church was double the
white; and to learn from a careful statistician that there is a less
per cent. of crime and immorality, and a greater per cent. of
full-blooded negroes here, under the influence of this old religious
_regime_, than can be found in any like number of our colored
population throughout the Black Belt, save where the Christian school
has changed the life during this last generation.

We are solving the negro problem in the only way possible, in the
opinion of all statesmen, all publicists and all philanthropists, by
the farm and the shop, and the school and the church, and over them
all the Stars and Stripes. But we are doing more than this; we are
setting the solitary in families; the wilderness and the solitary
places are being made glad, and 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.

[Illustration: 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 ho