The time has come when woman no longer accepts the hearthstone as the circumscribed arena of her activities. Amid the busy whirl of this nineteenth century we behold her stepping with well-shod feet boldly across the threshold where hitherto her ambitions have been smothered or held in check by social customs and prejudice, taking her place in the various avocations which bring to mankind peace and happiness, through an honest dollar for its equivalent in honest toil. If we will notice the index finger in the plane of human advancement and limit its progress to the strides made in civilization within the last forty years, it will be readily acknowledged that the woman movement during these years has made no insignificant ripple in the tide of human achievements. There is scarcely a profession which has not felt the impress of her presence; scarcely a moral reform, from the antislavery cause of the past to the great temperance movement of to-day, which has not received her sanction and hearty support. Wherever she has gone forth she has acquitted herself creditably, and successfully lived down all attempts to ridicule and cast opprobrium upon her adventure. This forward march, which has been likened to a great tidal wave, has carried in its course higher education for woman, including her entrance to the medical, legal, and clerical professions, the position as trustee on school boards in various sections, the restoration to married women of a right to their own property, and various other reforms tending to broaden her sphere, increase her activities, and heighten her self-respect. Side by side with this uniform impulse on the part of woman to know and to be known in life's arena have come to its twin sister the progress and unprecedented achievements of the Negro in America. The school may instruct and the Church may teach, but the home is an institution older than the Church and antedates the school, the place where the children should be trained for useful citizenship on earth and hope of holy communion in heaven. Our hands have ever been firm upon the rudder, guiding and governing the education of our youth for years of future usefulness. I take it that we, as colored women, must regard ourselves as a peculiar people in these advanced movements. We cannot afford to be swept along in the current of daily happenings without thoughtfully comparing our status and conditions with all that surround us, questioning for a moment whether the experiment will prove an expensive luxury or wholesome and digestible food. Economy of time, economy of means, economy of action, must be our constant watchwords. The Negro woman, being the most potent factor in the intellectual development of the race, must be aroused to a consideration of the fact that to improve the intellect and neglect the moral and physical growth of our youth will be to impose upon society dangerous citizens. THE MOURNING PREACHER. BY J. C. M'ADAMS, SHELBYVILLE, TENN.