descendants of the ex-slaves themselves will remain contented and good citizens. To carry out this idea is certainly one of the greatest of enterprises to which social reformers in the New World have ever set their hand. When a school was established and a supposed competent tutor was appointed, Booker Washington did not find that his course had ceased to be a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. His mother and stepmother were so poor that it was not thought that his services at the salt works could be altogether dispensed with in order that he might attend school. Then a kind of compromise was made, and without the work being entirely suspended, he was allowed to pass some portion of each day at the school. Having thus risen to this respectable standing, he found it desirable to wear a cap which his mother made for him; for it would seem that a Virginian planter no more thought of providing such head-dress for boy slaves than he would of clothing his colts or calves. It was then, moreover, that he gave himself the name which he has ever since retained and honoured. He had been called Booker as a child-slave; for some reason his mother had added Taliaferro, but the final Washington was a becoming euphonism of his own. With so much manual labour to be done, the difficulties in the way of education were continually becoming intensified. Soon it became impossible to continue in attendance at the day school, and he had to be content with attending an evening class after completing the day's toil. Under the most favourable circumstances this was exhausting; and his experience proved still more trying when he was removed from the salt works to serve in a coal mine, which supplied the furnaces with fuel. Booker Washington has very vivid recollections of the horrors and even constant dangers attending such subterranean work. The darkness alone was almost such as might be felt; and the mishaps, through taking a wrong path, through falling coal, or a candle getting extinguished, were ever threatening those engaged in the works. It was in such an atmosphere and amid such surroundings, however, that the dawn of a new era sent its beams across his chequered pathway. It was there that he heard for the first time of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, which was destined to shape for him his life-course. The institution in question is near to the small town and bathing resort of Hampton, in Virginia, and the channel, commanded by Fortress Monroe, was the scene of some lively naval fights during the Civil War. The institution was founded in 1868 by General S. C. Armstrong, and two years later was incorporated by the State of Virginia. Its object is stated to be "to train young men and women of the negro and Indian races to become teachers among their own people." Booker Washington happened to overhear two men in the coal mine conversing together about this school, and he resolved to find out everything possible about it. The