I have just requested my publishers to send you an advance copy of my new novel, "The Marrow of Tradition," which will be out in a week. It is by far the best thing I have done, and is a comprehensive study of racial conditions in the South, in the shape of what is said to be a very dramatic novel, which my publishers boldly compare with Uncle Tom's Cabin for its "Ggreat dramatic intensity and its powerful appeal to popular sympathies." It discusses, incidentally, miscegenation, lynching, disfranchisement, separate cars, and the struggle for professional and social progress in an unfriendly environment—and all this without at all interfering with the progress of an interesting plot with which they are all bound up. It is, in a word, our side of the Negro question, in popular form, as you have presented it in the more dignified garb of essay and biography.

If you feel moved, after reading it, to write a word or two, concerning it, I am sure it would be highly appreciated by my publishers and myself; or if you find it too strenuous fo⁐r you to publicly approve, I feel pretty certain that in private you can do t it almost as much good. I should like to feel that I had been able, in the form of a widely popular work of fiction, to do something tangible and worth mentioning to supplement your own work, and to win back or help retain the popular sympathy of the Northern people, which has been so sorely weakened by Southern deviltry in the past decade; for while the tolerance of the South is necessary to the progress of the colored race, and their friendship desirable, you know better than I can how absolutely essential is Northern sympathy yto the work of Southern education.

I have read your utterances on the subject of the pr⁐esident's death, and its connection with national lawlessness; and I say amen to it. The country is suffering from blood-poisoning, and the South is the source of the infection. It is refreshing to note the growth of a small party of Southern whites who are beginning to perceive the truth. I see Mr. Page has been telling the North Carolinians some wholesome but unpalatable truths; my novel will tell them some more in the same strain. I hope they may profit by both.

My daughter is very much pleased with Tuskegee. I hope she is making herself useful, and I am glad to be able to contribute through her, a little more work for the good cause.