SKYLAND INSTITUTE (MOUNTAIN WHITE), BLOWING ROCK, N. C.
BY MRS. ELLEN R. DORSETT, PRINCIPAL.
The closing exercises of Skyland Institute, at Blowing Rock, N. C., have each year to be carefully planned with regard to our small audience room, and so we have not one great day, but three days of interest.
The first of these was Wednesday, May 25th, when public examinations took place. We were gratified to have among our visitors, parents who had never before visited our school, also summer visitors, interested in educational matters, who gave us words of cheer.
The following day our pupils gave an industrial exhibition. This was a new feature in our school history, and it was one difficult to inaugurate among the pupils—but it will not be difficult to continue, because of its success. There were five classes of entries; sewing, bread making, pastry and desserts, laundry work and boys' hand work. There were three premiums in each class, and these were in money given by interested friends. The first premium in each case was seventy-five cents. After the judges had made awards, the dining room doors were thrown open to the public, a surging crowd, and small samples of the cooked food were given.
Upon May 27 our school room was beautified with azalias and ferns, and in the corner stood our piano, which came to us during the year from Connecticut friends, ready to do its part. People came from a distance, and the woods across the street from us made a fine North Carolina picture with the covered wagons, the topped buggies, surreys and saddle horses. The audience without was as great in numbers, as that within. The address was most acceptable. One of the old citizens who waited to grasp the speaker's hand, told him how he wished that he were young again, that he might make his own life successful. "It is not too late now!" were the words of the preacher in reply.
Some tributes came to us in these last days regarding our work. One man with a broken voice, told us that he was a better man because of our Sunday-school and Christian Endeavor Society. He had been a drinking man, but "for fifteen months had not tasted liquor." Parents told us of the feeling of safety they had when they committed their girls to our care, and gave us words of appreciation.
Already the applicants for admission to our boarding department for the coming year far exceed our accommodations, while every Sunday our school house is not large enough to accommodate the people who do come. Many more would come but there is no room.
The spirit and progress of the work far surpass the equipment, and it is with hearts of gratitude that we lift our eyes and behold "what God hath wrought."