us made a fine North
Carolina picture with the covered wagons, the topped buggies, surreys
and saddle horses. The audience without was as great in numbers, as
that within. The address was most acceptable. One of the old citizens
who waited to grasp the speaker's hand, told him how he wished that he
were young again, that he might make his own life successful. "It is
not too late now!" were the words of the preacher in reply.

Some tributes came to us in these last days regarding our work. One
man with a broken voice, told us that he was a better man because of
our Sunday-school and Christian Endeavor Society. He had been a
drinking man, but "for fifteen months had not tasted liquor." Parents
told us of the feeling of safety they had when they committed their
girls to our care, and gave us words of appreciation.

Already the applicants for admission to our boarding department for
the coming year far exceed our accommodations, while every Sunday our
school house is not large enough to accommodate the people who do
come. Many more would come but there is no room.

The spirit and progress of the work far surpass the equipment, and it
is with hearts of gratitude that we lift our eyes and behold "what God
hath wrought."

* * * * *

ALLEN NORMAL INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, THOMASVILLE, GA.--LAST DAYS OF THE
SCHOOL YEAR.

BY MISS A. MERRIAM, PRINCIPAL.

Though there may be little to interest the general reader in a
"Closing Exercises" account of an American Missionary Association
Normal School, these occasions stand for much to both teachers and
scholars. To the former they mean satisfaction not unmixed with
solicitude as to how the knowledge acquired and the mental strength
developed by years of discipline will be used. To the graduate comes
the joy of achievement tempered by the recurring question, "What shall
I do _now_?"

There is another class to whom "Commencement" is a great day--the
fathers and mothers who have toiled long and hard to keep their
children in school. It is a picture one does not soon forget--those
dark faces gazing, with the pride and joy that dims the eye and makes
the lip quiver, upon their children, standing with the graduates.
There, too, is the old grandmother, who nods her turbaned head with
unwonted emphasis as she listens to the essay of her grandchild, whose
name she cannot read!

Prof. Jas. L. Murray, principal of the Albany Normal School, who
delivered the a