can be given and, besides, is paid a better salary than nine-tenths of our A. M.'s and LL. D.'s receive. The truth is, the title is becoming quite as respectable.

The boy that we teach in our public schools to use his hands is not thereby rendered unfit to enter our technical schools, our colleges or even our universities. On the contrary he is better prepared to do so, especially if he is poor and dependent upon his own exertions to work his way as he goes. Many of our best educated men and women have worked their way through college, and it stands to reason that many more could do so and would, if we in the secondary schools would prepare the way for them. The best teacher I have is a Mississippi woman who has been dependent upon her own exertions since girlhood, and yet today she can teach six different languages and teach them well.

It is our duty, therefore, to open more avenues that better facilities may be given our worthy boys and girls to acquire more extensive courses of study than they would ever be able to do without such.

The curriculum of our secondary schools generally is so arranged that it will meet the wants of those who intend to enter the universities and colleges, and also of those who neyer expect to receive any additional school-training. I say it has been arranged with these ends in view, nor can I see any objections to placing industrial training in one or both of our regular courses. Especially should this be done for the boys. I have often said that the Southern girl is brighter than the Southern boy. I have been led to say so, because, as a general rule, she stands higher in her classes, notwithstanding the fact that she spends, on an average, from one to two hours per day in extra study and practice in music, art, etc. May it not be, however, owing to the fact that not enough attention is being paid to the leisure hours of the boy? While "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is it not a fact that he has too much recreation? Or, rather, does he not have offered to him many kinds of recreation that are more hurtful in every way than beneficial?

Does not your experience warrant the assertion that a decided majority of boys are only too anxious to learn the proper use of tools and the details of mechanical arts? Moreover, it can not be said that they become tired of the work as soon as the novelty wears off. Emulation can be developed in the workshop as easily

as anywhere else, and an interest can be created to that extent that the labor will really be a pleasure. I know that I am not mistaken in this, and I desire to assure you that it is not with me a mere theory.

Furthermore, it can be established that it is not the boys, but the parents in many instances, that are to blame for their children's indolent habits. Effeminacy is being fast developed and the cause is found in the home government. Too often we find the young miss in the parlor giving the piano the toothache with "ragtime" music, and singing "I Want to be an Angel," while her poor old mother is in the kitchen getting dinner. Many mothers and some fathers are overtaxing their strength to save their children from a little work-all from a mistaken idea as to the good and healthful results to be gained from the systematic employment of boys and girls about home.

I was once boarding at a place where the mother was forced to do the cooking a few days (you ladies know that such things will happen, even in the best regulated families). I noticed her carrying in stove wood. I saw her big, strapping son, twelve years old, sitting at a table and playing checkers. It was too much for my temper, and I said, "You lazy, trifling, little scamp, go right out there and take that wood in for your mother." “I don't know how," he whined. Well, I showed him how and, my word for it, he learned fast.

There is another feature to be considered under this subject. As all know we have a large negro population throughout the Southern States, and, my friends, they are here to stay. Frequently we read in Northern journals about the negro problem of the South. It is both amusing and disgusting to the Southern white man and to the intelligent negro to read the “rot" that is being printed from the pens of long-haired men and short-haired women who know absolutely nothing concerning the true condition of affairs among this people. Almost without exception, they view the negro from a distance and form their opinions similarly to those who come West and expect to find the Indian princesses, the beautiful Minnehahas of song and story, existing in reality among the Choctaw, Cherokee and Chickasaw nations. (And if you want all the poetry about Indian maidens knocked out of your soul, just go with me through the Territory on my way home.)

I have been acquainted with the negro for more than forty years. I have taught him in State normals, and instructed him in county institutes. I have studied him and his condition from every side, and I do not hesitate to say that his future happiness— his future success in the South-depends upon his learning something about the more useful pursuits of life. So far as the proper education of the negro is concerned, we have, in a measure, failed. He has conceived the idea that by acquiring an education he will be relieved from the necessity of work. Before he has reached the point even "where a little learning is a dangerous thing," he wants to preach, and preach he will, even before he owns a Bible to read his text from.

What are the conditions in our cities today in respect to the negro? I will give you a sample, and many of you can tell whether or not I have overstated the case. There are in my town 1,003 negro children between the ages of eight and seventeenour State school age. There have been enrolled thus far during the present session 576, about seventy-five of whom are under the State age. This leaves half of the school population on our schools rolls, and these attend so irregularly that their average attendance will not exceed seventy per cent. of the enrollment. Where are all the others? A few of them are at work, but only a few. The rest are absolutely worthless and are growing up to be a public menace to the thrift of the community. It is almost impossible to find a young woman or girl who knows how to sew, cut the simplest kind of a garment, or cook without making dyspeptics, and yet we have Latin, etc., in our colored high school, where we ought to have needle work, culinary training and other industrial studies. The boys should be made to learn a trade and to begin it in our public schools.

As things now stand, the average set of negroes in our cities go to the cotton patch about two months in the year and during this period you can not get one to do anything else for love or money. He thinks too much of the annual festival or frolic that is peculiarly his around the gin houses and country cabins, and is ready at any time to pay two-bits to be in a crowd,—nor is he particular as to what is going on. While summer lasts, and blackberries, roasting ears and watermelons are in season, any kind of exertion is an unknown quantity, unless perchance he can find some secret nook and exercise his lungs with "7-come-11." But

when winter's cold blasts begin to chill the frame and to whistle through the keyholes, he, too, sets up a howl and is willing to work for his victuals and clothes, a few stray dimes and what he can steal.

In conclusion, my friends, while industrial training can not possibly be the panacea for all our ills, I feel assured that it will do as much as any other one thing towards the solution of the negro problem in the South today. If it can be worked into our city schools without detriment to them, ought it not to be done? I believe a plan can be mapped out by which we can go before our school directors and have it done. It is true that it will cost something, but there is no need of its costing very much. It is entirely unnecessary to go into the work full-fledged. It can be done gradually and with very little outlay, when we consider the advantages to be gained.

It is not in my province today to outline any plans for the introduction of industrial training into our public schools, but I contend it can be done and should be done. I regard it, therefore, as incumbent upon us to formulate some plan of proceedure and with a united effort to bring this matter before the people of our cities and towns, and to continue to do so until we gain recognition and accomplish our purpose. The time is coming,-yea, it is already here, when the teacher must know something more than books, and be able to use his well-trained mind to meet conditions as they arise. Leaders of thought must be leaders of action; and such is my faith in the educators of the Southern people that I am willing to affirm that they can accomplish anything, if they so will. Be it ours, then, to shape public opinion about this matter in the right direction.

Let us not be a "tenderfoot" in pressing the claims of our profession upon those in authority. Let us not give up any enterprise simply because it requires work at our hands. The end will justify the means and so long as we labor to ameliorate the conditions of our people, men and women will call us blessed, and it matters not where the good and upright may lay us down to die, though rude be our bed and stony our pillow, there will arise from the valley of vision a ladder in lines of fire to heaven, on whose every round are the foot-prints of angels.

PUBLIC School EDUCATION OF GIRLS: WHAT IT SHOULD BE.

BY MRS. ELECTRA SEMMES COLSTON, GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL, MOBILE, ALA.

Since the first days, when, in the dawn of humanity, the destiny of the race was shaped by the single act of a woman, “her hand has ruled the world." Matthew Vassar in his first speech to the trustees of Vassar College said: "The mothers of a country mold the character of its citizens, determine its institutions, and shape its destiny." Well does it become us, then, to see that these girls of ours shall fulfill this high destiny reserved for them. To make a nobler race, is to make nobler women; to make nobler women, is to expand their sympathies, to enlarge their activities, and to elevate their aims. The object of education is to make good women, who shall make good wives and mothers and sisters, and useful, intelligent and cultivated members of the human society; so, that, by attraction, good men may be worthy to become their husbands, fathers, brothers, and co-workers!

Ignorance and sin are a menace to any permanent government, and especially to a republic. The object of education is to overcome ignorance, and eradicate sin. Education in our American sense is the training of a whole people for a worthy and effective manhood and womanhood as the soul of good citizenship. By its very nature, it is the most influential motive power of our civilization. Like all formative agencies, it must be of slow growth, for whatever living thing is strong or beautiful has been made so by the growth of the years. To grow is to be strong and beautiful and fresh and joyous, hence the spring is the glad time. The insects hum, the birds sing, the lambs skip, the very woods give forth the sounds of life; the growing grass, the budding leaves, the sprouting seed, coming as with unheard shout, fill us with happy thoughts, because in them we behold the vigor of life, bringing promise of higher things. Growth leads us through wonderland. It touches the germs lying in darkness, and the myriad forms of life spring to view; the mists are lifted from the valleys of death and flowers bloom and shed fragrance upon the air. To grow is to feel the mysterious thing we call life vitalizing every fibre of the human being instinct with that life. Hence the education of our girls must commence in their