ALLEN NORMAL INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, THOMASVILLE, GA.—LAST DAYS OF THE SCHOOL YEAR.
BY MISS A. MERRIAM, PRINCIPAL.
Though there may be little to interest the general reader in a "Closing Exercises" account of an American Missionary Association Normal School, these occasions stand for much to both teachers and scholars. To the former they mean satisfaction not unmixed with solicitude as to how the knowledge acquired and the mental strength developed by years of discipline will be used. To the graduate comes the joy of achievement tempered by the recurring question, "What shall I do now?"
There is another class to whom "Commencement" is a great day—the fathers and mothers who have toiled long and hard to keep their children in school. It is a picture one does not soon forget—those dark faces gazing, with the pride and joy that dims the eye and makes the lip quiver, upon their children, standing with the graduates. There, too, is the old grandmother, who nods her turbaned head with unwonted emphasis as she listens to the essay of her grandchild, whose name she cannot read!
Prof. Jas. L. Murray, principal of the Albany Normal School, who delivered the annual address, told his audience, in plain, forceful words, what kind of an education was needed. Rev. T. M. Nixon, pastor of the Congregational Church in Thomasville, gave an excellent sermon on Sunday along a somewhat similar line of thought.
The majority of our graduates answer the question, "What shall I do now?" by securing positions in the "government schools," as those maintained in part, at least, by appropriations from the State are called. It is gratifying to see the steadily growing tendency towards improvement in public school buildings and appliances. One of our graduates, who has taught two years in a poor little building used as a church, has finally succeeded in getting together the lumber for a little school-house, and, by dint of hard labor, has prevailed upon the people of the neighborhood to put up the building. She hopes in the fall to be able to get sash and glass for the four small windows. The blackboards have been furnished by a Northern friend.
"Lighted to light" is the motto of the graduating class.
In order that those who are furnishing the oil for the lamp which has guided so many into the right life may know how their work is regarded by those among whom it is being done, a few sentences are quoted from the leading newspaper of Thomasville, Ga.
"The exercises throughout were most creditable, and demonstrate that the Allen Normal and Industrial School is keeping its place among the foremost institutions of the kind. The course of instruction as carried out by the principal and her efficient corps of teachers is most thorough. Hand and heart are both educated. A pupil leaving this institution with a diploma of this school, has something to be proud of; more, has something—a good education—which cannot be taken away. There is no telling the amount of good these graduates may do if they will practice what they have been taught."