“Angry words, O let them never
    From the tongue unbridled slip;
  May the heart’s best impulse ever
    Check them ere they pass the lip.”

Nothing, perhaps, more commends the school to the notice of our white neighbors than its music, and greater numbers of them will come to a concert than to any other exercise.

In the Mansion are our rooms for the Normal Department, a study room and a laboratory.  The primary, intermediate and grammar grades are taught in the new school-house, between the Mansion and Strieby Hall, the upper part of which is a neat and commodious chapel.  The primary school is free of tuition as a practice-school for the Normal students, and brings in many little ones from the region round about.

We send forth many teachers for the public schools, and despite the shortness of the terms and the want of appliances, we see encouraging evidences of better work done there from year to year.  Besides test-book teaching, these young home-missionaries labor in many lines for the moral, social and material improvement of their people, and deserve much help and cheer.

A Biblical department is preparing young men to preach the gospel, and as they have the industrial training too, they will be fitted for a very practical sort of evangelism.

A night-school supplies instruction for farm-laborers, laundry girls, etc.

All school-room work, except that of the Biblical class and a part of the Normal work, is women’s work.

Let us step into the Ladies’ Hall on the other side of the Mansion from Ballard Hall.  This is a very hive of female industry.  Here is the girls’ dormitory, with a capacity of about seventy-five, and the boarding department.  All the work of the household, with trifling exceptions, is done by the young women and girls of the school.  Each one does an hour’s work a day, having it changed every month, and many do more to help themselves along.  The girls have the care of their rooms and generally take great pride in having perfect “reports” for tidiness.  Everything is simple and cheap and common, but that does not prevent its being homelike.

Personal cleanliness is required of course.  Some few have been accustomed to it at home.  One large girl said, when told that she must bathe, that she had not washed all over since she could remember, and she still refrained until put “under discipline.”  Finally she yielded, but in the evening was heard crying aloud from a seat on the top stair.  The matron asked, “What is the matter?” and she replied, “Oh! oh!  I’ve wet my skin and it’s made me sick.”  This is a very extreme case of attachment to dirt, but it is interesting and marvellous to witness the changes in appearance, expression and manners, during a prolonged stay in school.

Besides general housework, the girls are given special instruction in cooking, nursing and care of health, under their experienced matron.  They sew for an hour a day in classes, under the supervision of another lady who also instructs a class in cutting by model and dress-making, and sees that all the girls attend properly to their mending.