in review of the current
news of the world, which is daily read and discussed with the
students. Victor Hugo, French and English politics, the Afghan
trouble, Russia and Nihilism, Irish Nationalists, France and China,
England and Egypt, were touched in the questions, and the answers and
general interest showed the value of this daily exercise. In the
ancient history class, printed questions were shuffled and
distributed among the students, and question and answer were spoken
out promptly by each scholar, giving an attractive quickness and
vivacity to the recitation. The class of little Indian geographers
stood before a table on which was a miniature United States made of
sand, with its Eastern elevations, its great central plains, and its
high Western ranges. A thread of blue worsted, put in place by the
young world-builders, simulated the Mississippi, while cities (in the
guise of white buttons) sprang up with a rapidity unknown even in the
great West. The practice-teaching class is always of especial
interest and significance, as over ninety per cent of Hampton's
students devote themselves to teaching as their life mission. A dozen
little bright-eyed, brown-faced primaries from the "Butler" training
school received a geography lesson from one of the senior girls,
criticised by her class-mates. Its grand _finale_ was a miniature
volcanic eruption, creating a sensation among the Butler mites.

The industrial exhibits and the training shops, with their Negro and
Indian apprentices, attracted interested attention, as usual.

The emotions of anniversary day culminated in the afternoon
exercises, in which were several incidents of unusual interest. The
pretty and graceful salutatorian, fair as most of her hearers, was
introduced as a young representative of the family of faithful Mary
Peake, who, just escaped from slavery herself, taught the first
"contraband school" at Hampton. This introduction roused the
war-memories of Rev. Dr. Strieby, who, greeting the young girl as she
stepped on the platform, told the story of the first missionary sent
down to Old Point by the American Missionary Association, his
reception by the contrabands as an angel of deliverance, and his
first school, opened Sept. 17, 1861, with Mary Peake as its teacher,
till she gave up her life in the work for her people.

The pastor's class was represented by a Baptist minister from
Hampton, who gave an account of the Old and New ministry, somewhat
ch