ods in the schools of the
town of Beaufort,--ten in a school of ninety, thirteen in another of
sixty-four, and twenty in another of seventy. In the schools on the
plantations there were never more than half a dozen in one school, in
some cases but two or three, and in others none.

The advanced classes were reading simple stories and didactic passages
in the ordinary school-books, as Hillard's Second Primary Reader,
Willson's Second Reader, and others of similar grade. Those who had
enjoyed a briefer period of instruction were reading short sentences or
learning the alphabet. In several of this schools a class was engaged on
an elementary lesson in arithmetic, geography, or writing. The eagerness
for knowledge and the facility of acquisition displayed in the beginning
had not abated.

On the 25th of March I visited a school at the Central Baptist Church on
St. Helena Island, built in 1855, shaded by lofty live-oak trees, with
the long, pendulous moss everywhere hanging from their wide-spreading
branches, and surrounded by the gravestones of the former proprietors,
which bear the ever-recurring names of Fripp and Chaplin. This school
was opened in September last, but many of the pupils had received some
instruction before. One hundred and thirty-one children were present on
my first visit, and one hundred and forty-five on my second, which was a
few days later. Like most of the schools on the plantations, it opened
at noon and closed at three o'clock, leaving the forenoon for the
children to work in the field or perform other service in which they
could be useful. One class, of twelve pupils, read page 70th in
Willson's Reader, on "Going Away." They had not read the passage before,
and they went through it with little spelling or hesitation. They had
recited the first thirty pages of Towle's Speller, and the
multiplication-table as high as fives, and were commencing the sixes. A
few of the scholars, the youngest, or those who had come latest to the
school, were learning the alphabet. At the close of the school, they
recited in concert the Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd," requiring
prompting at the beginning of some of the verses. They sang with much
spirit hymns which had been taught them by the teachers, as,--

"My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty";

also,--

"Sound the loud timbrel";

also, Whittier's new song, written expressly for this school, the
closing stanzas of which are,--

"The v