The young man who finished the normal course, being a good carpenter, has been for three years head of the college repair shop. For this summer he will return to a country school where he has taught for five consecutive summers, and in the fall hopes to enter a trade-school to perfect himself in carpentry and to learn what he can of architecture and building, purposing to devote himself to that line of work.
It is a matter of congratulation to the school that so many students, after finishing some course here, are ambitious to pursue their studies further in the best institutions of the country.
The young women who were graduated from the normal course are all to enter upon the work for which they have been trained, one or two already having positions in view in city schools, while the others will take up work in the country districts. It is not a large class, as has been said, but it is a good, earnest, ambitious class, in which there is large promise of solid usefulness.
COMMENCEMENT AT STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, LA.
The exercises of commencement week began on the morning of Sunday, May 20th, with an interesting address to the Christian associations by Rev. A. S. Jackson, D.D., of Dallas, Texas.
On the evening of the same day President Oscar Atwood delivered the Baccalaureate Address. The close attention which this address commanded showed how well chosen was its theme and interesting the presentation of its ideas.
On Monday the Industrial and Grade work was exhibited. Specimens of practical work in wood done by the young men and boys in the shop, articles both useful and beautiful from the sewing-room, together with fine drawings and written exercises done by members of the different grades, made up this exhibit.
The value of this branch of the university's work cannot be overestimated. The training given is of the most practical kind. Young men have been enabled, through the industrial education received at the university, to work at the carpenter's trade during their summer vacation, and thus earn the means necessary to take them through the following year of study. At the present time one enterprising young graduate, as a result of this very training, is putting up with his own hands the building which is to shelter the school he is founding in Southern Louisiana.
In the sewing-room the young women and girls, besides acquiring a knowledge of mending and darning, learn to cut, fit and make all kinds of garments. Fancy work is taught them after they have learned the more useful kinds of sewing.