A word as to the taste: It must be remembered that these people have not been reading long, and consequently have not read much. The colored editor can not mold his weekly after the literary weekly of the country, nor after the daily of the city. His model must be, rather, the average country weekly; and he must afford such reading matter as will suit his customers. The great colored newspaper must begin at the bottom and grow up with the advancing race. So far as I am able to judge, neither the great newspaper, nor the great editor, has yet appeared; but I have no doubt that the editor will come, and come from the ranks of those who are passing through the experience common to those who have been enslaved.
Many things in politics, religion, and philosophy seem to combine to point out for the American negro an important and commanding future. The great poets, orators, and literary men of the nation ought to, and I believe will, come from this race. Compelled to come up fresh from first principles, they will throw a glow of warmth and originality over American literature, which the world will not fail to recognize. To assist in shaping the course of the writers and bringing out this literature, is the mission of the colored man's paper. Up to the present, he has been presenting crude and cheap thoughts, and dealing with unimportant, petty facts, and reeling off much jargon. He is running off the froth of an effervescent race; but the good wine will come after a while, and these rich, fresh minds will give out their brilliant, sparkling thoughts in charming melody, and the colored man's newspaper, purged of its dross, will be as pure gold.
I do not leave out of account, in marking out the field for the colored man's journal, the thousands of colored people scattered throughout the North. These are the Old Guard. They have shown their faith, over and over again, by their
