Merchants are reaping a rich harvest, and all kinds of labor find employment and fair pay, interrupted somewhat for the past month by severe cold and continued rains, which have also seriously damaged the ungathered cotton crop. What would you say to _ninety inches_ rainfall in _eleven_ months? This is the amount reported by the signal service observer at Vicksburg for this year up to December 1. No one now thinks of Memphis as a failure; what with a unique and almost perfect system of sewerage nearly completed, and what with a growing wholesale trade and many permanent improvements, both public and private, a new Memphis, indeed, must soon replace the old. School opened in October with a full attendance and every promise of a most successful year. Our rooms for industrial instruction are now finished and ready for use. The classes in needlework, etc., are organized, and in January a class or classes in cooking will receive regular instruction, with practice in the experimental kitchen. Instruction will also be given to a class in the care of the sick. It is a fact that the great majority of our pupils must continue in very humble positions and circumstances; our aim must be to fit them to fill well the lots that must fall to them in life; and whatever positions they may fill, they must know how to build up, and even adorn, homes that shall be very different from those their parents have known. The proverb runs, “A man far from home is near to danger.” The most direct way, certainly, of bringing better things to these people, and to the South, is through the home.