these schools are an improvement over existing conditions,
history will belie itself if this subsidizing of private organizations
does not some day prove a great drawback to the proper development of
the public school system, unless it may be, that the courts will declare
the practice illegal and unconstitutional.

The home and the school being from our point of view unsatisfactory, the
next social institution to which we turn is the church. Since the war
this has come to be the most influential in the opinion of the Negro and
it deserves more careful study than has yet been given to it. Only some
of the more obvious features can here be considered. The first thing to
impress the observer is the fact that time is again no object to the
Negro. The service advertised for eleven may get fairly under way by
twelve and there is no predicting when it will stop. The people drift in
and out, one or two at a time, throughout the service. Families do not
enter nor sit together. Outside is always a group talking over matters
of general interest. The music, lined out, consists of the regulation
church hymns, which are usually screeched all out of time in a high key.
The contrast between this music and the singing of the plantation songs
at Hampton or some other schools which impresses one as does little
music he hears elsewhere is striking. The people have the idea that
plantation songs are out of place in the church. The collection is taken
with a view to letting others know what each one does. At the proper
time a couple of the men take their places at a table before the pulpit
and invite the people to come forward with their offerings. The people
straggle up the aisle with their gifts, being constantly urged to hasten
so as not to delay the service. After half an hour or so the results
obtained are remarkable and the social emulation redounds to the benefit
of the preacher. It is difficult for the white visitor to get anything
but hints of the real possibilities of the preacher, for he is at once
introduced to the audience and induced to address them if it is
possible. Even when this is not done there is usually an air of
restraint which is noticeable. Only occasionally does the speaker forget
himself and break loose, as it were. The study then presented is
interesting in the extreme. While the minister shouts, the audience are
swaying backward and forward in sympathetic rhythm, encouraging the
speaker with cries of "Amen", "That