“What did your students do during vacation?” Various things. But with few exceptions they did not rest. Quite a number are young and went to their homes in town and country—the girls to help their mothers, the boys their fathers. Some hired out for house and farm labor. One farms on his own account. One was head waiter in a summer hotel in Tennessee. Two worked on a farm in Minnesota and two, sons of a professor, on one in Ohio. Some ran on sleeping cars in the North, and made up the beds you lay on. One worked in the railroad exposition in Chicago. One kept store and studied law in West Tennessee. One preached in Florence, Ala., with the usual blessing of God on his labors. One was employed by the State of Texas in holding institutes. Former students of ours were also employed in the same way. But, as usual, the most of those advanced enough to do so taught school. Not to mention those of low grade, out of seventy-eight enrolled in the collegiate department last year, fifty-seven taught school. The colored man seems by taste and circumstances to be a school teacher. Occasionally a student teaches who ought to rest. It is the thing to do. It is rather a shame not to. The long-instructed desires to instruct. The young fledgling wants to try its wings, the Demosthenes his oratory, the Hercules his club. Long before vacation begins we teach thinning classes, and lament many an empty seat the first Monday in September. This is hard on scholarship, but necessary for the purse, and good for their own manhood and the people whom they teach. Schools must be taught when they are held, and held when the children can be spared from the farms. This varies with latitude and the products raised. In the cotton region it is when the crop is “laid by,” that is after the last hoeing and before the first picking, and begins in April or May. In the wheat and grass regions schools commence in June, July or even August. Those whom we lose by early schools in the spring we get promptly in the fall, and the reverse.