American Missionary | Page 7

ready for the opening, the building having been constructed during the months of summer. For valuable aid in sympathy, counsel and influence in Meridian, we and the people to whom we are sent are greatly indebted to Rev. Wm. Hayne Leavell, of Meridian.
WHITNEY HALL, for the Indian boys at Santee Agency, is another noble gift of large Christian faith for our Normal School in Nebraska. We summoned our courage to take this, also, with what the enlargement includes.
These are the chief additions to our system of schools, though there have been less marked enlargements in other places. They are simply the growths of strong faith and strong life. They are the free and special gifts which came to us through the convictions of others who had realized the need.
The common schools, 35 in number, in eight different Southern States, are in the hands of faithful teachers.
There are six Chartered Institutions, behind which we have stood the year past.
TALLADEGA COLLEGE in Talladega, Ala., has had a year of exceptional interest. The college work is developing and the theological school was never better. The industrial departments in agriculture and the mechanic arts offer fine advantages. The institution increases in popular favor and is full of students.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY in Georgia, under the temporary presidency of Prof. Francis, who was also college preacher and pastor, has moved on in its usual course. Through the successful solicitation of Prof. Bumstead, with our cordial and constant endorsement, sufficient Christian money came into the treasury to meet the deficiency caused by the withdrawal of $8,000 from the State of Georgia. The Association was able in its grants to share in this satisfactory result. At the last meeting of the Trustees, Prof. Bumstead was elected President for the ensuing year, and Prof. Chase, in view of a removal to New Mexico, resigned the professorship which he had ably held many years.
STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY at New Orleans, located in the most influential city of the Southwest, draws its students from refined Creole homes and from the rude cabins of the remote plantations. An interesting report gathered from twenty-two of its students who taught school during the summer vacation, tells us that they instructed 1,398 pupils in day schools and organized thirteen Sunday-schools, in which were taught 1,574 children, most of whom were absolutely unreached before. This summer record of Straight University students is a partial illustration of what is going forth from it year by year; and not from Straight only, but from all of our higher schools. The theological work in Straight is of incalculable importance.
TILLOTSON INSTITUTE, at Austin, Texas, has invigorated its normal course and has inaugurated a hopeful college preparatory department. The recipient of a special gift, it was enabled to complete a new industrial building, in which has begun a course of industrial training. It greatly needs a second dormitory hall for young women, and were not the institution so remote, some prophetic giver would see the urgency and the strategy of such a gift, and would make it. If, without the sight, some one shall be led to do this for Tillotson, he will reap the blessing of those who do not see and yet believe.
TOUGALOO UNIVERSITY, near Jackson, Miss., is an institution of exceeding interest. It has a department of Biblical instruction added to its course of study, in which students are prepared to preach the gospel. Its industrial facilities are excellent, both for agricultural and mechanical training. The students can take the timber from the tree, and the iron in the rough, and make wagons and carriages sufficiently good to compete with the best makers in the State. The school in all of its parts is controlled by the missionary spirit. Rev. F.G. Woodworth, of Connecticut, last year assumed the Presidency.
FISK UNIVERSITY, at Nashville, Tenn., is one of the oldest and most complete of all our Southern colleges, and has no superior among all the institutions in the country devoted to the education of the Negro. Giving relatively less attention to the industries, it models itself after our Northern colleges, and emulates them in the rigor of its intellectual studies and in the thoroughness with which it seeks to make good teachers and preachers; educators in the larger way for the race. It also has a department of theology. It has made its place, which it holds with enthusiasm and fidelity. If some one would give us, or leave us, money to endow this institution, he could scarcely send his influence further down the centuries than in this way. It would tell upon the race and upon the Nation.
In this glance at our schools, we see Christian schools. But they are more, they are missionary schools. We are bearing the torch of Christ into places of darkness. We teach the industries to them