Last year, two-thirds of our whole number in attendance entered after the Christmas holidays. This year the second month closes with fifty names more than the highest number of last year. The rooms are furnished with the best of modern desks; but their present capacity is exceeded by more than forty names. If another room and sufficient teaching force be added by the friends of the Association after New Year’s, our present number of two hundred and forty will, in every probability, run up to three hundred. To meet the wants of these, we should have six teachers besides the superintendent, including one that should give half an hour each day to instruction in vocal music and some time to instrumental music. We now have one that is competent for this work, but she has no time for it. Our overworked force is to be somewhat relieved by the expected arrival of a fifth teacher this week. At present we are obliged to receive many primary scholars, not only to relieve the public want, but also with the view of raising up normal scholars, for whom the Institute has been specially designed. We regret the seeming necessity that is laid upon the colored parents of taking their children from the public schools. We do not advise their action. The feverish desire for education which seized the body of colored people immediately after emancipation has subsided. Their best men are now obliged to urge upon them the duty of educating their children. In this they have come down to the level of the whites. An organization has been formed to promote this interest. The largest church has established a school of more than fifty members. The pastor of the most influential church, in point of intelligence, has opened one, with an attendance of more than forty, and teaches it himself, in addition to preaching three sermons every Lord’s day and performing the other usual duties of a minister. These schools are intended to awaken their people in the matter, and to raise up candidates for the work of teaching, that may get their fuller preparation in our Normal department. The friends of Christian education could not ask for a more needy and promising outlook than lies before us. Will they put into the hands of the Association the necessary means? The Church—1876-1879. Organized with forty-seven members, it now has sixty-one. It owes its origin and existence to the presence of the Institute. Its members are very poor in this world’s goods, but delightfully rich in grace.