s always been faithfully inculcated, and
opportunities for it have not been wanting. Nearly all the normal
students and many in the lower classes go from school to some useful
occupation, learning trades, or engaging in other remunerative
employment. Large numbers not only maintain themselves but are
necessary helpers to the bread-winners of their respective families.

But in keeping with the tendencies of the times and of the newer
education, and with the traditions and practice of the American
Missionary Association, an industrial department has been added to
Avery, and it has aroused no little enthusiasm among students and
patrons. Needlework for the girls has been introduced, and under an
accomplished and efficient instructor it has been from the first a
great success. The girls from the lower grades as well as from the
normal classes are being systematically trained to do their own
sewing, and will in time be taught to make their own garments. Our
purpose is to add to this, cooking and other departments of domestic
science, as the resources of the Association will permit. Steps have
been taken to establish a printing department.

In 1892 Avery Normal Institute was incorporated under the laws of
the state, though the control of the school has been kept in the
same hands as before, a majority of the trustees being in the
executive committee or the administrative force of the American
Missionary Association. The purpose of the incorporation was to
secure for its graduates the advantages which the laws of the state
confer upon graduates of all incorporated institutions.

[Illustration: SEWING CLASS, SIXTH GRADE.]

An article of this nature would be incomplete without some reference
to charges so frequently made, and in high places too, that
education, and especially the higher education, does the negro more
harm than good, and that the educated classes furnish the larger
part of the criminals. That there are educated criminals is not
doubted, but they are not confined to one race, nor do they come
from the students of the American Missionary Association schools. Of
the nearly four hundred living graduates of Avery, not one is a
criminal nor has one ever been accused of crime, and the writer has
yet to learn of more than two who have proved unworthy of the
training they have received, or dishonored their alma mater by
immoral lives. These fell under a stress of circumstances that would
have ruined almost any young