kable degree in the large
collection. Southerners and Northerners were alike astonished at what
their eyes beheld. Those who thought that the negro has no higher
mission than to be a "hewer of wood and drawer of water," were
compelled either to change their minds or else to say they did not
believe that the colored people did the work. It was amusing to hear
the remarks of some of the latter class, as they looked at some
beautiful specimens of negro handicraft or ingenuity.

It may interest the readers of the MISSIONARY to glance at the great
variety of lines along which negro ability put itself on exhibition.

Examination papers from schools were very numerous, showing
proficiency in penmanship, spelling, arithmetic, algebra, geometry,
free drawing, grammar and translations from the classics; fine
needlework of all kinds; millinery; dress-making, tailoring; portrait
and landscape painting in oil, water-colors and crayon; photography;
sculpture; models of steamboats, locomotives, stationary engines, and
railway cars; cotton presses, plows, cultivators, and reaping
machines; wagons, buggies; tools of almost all kinds, from the hammer
of the carpenter to the finely-wrought forceps of the dentist; piano
and organ (both pipe and reed) making; carpentry, cabinet-making;
upholstery; tin-smithing; black-smithing, boot and shoe making;
basket and broom making; pottery, plain and glazed; brick-making;
agricultural products, including all the cereals and fruits raised in
the country; silk-worm culture; fruit preserving; flour from a mill,
and machinery from a foundry owned by a colored man; patented
inventions and improvements, nearly all of them useful and practical,
were quite numerous; drugs and medicines; stationery, printing and
publishing.

Some of the articles on exhibition are worthy of special mention--a
black walnut pulpit, in design and finish as beautiful and tasteful
as any church might wish; a sofa finely upholstered, and the covering
embroidered with artistically-executed needlework, showing four
prominent events in the life of Toussaint l'Ouverture; a chandelier,
very beautiful in design and finely finished; a complete set of
dentist's instruments, in polish and finish remarkable; a little
engine, made by a silversmith of Knoxville, who was a slave, and who
has become a skilled workman of local reputation. He never worked in
a shop till he had one of his own. He learned the use of tools
without any instruction