At the Boston Anniversary, held May 23d, addresses were made by Rev. George R. Merrill, of Biddeford, Maine, and by President Buckham, of the University of Vermont. The remarks of the latter appear in full in the Congregationalist.
The season of the year has come again, when the schools are closing, and teachers returning North for the summer. The year’s work being ended, the laborers must be paid. Just at this time the receipts grow less, and the income is not so well adapted as at other times to the unusual outgo. If the churches which have taken their collections recently will forward them promptly, and if those who are purposing to send us money soon will send it a few days sooner, we may be saved considerable embarrassment. We do not want to have a single teacher’s or preacher’s claim unpaid the day it becomes due and is presented.
We have referred recently more than once to special wants among our Southern institutions, especially at Tougaloo and Talladega. Both of these, and Straight University as well, are in pressing need of new dormitories, to accommodate the students from abroad, who come to them for instruction unless deterred by the well-known want of room. Several thousands of dollars have been pledged for the Tillotson Normal School in Texas, an eligible site for which has been already secured; and it is important that this stock should grow speedily to be a fruit-bearing tree. These special needs must be kept in mind, and if there should be, during the summer months, some special pleas for help in meeting them, we trust the friends of the freedmen will be ready to respond, if not waiting impatient to be asked. Some of these college presidents and professors will be in the North before very long, and may think it worth while to tell the things they know and the things they have not got, which are often harder to bear than the things they have. The pleasantest way of all would be for their friends to lay by in store something for them, that there be no gatherings when they come.
Special exigencies during the past year demanded of us that we should have a special agent in the field. It was necessary that the burned buildings at Macon, Mobile, New Orleans and Savannah should be replaced as speedily as it could be wisely and intelligently done. It was not merely to rebuild, but to build better, both as to location and adaptation for the work, with a constant view to economy and the limits of insurance money. The Executive Committee persuaded Prof. T. N. Chase to leave his chair, at Atlanta University, temporarily, and undertake the general supervision of the educational work, and, especially, the oversight of these important measures for replacing, improving and enlarging the school buildings. We have now gratefully to record the achievement of this latter work, in great part, and its forwardness so far as it is not yet fully done. Three of the locations have been changed, involving the sale and purchase of lands. Plans have been made, altered, adapted, in all cases, we believe, to the excellent accommodation of the schools and churches, and to the entire satisfaction of the teachers and missionary pastors.
As Prof. Chase returns to his chosen and preferred work at Atlanta, we desire to express our appreciation of the great value of his services in this special work. Nor has his usefulness been limited to the supervision of buildings alone. He has always had more interest in the schools themselves than in their mere habitations; and his suggestions in regard to them have been valuable and practical, while in many other ways he has rendered important service to the executive officers of the Association. The wider acquaintance which he has made during his journeyings and sojournings with the work at large, will, we doubt not, increase his usefulness to the institution with which he has been so long and honorably connected.