be met and solved. For my part, I would find no interest in living in an age where there were no weak member of the human family to be helped, no wrongs to be righted. Men grow strong in proportion as they reach down to help others up. The farther down they reach in the assisting and encouraging of backward and unpopular races, the greater strength do they gather. All this is borne out in the character of the hero of this evening. Without oppression, without struggle, without the effort to grapple with great questions, such a great character could not have been produced. It required the white heat of trouble to forge such a man.
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