The boys--_little_ fellows some of them only seventy-two inches tall in their bare feet--comprise the regular students in the industrial courses; the baker, the butcher or meat boy, the irrepressible John boy of all work about the kitchen; then the stock, the farm, the carpenter and blacksmith apprentices, together with several kept for general help, for work of an unusual magnitude was to be undertaken this vacation. The Girl's Hall, a great three story building with seven thousand five hundred square feet of ground plan, had been slowly settling into this treacherous alluvium, which is three hundred feet deep to the first sand and gravel, until the building was in danger of falling. Southern contractors advised taking it down because it could not be safely repaired. But the American Missionary Association's force was equal to the emergency. The weight, with the resulting strains and thrusts, was calculated. Concrete footings of sufficient area were planned, brick piers and heavy timbering were skillfully placed, and the building will stand stronger than new and much improved in plan. If these youths, who pulled on the forty-eight great "jack-screws," lifting and blocking up the building section by section, who excavated exactly to the surveyor's stakes, who mixed concrete and mortar, who framed and handled the huge "hard pine" timbers, who earnestly undertook whatever was told them--for this was new and strange work--if these youths had not been "Negroes," the outside world would have been glad to picture them in magazine and review. The writer has had a long experience as master of a boy's boarding school in the North, situated in a village which also contained a young ladies' seminary. Had those young people been as sober and in earnest as these dusky-skinned ones, as free from midnight mischief, how many weary vigils would he have escaped! The religious life at Tougaloo does not cease with term time. Two or three young men go out to hold Sunday services in the country cabins, the Sunday-school is full and the older ones serve as teachers, for many children come in from surrounding fields, making a school of nearly one hundred teachers and pupils. The young people's society meeting each Sunday afternoon, and the prayer meetings on Sunday and Wednesday evenings are characterized by a quiet, earnest Christianity, that would do credit to any circle in our Northern States. * * * * * FROM A TEACHER IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS.