"Howard University. A charter has been granted by Congress for the Howard University, which is to be open to all of both sexes without discrimination of color. This institution bids fair to do great good. Its beautiful site, so opportunely and wisely secured, is an earnest of success. Large and commodious buildings are soon to be erected thereon. The normal and preparatory departments of the university were opened on the first of May, under the instruction of Rev. E. F. Williams, an accomplished scholar and a thorough teacher. At the close of the month the school numbered thirty-one scholars; it has now increased to about sixty. Miss Lord, so long a popular teacher of this city, has been appointed assistant. The grade of this school is low for its name, but the students are making good advancement." It may be thought by casual consideration, as was said by eminent men, that the name was the largest thing about it, but I prefer to disagree and to say that the purpose as set forth in the charter is the greatest thing about it. These are the words: "We urge all friends of the freedmen to increasing confidence and to look forward with assured expectation to greater things than these. This people are to be prepared for what is being prepared for them. They are to become a 'people which in time past were not a people'; and there is increasing evidence that 'God hath made of one blood all the nations of men.' Equal endowments substantially, with equal culture, will produce that equality common to all mankind." In them we get the quintescence, we get the crystallization, we get the high purpose, we get the spiritual foundation, of Howard University. Conceived in prayer, born of the faith and convictions as embodied in its original seal which reads, "Equal rights and knowledge for all," an offspring of Plymouth Rock, Howard University is set before you--a cross between religious fervor and prophetic educational enthusiasm. She is, then, the essence filtrating from the declaration of Paul at Athens, that "of one blood hath God created all men to dwell upon earth." For forty-five years, Howard has been living her life. She has been more or less doing her work as circumstances allowed and dictated, but now we ask of you "Watchman, what of the night?" How far has this work been progressing along the line of basal principles that we find embodied in all these authoritative extracts? Unfortunate I think it is that the discussions in the early meetings of the Board of Trustees were not preserved in stenographic report, for the time will come when the spiritual history of Howard University must be written as well as its material history, and then the historian will be at a loss to find the true afflatus that gave birth to our alma mater, unless we keep it in evidence.