Some years in the history of Fisk University have been years of great barrenness in spiritual things, but none of entire unfruitfulness. Yet long and sorely have we been made to cry unto God, and humble ourselves before Him. Other years are precious in our memories because of God’s peculiar presence there. Three are especially so, 1870, 1873, and 1876; but space will not permit us to enter upon them. Books might be written about them, but they are recorded in God’s book of remembrance; there let them remain. Oh, for a mighty and continual baptism of the Holy Ghost on all our schools in the South!
Sanitary Reform—Business—Industrial Instruction—Lecture Course—Revival.
PROF. A. J. STEELE, MEMPHIS.
Great is sanitary reform, at least so say all good Memphians. The Memphis of last November is not the Memphis of this, except in muddy and broken streets and shabby street cars drawn by more shabby mules. For these, “men may come and men may go, but they go on forever.”
The business season opened in October, hopefully and more brisk than ever before, notwithstanding that our population has within the three years dropped from fifty to thirty-five thousand.
Merchants are reaping a rich harvest, and all kinds of labor find employment and fair pay, interrupted somewhat for the past month by severe cold and continued rains, which have also seriously damaged the ungathered cotton crop. What would you say to ninety inches rainfall in eleven months? This is the amount reported by the signal service observer at Vicksburg for this year up to December 1.
No one now thinks of Memphis as a failure; what with a unique and almost perfect system of sewerage nearly completed, and what with a growing wholesale trade and many permanent improvements, both public and private, a new Memphis, indeed, must soon replace the old.
School opened in October with a full attendance and every promise of a most successful year. Our rooms for industrial instruction are now finished and ready for use. The classes in needlework, etc., are organized, and in January a class or classes in cooking will receive regular instruction, with practice in the experimental kitchen.
Instruction will also be given to a class in the care of the sick. It is a fact that the great majority of our pupils must continue in very humble positions and circumstances; our aim must be to fit them to fill well the lots that must fall to them in life; and whatever positions they may fill, they must know how to build up, and even adorn, homes that shall be very different from those their parents have known.