While, owing to hard times, the enrollment at Tougaloo this year, 362, was less than that of the two previous years, the average attendance has been better than before, larger numbers having continued until the close. The year has been marked by specialty good work on the students' part, only one having failed of promotion. It has been a notable year also in the religious development of many. One only of the Normal Department is not now a professing Christian, and at the farewell prayer-meeting he expressed the earnest desire soon to become one. In the new Theological Department nine have been enrolled. The prospect for next year is that this feature of the work will be largely developed. The new College Preparatory Department has made a most successful beginning, seven having been enrolled and having done good work. The past year has also been notable in the industrial departments. Great attention has always been given to these, though in the girls' industries, especially, the facilities have been exceedingly inadequate. During the year, Berkshire Cottage, the girls' industrial building, has been completed, and in it are pleasant accommodations for the needlework and cooking classes. Seventy girls have had class instruction throughout the year in these branches. In Berkshire Cottage is also carried on the work for which the building was specially designed—the model housekeeping. When the rooms are all furnished eight girls at a time, in two sets of four, will keep house for two months at a time, gaining a practical knowledge of household economies. This year sixteen girls have had this most important training, the last four in the new cottage. Of this four, three were in the graduating Normal class. The exhibits of the cooking and sewing classes at Commencement, consisting of cakes, biscuits, confectionery, etc., and a great variety of well made and useful garments, were highly praised, and a large number sold to visitors. Few schools have better facilities for the practical and most important work of developing homemakers than has Tougaloo. Upon the trained young women who can make good homes depends very largely the future of the Negro race.
AGRICULTURE.
From the earliest history of the school there has been attention paid to agriculture, and each year sees development in the acreage under cultivation and the quantity of produce raised. This year nearly all the fresh meat and the milk, sweet potatoes, molasses, vegetables, etc., needed by the large boarding department, have been raised on the farm, and some things have been marketed, besides the large amount of corn and hay needed upon so large a plantation. The need of a special agricultural building, to cost about $2,000, in which those students who work upon the farm can live, and where they may have special class instruction, is greatly needed.
MANUAL TRAINING.
The Manual Training Department has also this year received new impetus. It includes work in wood and iron, and industrial drawing. The methods are those of the most modern and most approved schools for manual training. Sixty boys have had the woodworking, and twenty the forging. Industrial drawing has been the new feature of the year. There are twenty new and complete sets of drawing tools. For the lower grades there is elementary or "one view drawing," and in the normal grades both boys and girls have advanced work that includes the fundamentals of machine and architectural drawing. Orthographic and isometric projection are taught. The exhibit of this drawing work was remarkably fine, and elicited hearty commendation. Its utility was clearly recognized when on the walls were seen drawings of house framings, house plans, architectural and building details, etc. It should be said that the work along industrial lines is neither optional nor elective, but that it is a part of the regular class-work of the school as much as grammar or arithmetic.
Another feature has been the opening up of the "Tougaloo University Addition to Tougaloo." About one hundred and twenty acres of university land have been surveyed and plotted off into home lots of about five acres each, to be sold to former students of the school and to others who desire to educate their children at Tougaloo. Already several lots have been taken and homes built, and in a few years there will be quite a little educational community.
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES.
The Commencement exercises, May 20th-23d, passed off pleasantly. On Sunday, President Woodworth's baccalaureate was from the text, "He endured as seeing him who is invisible." The farewell prayer-meeting in the evening, conducted by Miss Page, valedictorian of the graduating class, was peculiarly rich and helpful in its reminiscences, forecastings and inspirations. All the graduates go out as earnest Christians. The boys' gymnastic exhibition on Monday evening drew a very interested audience, and the eighth grade exercises on Tuesday morning were admirable. The alumni meeting was the largest that has ever been held, one-third of the alumni having been in attendance. Two notable papers were read, one by Miss Jessie Rhone, of '84, on, "It is better beyond," and one by Mr. W. H. Lanier, '81, on, "The conduct to be pursued by the educated colored young people in gaining success." Both were hopeful and helpful.
Mr. Lanier's relation of his experience as teacher in one of the most difficult towns of the State, where former teachers had been run off and the school closed by the whites, and of the way in which he had so conducted himself that men whose only greeting at first was, "Howdy, boy," now recognize him cordially with, "How do you do, professor," was a most admirable illustration of how tact and good sense will help to break down barriers. The Commencement concert on Tuesday evening drew a very large crowd. Every seat was occupied and all standing room, and it was clearly shown that the chapel at Tougaloo is all too small. Over one hundred and fifty of the audience of about six hundred were white. Better chorus work is not often heard. Tougaloo is fortunate not only in having had competent music teachers, but in having in Prof. Hill, Dean of the Normal Department, a most capable musician.
For the first time in years Commencement day was showery, but a large audience assembled to see the normal graduation. Seven graduated, and their orations and essays were highly creditable. The annual address was given by Rev. B. F. Ousley, now professor in the Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College at Rodney, Miss., the State institution for colored young men, and formerly a missionary of the American Board in South Africa. It was a clear, thoughtful, and in every way admirable presentation of the qualifications of "The Man for the Age." Brief impromptu addresses were made by Rev. S. P. Smith, American Missionary Association pastor in Jackson, Mr. W. H. Lanier, of '81, Major Millsaps, one of the leading bankers of the State, Rev. S. C. Mounger, presiding elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, residing at Jackson, and Col. J. L. Power, of the Jackson Clarion Ledger. The last three gentlemen emphasized again and again the fact that the best white sentiment of the State is heartily in favor of such work as is done at Tougaloo, and in full sympathy with it.