These thorough teachers earned for our institute the name of being one of the best in our State. Students were sought for teachers in our own and adjoining counties. Although our abolition principles were very unpopular at that day, as we generally had from one to three colored students in our school, yet the thorough discipline given in the studies drew the young people of the best intellect from the surrounding country. There were those who came from fifty to one hundred miles to prepare for teaching or for a collegiate course. Hundreds of young people who enjoyed the privileges our school afforded came to us with their prejudices against colored people and our position in regard to them; but they soon melted away, and went they knew not where. It was frequently said if we would give up the vexed abolition question, and let the negroes alone, Raisin Institute would become the most popular school in the State. As a sample of many others, I will notice a young lady from Jackson County, who was brought to us by her father to become qualified for teaching. But her sensibilities were so shocked at meeting in her grammar-class a colored man that she returned to her room weeping over her disgrace, and resolved to write her father to come and take her home immediately. But the other young women persuaded her to attend the recitations assigned her, when to her surprise the same young colored man was in the advanced arithmetic class. And while impatiently waiting for her father to come and take her from this "nigger school" (as she and many others called it), a letter came from him advising her to remain, as he had expended so much in fitting her for two or three terms there; although if he had known that a negro would have been allowed to attend her class he would not have taken her there. She soon became reconciled, and before a half-term closed, when she threatened to leave at all events (as she read her father's letter), she came to that colored man to assist her in intricate parsing lessons. Before the close of the first term she as frequently applied to James Martin, her colored classmate, for assistance in solving difficult problems in mathematics as to any of the others. She was one of our best students; but this deep-rooted prejudice went, she knew not how, as with very many others. As to religious privileges in our school, our prayer-meetings were held bi-weekly, Sabbath and Wednesday evenings, and ministers of various denominations frequently appointed meetings in our school on the Sabbath. While the Rev. John Patchin had charge of the institution he generally preached Sabbath evening, instead of the prayer-meeting.