GEORGIA.
Atlanta University.
REV. C. W. FRANCIS.
Several facts of interest are connected with the opening of the school year at Atlanta University.
1st. We are in possession of several valuable improvements, which give increased facilities long greatly needed. These are in consequence of recent gifts, the first fruits of which a conjunction of favorable circumstances made thus early available. They consist of an addition to the building for girls, nearly doubling its capacity for lodgers; to the dining room, furnishing nearly forty more seats; to one school room, furnishing desks for sixty pupils, and two convenient recitation rooms. And these are all in full demand, and the inquiry presses, “What shall we do next when the January rush comes on?”
2d. A largely increased attendance, especially of girls, 79 being now present as boarders, and these new pupils come largely from remote regions, some traveling more than 300 miles to reach school. This increase is the result of no special appeals or inducements—indeed, until much more extensive preparations were made it would not be safe to invite a larger attendance—but grows chiefly out of the interest awakened by old pupils in their own community, and in the schools taught by them during the summer vacation.
3d. A very satisfactory report of vacation work by nearly all of the more than 150 who engaged in it.
(a.) Every pupil who was competent and desired a situation in the public schools, obtained one, and many were taken who had made but little progress in studies, and after all were gone, more than a score of applications were made for teachers to be sent from here, which could not be met from any source, and the schools were disbanded.
(b.) No obstacles were met by any pupil caused by any of the white citizens of the state, but on the contrary, much assistance and support was cheerfully given, and that too, in many remote and rude regions.