the desert is rejoicing and blossoming as the rose.

COMMENCEMENT AT FISK UNIVERSITY, TENN.

Fisk graduated classes of usual size. It deeply lamented the absence of President Cravath, who was ill in the East, and the late death of Prof. Spence. The Dean, J. G. Merrill, was deputed to preside at the varied functions of commencement week. The weather was unusually temperate, audiences very large.

The largest college preparatory class in the history of the university was graduated. It catalogued thirty-nine. Ten States were represented on its list, and a larger number of young women than have ever entered Fisk before were made Freshmen.

SENIOR CLASS, FISK UNIVERSITY.

Commencement week included a missionary sermon, which was delivered by Prof. Brown, of Vanderbilt University, upon "Paul the Missionary;" baccalaureate, by the Dean, whose theme was "Moses, the Leader of his People." To these were added three "graduating exercises." In the program were over thirty speakers—young men and women, not one of whom had a syllable of prompting. A graduate of Princeton University, spending the day in Nashville, after hearing the four "Commencement" orations, said that each one of them was superior in thought and delivery to the one that carried off the prize at Princeton less than ten days before. These young men and their classmates are to make their careers—three as physicians, two as pharmacists, two as teachers, one as a business man, the other as a lawyer. The young woman graduate received two diplomas, the second being in music, her industry and ability being evidenced in the fact that her long hours with the piano did not prevent her receiving high honors in the classroom. One of the men had walked fourteen miles each day, summer and winter, besides doing the "chores" morning and night; another has had a chair in a barber shop every evening; others have taught schools in vacation, been Pullman porters and waiters at summer resorts. One, whose two grandfathers were Frenchmen, born in France, before coming to college loaded the rifle and stood by his father, who shot down three men who came to his home to mob him. He himself, a very Hercules by name and in appearance, champion on the college gridiron, pleaded on the commencement stage most persuasively for "Universal Peace."

Our commencement orator was Rev. H. E. Cobb, one of the pastors in the Reformed Collegiate Church of New York City. His address upon the "Open Door" disclosed to the young graduates their possibilities of success and failure, and captivated old and young.

Fisk enters upon a new year with high hopes. Her Jubilee Singers, whose music added greatly to the enjoyment of the week, return North in the late summer to keep alive the enthusiasm awakened by their last season's successes, while the Faculty know the hour grows nearer and nearer when the endowment which God has in store for Fisk is to materialize, and they will know who are God's chosen servants to do for the Negro what has been so gloriously done for the white young people of America—furnishing them a chance to secure an education at an institution throughly equipped to provide the leaders of a tenth of our population, men and women sound in mind and soul.

The Alumni had an enthusiastic meeting. They were addressed by Miss Nancy Jones, '86, who has served the A. B. C. F. M. in Africa, and by Dr. A. A. Wesley, '94, who spoke on "How to Overcome Prejudices," who, as surgeon in an Illinois regiment in the Spanish War, won such distinction as to have been appointed to read a paper before the National Army Surgeons' Association in New York City the week before commencement.

COMMENCEMENT AT TALLADEGA COLLEGE, ALABAMA.

Coming away one afternoon from one of the exercises of commencement week at Talladega College, a prominent white citizen said in comment on a speech he had just heard: "There is a good deal of foolish talk about how much the Spanish-American war has done in bringing the North and South together; but the fact is, that schools like this, in which the Negro is taught to be law-abiding and to live a moral life, administered as this one is with such good sense and wisdom, are doing far more than any sentimental influences of the war to bring races and sections to mutual good understanding." On Sunday, at the big Chautauqua building, during the baccalaureate sermon, two white citizens were standing at the door watching the quiet, orderly audience of perhaps fifteen hundred colored people. One of them has not been distinguished for earnestness of desire to see the Negro educated. Said the other, "It looks like the niggers are coming up in spite of h—," to which the response, though possibly reluctant, was clearly affirmative.

Those who have been toiling all the year long, unable to appreciate the work in its perspective, discouraged sometimes because results hoped for do not immediately appear, are cheered by such testimony to the efficiency and value of the work, even if it is not always given in elegant and reverent form. And there was other testimony of the same kind from all sorts and conditions of visitors. Expressions of pleasure and approval came constantly from alumni, from teachers in other schools, from citizens both white and black.

Not as large a graduating class was sent out as usual, there being only nine in all—three young men from the college department, and six from the normal school, all young women but one. The parents of none of these students have graduated from Talladega. All of them were slaves, though most were so young at the time of emancipation as not to remember much of slavery days. The father of one of the college men, however, was, it is said, made by his master to run regularly before the bloodhounds to keep them in training. Sometimes it was hard running, and sometimes he had to take refuge in a tree to escape harm when the dogs had caught up with him. This young man, who carried off the A.B. degree, is planning to go to Yale for further study, and after a year or two to enter a Northern law-school.

Another of the same department is in some ways an accomplished fellow. He has read widely and remembers what he has read; he plays the violin; he is an excellent pianist, and he is a member of the college male quartet, which is to spend the summer in the North, endeavoring to raise money for new buildings greatly needed at Talladega. After this summer campaign he also hopes to begin the study of law at Columbia or Harvard. The third young man of the college class expects to take for a year a principalship in the public schools of a neighboring city, and then enter upon the study of medicine.

The young man who finished the normal course, being a good carpenter, has been for three years head of the college repair shop. For this summer he will return to a country school where he has taught for five consecutive summers, and in the fall hopes to enter a trade-school to perfect himself in carpentry and to learn what he can of architecture and building, purposing to devote himself to that line of work.

It is a matter of congratulation to the school that so many students, after finishing some course here, are ambitious to pursue their studies further in the best institutions of the country.

The young women who were graduated from the normal course are all to enter upon the work for which they have been trained, one or two already having positions in view in city schools, while the others will take up work in the country districts. It