Something of external enlargement has fallen to the lot of Tougaloo within a year past. The beginning of the last winter term brought a crowd of students who, with difficulty, could find a lodging place among us, owing to the lack of buildings. The young men, many of them, had to make the best of the rudest sort of apartments. It was when every available room apparently was full, and shortly after a number of students had been sent away, that the “chapel,” with its second floor devoted to rooms for twenty-eight young men, took fire and burned to the ground. This building, never even in its best days a very commodious, convenient, or cheery place, was the best we had, excepting, perhaps, the “mansion.” On the first floor were a low-walled chapel-room, serving the purposes of school-room, assembly-room and church, and two small recitation-rooms. In one of these was kept the small library of the institution. This library embraced sets of the New American Cyclopædia and the Family Library, some 300 or more Sunday-school books, a few miscellaneous volumes—the gifts of individuals—and a considerable collection of Congressional books, reports, etc., sent to the Normal Department from Washington. The greater part of this incipient library was saved. The sets above mentioned, however, which our students were beginning to appreciate and use intelligently, were broken up. [Illustration: STRIEBY HALL, TOUGALOO, MISS.] There was an insurance on the chapel of $3,000. Something had been previously accumulating through special solicitations and the benevolence of friends, for enlarging the hall for young women. That addition was in progress at the time of the fire. This building contained the boarding and laundry departments of the school. It had rooms for thirty-two young women. It was proposed to enlarge it by adding another story to the long two-story structure already on the ground, and also a three-story wing, furnishing in all accommodations for seventy-two girls, besides containing two good-sized sitting-rooms, a pleasant sewing-room, and private apartments for the matron and five teachers. This has been completed. Early last spring, funds were forthcoming for a new hall for young men. Work was immediately begun. A fair crop of “Mississippi brick” was raised on the spot. A sufficient number of men were employed to push on rapidly the work of building. A commodious and pleasing hall 41 × 112 feet stands ready for students. A deep, roomy basement extends under the whole building, furnishing rooms not only for uses connected with the hall, but also those connected with certain of the industrial departments. The first floor affords us a large room for chapel, two convenient recitation-rooms, an office, and apartments for a small family.