The Athenaeum. (Atlanta, GA) 1898-1925, February 01, 1925, Image 12
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THE ATHENAEUM
1889. In 1895 Douglas passed on beyond the great divide.
He was a man of great ability, keen foresight! steadfast purpose
and dauntless ambition. He often remarked that the man most easily
whipped is the man most often whipped. A firm believer in his peo
ple, Douglass was willing to sacrifice anything for them. An advocate
of higher education, he was yet wise enough to 1 see the necessity for
an accurate knowledge of the skilled trades. No people can reach
the heights who can only wield the hoe; and yet the trades are the
only firm foundation upon which a civilization can be built. From
the manual arts and crafts alone can we obtain the economic inde
pendence necessary before we step up into the realms of higher educa
tion.
Thus we see a slave litterally take an education and his freedom,
build an upright, fearless, and straight forward character which later
won the highest awards accorded a Negro in this nation, the editor of
the first Negro paper, and the man to whom* an entire nation turned
when it wished to know about a large part of its population.
Let us then taking Douglas as example, be not the men most
often whipped because most easily whipped. Let us be wise enough
to take all that) this our beloved college, offers us and then seek for
more. Let us not be softened by the many opportunities which sur
round us but rather let us take them and make of them more and
better opportunities for those who follow after. Let us take the bal
lot, study well its uses and values, and use it wisely. Let us not be
afraid to aspire to the heighths but rather let us climb hand in hand
to the mountain top and rest only when there are no more worlds to
conquer. Finally let us be, not like dumb, terror stricken cattle,
driven to the pens of slaughter, but rather let us like the heroes
of the world write our names fair and bold upon the records of time
in the halls of fame.
—C. W. Sellers, ’25-
A EULOGY ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By John W. Lawlah, ’25,
Back among the barren and deforested hills of Hodgenville, Ky.
there was born on February 12, 1809, a boy destined to assume an
important role in our modern life. The boy, Abraham Lincoln, the
future 16th President of the United States, and an assassin’s victim
of April 15, 1865, was born in very unfavorable circumstances, and
less than a year of school attendance is all that fell his lot. But with
this meagre help he learned to “cipher to the rule of three.” He read
the few good books that were then in reach, remembered well, and
exercised the knowledge gained. In other respects he was a boy
among boys, loving fun and not enamored to manual toil. At the
age of nineteen he accompanied Gentry’s son on a flat-boat trip to
New Orleans. On that memorable venture he first came into con
scious contact with slavery witnessing an auction sale of Negroes and
vowing if ever the opportunity came to “hit” that system he could