The treatment which preserves health is the best treatment for its recovery. We should lead our pupils to see that wholesome diet eaten at proper hours, and sufficient sleep taken at the time which God appointed for sleep, will impart more physical vigor than any other two agencies; and that a disregard for them is a fruitful source of much sickness, especially among colored people. Sunlight and pure air are important factors in making the sick well, and keeping the well from being sick. The _temperance pledge_ is also a cheap and safe medicine. A knowledge of the chemistry of food, of digestion, circulation and respiration is important, and may be taught to comparatively young pupils. Nature, like a sensible dame, resents an insult; and sickness is the punishment she imposes to avenge her injuries. Nor will punishment cease until reparation is made. AMOS W. FARNHAM, _Avery Institute, Charleston, S. C._ * * * * * We are happy to make mention, which is all it would be proper for us to do in this place, of the book for boys written by Gen. O. O. Howard. Our friends are so largely his friends, that many of them will want to read “Donald’s School Days,” published by Lee & Shepard, of Boston. * * * * * THE FREEDMEN. REV. JOS. E. ROY, D. D., FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA. * * * * * SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 1. I find this school and church work in more forward condition than I had expected. I had known of the slow process of building up educational and church institutions at the West. I knew of the greater difficulties in this line at the South. I am gratified to find the schools in such substantial buildings, and almost all the churches in houses of their own, some of them attractive, and some very rough. 2. I find that these people handle the Congregational system better than I had expected. They even excel in parliamentary tactics; and what is the course of Congregational usage but the wise procedure of a deliberative assembly? In their reaction from the experience of bondage they rejoice in the full liberty of Christ’s house. If this system was good enough to be given by the Apostles to the early churches round about the Mediterranean, which had not, as I believe, been trained in New England, and whose members had to take from them some severe rebukes in the line of morals, surely it is good enough for these lowly people.