best result. Whatever may be said of the superficial scholarship of the majority of their pupils, or of the occasional over-elation of some of the weaker heads, the general effect of their training is good and helpful, not only to themselves but to their people. I know of what I affirm. I have lived for twelve years past in constant contact with and careful observation of these young people. There are now thousands of them scattered through the South. Many of them have married their school companions; indeed, the coeducational feature of the system is one of its most valuable elements, tending to bring together, on a higher plane of Christian friendship and marriage, where such object lessons are most important. I find these people at work in all the superior avenues open to their race; in the church, as pastors and workers of an improved style, physicians, mechanics; the women good mothers and housekeepers, bringing up their children "in the fear of the Lord;" the life of the common school as teachers; blessing the churches and communities in which they live; in short, acting well their part of leadership in every realm of life among their people.

When it is said that their education unfits them for work, the assertion simply means that intelligent, ambitious, self-respecting American youth, of every race, class or "previous condition" will not and ought not to become workers of the old-time sort; servants under the despotic control of a selfish and exacting mistress; laborers in a life little above the old conditions of slavery; humble, cringing, or reckless and "strik. ing" operatives, enlisted and maneuvered by demagogues in the bitter war of labor against capital. These educated young people are doing what the children of every respectable family in any part of our country are doing; working according to the improved industrial methods, in modern style, moved by the new ambitions of the day and time. Already have the communities of the South had reason to be grateful for what has been done in this way. The system of common schools for the colored folk would be impossible without their work in the schoolroom. The Negro church would be sloughed in a half-pagan superstition without their ministry in the pulpit, and the Sunday school. They are leading the way as honestly, effectively, and successfully as any people, all things considered, to a better time coming for the States which must remain the permanent home of the race.

In another place, in my observations on the common school and woman's work therein, I shall write of the great service of the colored young women therein. Suffice it here to repeat what has all along been repeated, that in this blessed ministry of education the women of the North, by what they have contributed and what they have done, have not only laid the sixteen Southern States and the American people under a weight of obligation that only time will reveal; but which, also, time, the all-reconciling force in human affairs will be certain to bring to the remembrance, appreciation, and grateful acknowledgment of the Republic.

LXXIV.

Of course the question must be met and answered, What is to be the final status of this class of schools? It will be decided by each religious body on grounds satisfactory to itself. But certain tendencies are already apparent, all pointing in the same direction.

First. It has been for some time apparent that the elementary schooling of colored children should be left to the local public schools as fast as they are competent to do the work. Probably, in a large majority of cases, this would be feasible, especially as in these communities the common-school teachers are largely drawn from these institutions. It will be impossible to gather the funds in the North for the support of a great system of elementary education in the South. No State in the Union, not even Massachusetts or California, now pays so much per capita for the most complete system of public schooling as it costs these institutions for the training of their graduates, over and above what is received for tuition fees and student work. There has been too much of the tendency in all these Northern churches to push their Southern educational work on the lines of the parochial and "Christian education" scheme, against which the Northern Protestant people are almost a unit in opposing the Catholic programme in their own States.

The Southern colored people can not educate their children in their own parochial schools without such incessant demands upon Northern benevolence as will not much longer be met. If the colored people can be aroused to their own responsibility and lifted above a present dan gerous dependence on Northern charity, they can, in different ways, supplement the public school and make it in time adequate to their needs. Whether they do it will depend largely on the cheerful coöperation of these great institutions with local boards of instruction. There is no doubt that all these seminaries, called colleges and universities, would be far more effective if their number of students were decreased by a third, carefully sifted, and the work of the institution concentrated on a class of pupils who, by age, capacity, and character will repay the labor and money expended upon them. At present every incompetent, half-trained, unreliable scholar sent forth feeds a popular prejudice against negro education, perpetuates the reign of poor teachers and useless schools, and works unfavorably in the reaction at the base of supplies. For a generation yet this class of academies will virtually have in its hands the fixing of the standard of teaching abil ity and general professional character among the colored people of the South. Every institution established by State or local home effort will be compelled to follow these models. It would be far better could 25,000 students, sifted from the mass that is rushing upon these institutions, be selected, assisted, if need be, to remain until well trained and then graduated, than to expend thousands on children who can as well be schooled in the ordinary way.

LXXV.

Second. This will involve the necessity of a general effort to endow the best of these schools until they are raised above their present neces sity of "living from hand to mouth."

The result of this would be a superior class of teachers, better paidand more permanent, three most desirable elements of success. The schools themselves would then be lifted above their precarious depend. ence on annual contributions by churches, Sunday schools, and personal gifts. They would also be fortified against the two home perils: a raid by ambitious colored churches and interested leaders to capture and manage them in their own way, and the occasional upheaval from the lower regions of Southern life, which is still to be guarded against in every State.

LXXVI.

Third. Thus defended and concentrated it will be perfectly safe to call to these boards of management and instruction friendly and competent Southern men and women of both races, anticipating the time when all these schools can be handed over to the Southern people, the grandest educational gift ever yet conferred upon any people, by the combined philanthropy and Christian patriotism of the North and the Nation.

These suggestions are in no way original with the writer. They are all strongly confirmed by the growing conviction of the most experienced managers and workers in this field. Indeed more than one of these colleges is now virtually planted on this platform and others are looking that way. It is high time that the indiscriminate and often thoughtless giving of our Northern people for the education of the Negro should give place to a concentrated effort to secure and thoroughly establish the positions already gained. Through the entire summer the streets of our Northern cities are swarming and our churches besieged by a host of solicitors, of both races, often wholly unknown or commended in the reckless way in which people can be sent from any community anywhere to beg for "a good cause." As an old railroad president growled out to one of these petitioners, "You can't educate 20,000,000 people by passing round a hat." Our Southern friends mistake in their goodnatured indorsement of many of these solicitors, and provoke reaction by favoring this incessant application.

While there has probably been no more questionable or incompetent management of such funds than could be expected, there has been the usual result of spreading great sums of money in a miscellaneous way over vast spaces, often to be handled by workers incompetent or visionary. Many a church pays an annual tax for the support of a good brother or sister "missionary down south," when the same money applied to build a colored schoolhouse, place in it a better teacher, and

extend its term would help ten times the number of children, besides forging one more link in the chain of union and good feeling between the people of both sections. But we are aware that all this depends largely on the final union of the still disrupted churches of the three great religious denominations that contain nine-tenths of the Southern people. This final triumph of American patriotism and the Christian religion once achieved, all good things would seem possible.

PART III.

SOUTHERN WOMEN IN THE SOUTHERN COMMON SCHOOL.

LXXVII.

On a midsummer day in August, 1880, I was first introduced to the university life of our Southern States. Dr. Ruffner, State superintendent of education in Virginia, had summoned the first gathering of the teachers of that State in a midsummer institute, and the University of Virginia had tendered the use of its buildings, with all their facilities, while the foremost of the professors and their families gave their vaca. tion to the instruction and entertainment of their guests. Several hundred of the white teachers of the State assembled, representing every portion of its territory and almost every family of eminence in its history. Indeed, as one overlooked this remarkable gathering of teachers it almost seemed like a rally of the descendants of the noblest people of the Old Dominion to celebrate the illustrious marriage of which Thomas Jefferson published the bans sixty years before, and which, after a stormy courtship of more than half a century, was concluded in those midsummer weeks.

For a whole generation Thomas Jefferson and the group of likeminded public men of old Virginia had labored with the people of that State to establish a thorough system of education. Jefferson's plan originally included the emancipation and industrial training of the Negroes; a free common school for all white children; a system of high schools, partially free; and a State university. During his life he only accomplished the founding of the State University, which, with several denominational colleges and a number of secondary schools, in connection with private instruction, was relied upon to educate the respectable classes. A system of free instruction for the poorer white people was repeatedly attempted, but never attained the dignity of a common school that any large number even of that class in Virginia cared to use. Who will say that times have not changed, when the same class that rejected Jefferson's school in 1820, in fifty years, as the conservative party in the State government, struck hands with Massachusetts in the management at Hampton; adopted the Richmond free-school system, begun by Boston women; established a system of public instruction for both races, essentially the same as in all the States; in the free high