tizen, is beyond the measure of words.

Here, as everywhere in the South, I found that the American Missionary
Association, as representative of our Northern Christian sympathy, was
at work. Its normal schools, fitting teachers to go out and displace the
bare-footed, ignorant, snuff-stick-chewing school mistresses; its
churches, fitting mothers and fathers to enter upon their duties
conscious of their responsibility; and its missionaries, bringing
in an intelligent Christian life, and driving the curse of the
country--intemperance--out of the home, community and the county, are
thus meeting the need, and answering the cry, and fulfilling the
obligations. Below is a cut of one of the buildings of the Academy
at Williamsburg, Ky., recently erected among these people.

[Illustration: WILLIAMSBURG ACADEMY, KY.]

I found one worker where the field called for a dozen; one school where
we should have twenty; one church where we should have a hundred; one
scholar received into an over-crowded school house, when its doors
should open to scores. I found one missionary with nine organized
churches on his hands, and he the only pastor; the extremes of his
parish being seventy-five miles apart.

And lastly, on returning to New York, I found an empty, a worse than
empty, a debt-burdened treasury, forbidding all advancement in this
field.

* * * * *

_Anniversary Exercises._

* * * * *

FISK UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN.

BY DISTRICT SECRETARY C.J. RYDER.

Fisk University fills a large place in the educational institutions of
the South, and commencement week occupies an important place in the
college year at Fisk.

When the inhuman caste prejudice passes away, the Congregationalists of
the North will discover the encouraging fact that the American
Missionary Association has planted Congregationalism in the South to
stay. Fisk University and other such institutions, filled as they will
be by young men of every class and color, will be strongholds of our New
Testament faith and polity. Such a Commencement as was observed at Fisk
this year does much to bring about that blessed day. This Commencement
week, beginning Thursday, June sixth, and closing the evening of June
twelfth, was crowded with literary and musical exercises of high order.
President E.M. Cravath, D.D., delivered the baccalaureate sermon, taking
for his subject, "Building on the Rock." It was a