Erma is dead, and disconsolate Astral is adrift upon the ocean.

We who have followed their fortunes, lo, these many days, are loth to leave them until our minds can fasten on some circumstance external to our being, to confirm the thought that perennially rises within and bids us believe that their lives have not been spent in vain; that "somehow good will be the final goal of ill."

Those who seek for assurance of this hope would do well to recall the romantic circumstances attendant upon the birth of Erma's son; recall how that on the last night of Erma's abode on earth the spirits of the mother and son went forth to meet and stand revealed unto each other.

These circumstances are pregnant with hope and kindle within one the spirit of prophecy.

The spell is upon us! We don the garb of the seer, wrest the veil from the face of the future and read in her countenance tokens of the irrevocable decrees written by her in the book of fate.

We behold that she hath decreed that Astral Herndon, Jr., shall not long abide on the ocean; that he shall, ere long, make a landing and give evidence that the mountain-imbued son of a handmaid of God is a genius—one of those few colossal, immeasurable spirits that have been permitted, from time to time, to dwell among men for a season; whose presence is made manifest through the trembling of the frail earth beneath their ponderous tread.

Under the influences which this child of destiny shall generate, the Negro shall emerge from his centuries of gloom, with a hope-emblazoned brow, a heart freighted with courage, and a chisel in his hand to carve, whether you will or not, his name in the hall of fame.

"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done."

In this hope we calmly abide the coming of Erma's son, Astral Herndon, Jr. In that day, pleasing thought, Erma shall live again in the wondrous workings of the child whom she has brought to earth. All hail to Erma!

[1] It would be nothing short of a crime against humanity for an author to allow his imagination to create such a picture as is here drawn, unless the portraiture was true to life. In simple justice to himself, the writer cites as his authority the July, 1899, issue of "The Missionary Review of the World."