As I strolled about the Amherst College grounds and buildings, and noticed its concrete walls and shaven lawns, with their trimmed edges that said to the grass, “Thus far and no farther;” and looked upon the Gymnasium, Walker Hall, and College Chapel, of solid granite and beautiful sandstone, with their numerous gables, towers and turrets; and walked about the Museum building, crowded with many rare and costly specimens, representing thousands upon thousands of dollars and years upon years of skilled and patient labor; and then strolled about the pleasant village, and saw the beauty and elegance and comfort of the professors’ residences: then, as I went into the field, and saw in the centre of a farm of 500 acres of level, fertile land, the Agricultural College buildings of brick and stone, erected for service, but not lacking in adornment; the extensive and beautiful conservatory, the fine barn and cattle, and various “new and improved” agricultural implements; then, as, after a ride of seven miles through the valley of the Connecticut, justly famed for its beauty, where deacons formerly raised profitable crops of tobacco while they were trying to solve the questions of ethics involved in this industry, I saw upon the “hill” in Northampton, Smith College, with its lovely grounds, its Gothic buildings of somewhat elaborate architecture, including a house for the president and cottages for the young ladies, its varnished floors, its fine furniture, and its art galleries, containing already a goodly collection from the pencil of the painter and the chisel of the sculptor, upon all of whose equipments seemed to be written, “Nothing mean or cheap can enter here;” then, as, after having flanked Mount Holyoke and got in his rear, I came upon the school of Mary Lyon, where formerly were educated all the sisters and “cousins” of the Amherst students, and, beginning at the kitchen, where are two stoves expressly devoted to the cooking of griddle-cakes, a broiler for beefsteaks, a marble slab for a “bread board,” and a stone slab for warming plates, and then passed on through the capacious dining-room and the carpeted chapel to the fire-proof library building filled with books, and then to the new Williston cabinet and art gallery, where our guide, an old pupil of Mary Lyon, pointed out a picture which she said, apparently with “bated breath,” cost $1,000. As I saw all these evidences of growth and prosperity and tokens of the liberality of good men and women, there kept ringing in my ears a sentence from the catalogue of our poor Atlanta University: “It is hoped that the time is not far distant when funds will flow into the treasury of the Institution as freely as they do into those of colleges in other parts of the country.”