fested by all classes in
the conferring even of a Normal School Diploma.

The year's work has been one of exceptional earnestness and value. A
total enrollment of 750 in all grades, places the attendance for the
year at the extreme high-water mark, and the extensive use students
are coming more and more to make of the valuable library and other
auxiliary appliances and helps of the school, attests a growth in
breadth of view and of scholarship which is very hopeful and
encouraging.

The religious work and tone of the school have, as always, been among
the prominent and foremost forces, dominating and directing every
other thought and resulting in a steady growth of character among the
pupils of all grades and in the conscious and open choice of a goodly
number of pupils of the life of faith; among others this choice was
made, late in the term by a student of the senior class, the last one
not a professing Christian.

Nearly every young man in the school and many of the young women are
working their way through the course by serving, usually in white
families, mornings and evenings, and so, while sustaining themselves
in school, incidentally giving a very effective object lesson to many
who have professed great doubt as to the value of education for the
colored people.

Few things have done more in Memphis than this sort of association to
convince those who would not listen to any other sort of argument,
that the "old time negro servant" is not so altogether lovely and
desirable under the new conditions, even as a servant, as he is often
rated by those who think regretfully of the ministrations of slave
labor under the old conditions.

In a survey of the whole field of labor among the colored people,
while there are very many disheartening conditions and situations,
especially to one who is looking for the worst, yet a fair application
of the rule of science known as the survival of the fittest, must
inevitably and surely work out the conclusion that these efforts of
school and of church for the upbuilding and evolution of a race are to
have their final reward in the accomplishment of the great work,
whereunto in the manifest providence of God they have been called.

By this unwavering confidence has the American Missionary Association,
with its teachers and missionaries, been sustained through all these
years of perplexing and difficult labors. In this faith thousands of
young colored men and women have stepped