COMMENCEMENT AT FISK UNIVERSITY, TENN.
Fisk graduated classes of usual size. It deeply lamented the absence of President Cravath, who was ill in the East, and the late death of Prof. Spence. The Dean, J. G. Merrill, was deputed to preside at the varied functions of commencement week. The weather was unusually temperate, audiences very large.
The largest college preparatory class in the history of the university was graduated. It catalogued thirty-nine. Ten States were represented on its list, and a larger number of young women than have ever entered Fisk before were made Freshmen.
SENIOR CLASS, FISK UNIVERSITY.
Commencement week included a missionary sermon, which was delivered by Prof. Brown, of Vanderbilt University, upon "Paul the Missionary;" baccalaureate, by the Dean, whose theme was "Moses, the Leader of his People." To these were added three "graduating exercises." In the program were over thirty speakers—young men and women, not one of whom had a syllable of prompting. A graduate of Princeton University, spending the day in Nashville, after hearing the four "Commencement" orations, said that each one of them was superior in thought and delivery to the one that carried off the prize at Princeton less than ten days before. These young men and their classmates are to make their careers—three as physicians, two as pharmacists, two as teachers, one as a business man, the other as a lawyer. The young woman graduate received two diplomas, the second being in music, her industry and ability being evidenced in the fact that her long hours with the piano did not prevent her receiving high honors in the classroom. One of the men had walked fourteen miles each day, summer and winter, besides doing the "chores" morning and night; another has had a chair in a barber shop every evening; others have taught schools in vacation, been Pullman porters and waiters at summer resorts. One, whose two grandfathers were Frenchmen, born in France, before coming to college loaded the rifle and stood by his father, who shot down three men who came to his home to mob him. He himself, a very Hercules by name and in appearance, champion on the college gridiron, pleaded on the commencement stage most persuasively for "Universal Peace."
Our commencement orator was Rev. H. E. Cobb, one of the pastors in the Reformed Collegiate Church of New York City. His address upon the "Open Door" disclosed to the young graduates their possibilities of success and failure, and captivated old and young.
Fisk enters upon a new year with high hopes. Her Jubilee Singers, whose music added greatly to the enjoyment of the week, return North in the late summer to keep alive the enthusiasm awakened by their last season's successes, while the Faculty know the hour grows nearer and nearer when the endowment which God has in store for Fisk is to materialize, and they will know who are God's chosen servants to do for the Negro what has been so gloriously done for the white young people of America—furnishing them a chance to secure an education at an institution throughly equipped to provide the leaders of a tenth of our population, men and women sound in mind and soul.
The Alumni had an enthusiastic meeting. They were addressed by Miss Nancy Jones, '86, who has served the A. B. C. F. M. in Africa, and by Dr. A. A. Wesley, '94, who spoke on "How to Overcome Prejudices," who, as surgeon in an Illinois regiment in the Spanish War, won such distinction as to have been appointed to read a paper before the National Army Surgeons' Association in New York City the week before commencement.