the American Missionary Association from its own funds and the Daniel Hand estate, the direct contributions of individuals, and payments by the students for board and tuition. The intention is to make the expenses for students as light as possible. After the first session the charges for tuition were fixed for the grammar department at $2.00 per month; for the normal department at $2.50 per month; for board and tuition together $12.00 per month. In 1887 the tuition for the grammar department was dropped to $1.00 per month. The other charges remained in force for ten years, when the tuition was made the same for all, $1.00 per month. To meet the necessities of the case we are forced to allow our students to work out at least half of these very moderate charges. Nearly all the manual labor about the institution is done by students. Thus, in a very practical way, they help themselves pecuniarily and acquire knowledge of housekeeping in its manifold lines.

To train the hand as well as the head the boys receive instruction in carpentry and industrial draughting, and the girls have regular lessons in needlework, dress-making and kindred subjects.

GIRLS' HALL, TILLOTSON COLLEGE.

Tillotson has always done good work. She has made a name for herself. Standing, as she does, for thoroughgoing, non-sectarian, Christian education, for true manhood and womanhood, with mutual co-operation and helpfulness, with so many from all parts of this great State of Texas looking to her for light and leadership, her opportunities for usefulness are out of all proportion to her means. To properly meet these demands she sorely needs many things. A full list of imperative needs would call for too much space. A few must suffice.

A reasonable sum of money for endowment of professorships.

A great addition to apparatus and appliances for experiment and instruction.

Refurnishing of present buildings from top to bottom.

Sanitary drainage and plumbing.

A neat and pleasant chapel. A library and reading-room, with funds to purchase new books.

An extension to complete girl's hall, on the present plan, affording needed rooms for girls and teachers.

Music rooms removed from study and recitation rooms.

A building, with power, for metal working, tinsmithing, etc.

A plant for typesetting and printing.

Additional teachers should be employed, and the courses of study extended, so that men fully equipped for the demands of the new century can be furnished here.

Tillotson thus sends forth her plea to Christian men and women all over our land to be used as the means of untold blessing to needy thousands. Her usefulness has been great. It can be indefinitely increased with comparatively small outlay. Here are grand opportunities for investment in "futures" that will yield large returns. Just after the death of the late Dr. Joseph Hardy Neesima, of Japan, who had been so generously aided by Hon. Alpheus Hardy, of Boston, who had also died not long before, a Christian friend wrote:—"I wonder what Mr. Hardy thinks now of his investment in Joseph Hardy Neesima." They both can now realize so much more fully the meaning of the Master's words: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

GROUP OF STUDENTS ON STEPS OF ALLEN HALL, TILLOTSON COLLEGE.

AVERY NORMAL INSTITUTE, CHARLESTON, S. C.

More than ordinary interest attaches to this institution for the education of colored youth and the training of colored teachers, located as it is in the very cradle of secession, and near the spot from which was fired the first gun in the long war waged for their perpetual enslavement; and in a city situated in the heart of the cotton and rice-fields of the Southland.

AVERY NORMAL INSTITUTE, CHARLESTON, S. C.

Scarcely had the smoke of the long conflict cleared away or civil authority been fully restored in this long-besieged city, when General Saxton, then Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, opened a school in the Memminger building on St. Philip Street, built for and since used for the education of white children. Here, on the first day of October, 1865, were gathered a thousand children eager for the education so long denied to their race. So great was the pressure to gain admission to this school that one hundred children were seated in the great dome that surmounts the edifice.

The studies during the first year embraced the entire range of elementary branches, from the primer to the Latin grammar. About three-fourths of those who attended this first school were children of freedmen; the others, making up the advanced classes, were born free and constituted an aristocracy of color, a distinction which, after a lapse of more than a third of a century, still exists.

The closing examinations of this first year were attended by a large audience of both white and colored. There were present ladies and gentlemen, missionaries and teachers, civil and military dignitaries, and the leading representatives of both races. It was a novel and moving sight, one that the wildest imagination could not have foreseen or deemed possible five years before.

PROF. M. A. HOLMES, PRINCIPAL.

In its second year the school, then known as the Saxton School, held its sessions in the Military Hall on Wentworth Street, where with a slightly reduced enrollment, it remained until removed to its present quarters, May 1, 1865. The large and handsome building which it now occupies was erected by the American Missionary Association through the Freedmen's Bureau. Rev. Charles Avery, of Pittsburg, Pa., had given a large sum for the education of the colored people, and ten thousand dollars of his bequest were appropriated to the institution, and in honor of this noble philanthropist the name was changed to Avery Normal Institute. Here the enrollment was necessarily reduced and the normal character of its work made more prominent, a feature that had been contemplated from the beginning.

In any survey of the work of Avery, three principals should receive special recognition for their thorough, enduring and Christian labor in this needy field. They are the Rev. F. S. Cardozo, by whom the school was first organized in the Memminger building, Prof. M. A. Warren, who succeeded him and graduated the first class in 1872, and Prof. Amos W. Farnham, now of the Oswego Normal School. Each of these men was distinguished for unusual teaching skill, for great administrative ability, and for complete consecration to the work to which he was specially called. These worthy educators are still remembered here with affection and gratitude, but the full fruition of their labors will be known