Beginning with this year the conferences will be held in the new church, which will comfortably seat all the delegates. Until this church was completed, though, there was no audience room at the institute which would begin to accommodate all who came, and the sessions were held in a rude temporary building, which was also utilized for chapel and graduation exercises. Convenient as the new church is in every way, I shall always miss the unique gathering in that old pavilion. Imagine a broad, low building of unplaned boards, its floor the earth, and its seats backless benches made by spiking planks on to posts driven into the ground. From its rafters hang masses of Spanish moss, amid which streamers of red, white, and blue bunting are woven. On the walls are many American flags, looped back with the spiked leaves of the palmetto tree. Booker Washington stands on a low platform at one end of the room, and all around him, packed just as closely as they can be, are the people, while hundreds of late comers cluster around the doors and open windows like bees around the opening of a hive. No matter if the benches are backless and hard. No opera audience in five-dollar chairs ever sat half so interested for an hour as do these men and women through all the day, which, long as it is, proves far too short for what they have to say. This is the one day of the year for them, and not a minute must be wasted. The speakers are the men and women themselves. Mr. Washington simply starts the discussions and steers them so as to make all the time count. He is a genius as a presiding officer, and gets more out of the limited time than any one else could do. The subjects which they discuss are the practical ones which concern them most vitally. Some I have mentioned--non-ownership of land, crop-mortgaging, and the evil of raising only cotton. Others are the need of a longer school year and how to get it, the foolish extravagances of buying showy clocks, sewing machines, and organs before a house is owned to put them in, and similar subjects. The time is never long enough for all there is to be said. The effort is to make this a center from which some helpful thought will be carried out to take root during the year. [Illustration: "PLAIN-SEWING" ROOM.]