nds of the new
century can be furnished here.

Tillotson thus sends forth her plea to Christian men and women all
over our land to be used as the means of untold blessing to needy
thousands. Her usefulness has been great. It can be indefinitely
increased with comparatively small outlay. Here are grand
opportunities for investment in "futures" that will yield large
returns. Just after the death of the late Dr. Joseph Hardy Neesima,
of Japan, who had been so generously aided by Hon. Alpheus Hardy, of
Boston, who had also died not long before, a Christian friend
wrote:--"I wonder what Mr. Hardy thinks now of his investment in
Joseph Hardy Neesima." They both can now realize so much more fully
the meaning of the Master's words: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto
one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto ME."

[Illustration: GROUP OF STUDENTS ON STEPS OF ALLEN HALL, TILLOTSON
COLLEGE.]

* * * * *

AVERY NORMAL INSTITUTE, CHARLESTON, S. C.

M. A. HOLMES, PRINCIPAL.

More than ordinary interest attaches to this institution for the
education of colored youth and the training of colored teachers,
located as it is in the very cradle of secession, and near the spot
from which was fired the first gun in the long war waged for their
perpetual enslavement; and in a city situated in the heart of the
cotton and rice-fields of the Southland.

[Illustration: AVERY NORMAL INSTITUTE, CHARLESTON, S. C.]

Scarcely had the smoke of the long conflict cleared away or civil
authority been fully restored in this long-besieged city, when
General Saxton, then Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's
Bureau, opened a school in the Memminger building on St. Philip
Street, built for and since used for the education of white
children. Here, on the first day of October, 1865, were gathered a
thousand children eager for the education so long denied to their
race. So great was the pressure to gain admission to this school
that one hundred children were seated in the great dome that
surmounts the edifice.

The studies during the first year embraced the entire range of
elementary branches, from the primer to the Latin grammar. About
three-fourths of those who attended this first school were children
of freedmen; the others, making up the advanced classes, were born
free and constituted an aristocracy of color, a distinction which,
after a lapse of more than a third of a century, still exists.