id="Page_17" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 17]"/> upon untidyness of appearance, while by firmly sustained legislation the faculty forbids any display of extravagance in attire. Patches and darns are expected; soiled or neglected garments the school will not permit. In a word, what one would expect to find in a Caucasian institution, composed of pupils of moderate means, with high ideals and gentle manners, are found at Fisk. The choicest of the recently emancipated race are here seeking a training. As always and everywhere, none reach the highest ideal. Some are found who fail to aspire to it; a few are intractable, but to one who recalls the life of the race and the treatment it has received before and since it was freed, life at Fisk is a constant miracle.

INDUSTRIAL BUILDING AND GYMNASIUM.
Erected through a legacy by Mr. Howard, of Nashville, and gift of Dr. A. J. Burrell, of Oberlin, O.

"AS GOOD AS NEW."

The Fisk Idea is an expression often on the lips of its alumni. It may be summed up in this: The rudiments of learning for all, manual training for those that are adapted to it and will use it in their after life, the best of culture for those who are capable of receiving and employing it. In a word, capacity not color, Christianity not caste, is to decide the question as to the kind of education a youth is to receive, whether he dwell in the North or South, whether he be an Ethiopian or an Anglo-Saxon. Exceeding few in comparison with the vast multitude of their race will be those who receive their diploma at Fisk; but they are to be the leaders of a people sorely needing leadership. And Fisk's determination to rear such leaders is an abiding protest against the spirit which denies to any human being a chance, and a declaration that the Church, like its divine Master, is to minister especially to those who most need help.

Fisk Products are the test of its work. Each year it publishes to the world its list of graduates, and over against each name what he is doing for the world. It does not hesitate to compare this list with a like catalogue of any institution with equipment equal to its own. It has faith to believe that the demon of prejudice will not always hold its flaming sword to bar true manhood deserving success at the threshold of life. It would do its part to overcome this demon by producing self-respecting manhood, which in the eyes of all true men commands respect.

Fisk's Needs are great. It needs such an endowment as shall enable it to decline help from that truest foster mother—the A. M. A. Its chairs professorial and for instructors should be placed upon a permanent footing. In no other way can its fine plant be utilized. If Northern institutions of learning must rely upon endowments to pay from two-thirds to three-quarters of the cost of educating their students, certainly an institution educating the youth of a race scarcely forty years out of the house of bondage, and hence poor beyond all expression, needs vastly more the income of an endowment to supplement the meagre tuitions which its pupils pay. Here is an opportunity for the man of large means to bestow a princely gift, while the man of slender means none the less can invest in the same undertaking.

The man or men who shall thus endow Fisk, will have ever the favor of Him who has declared Himself the friend of the poor and needy.