The process of growth here, as elsewhere, has been one of the "survival of the fittest," the ill-trained, inefficient teachers gradually giving place to the better qualified, more capable class. The initial influence in this line of succession dates back but little more than thirty years, to the founding of "mission" schools at centres of influence throughout the South; "a handful of corn on the top of the mountain" from which has come the wide-spreading harvests of the present. It is a statement well within the facts that nine out of ten of the colored schools of all grades in the South are taught by those who had their training in these mission schools, or else by teachers who owe their education to those of their own race who were so trained. No more powerful or far-reaching influence was ever set in operation than that which had its origin in the cabin where taught the first humble missionary among the people freed by the war. The whole power and potency of all that has followed was represented in that first despised and humble effort. From that day to this seems a long call. The passage has been made almost unobserved, like the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. It now not unfrequently happens that a colored public school stands accredited in a community with excellencies to distinguish it as an example worthy of imitation. Such is the colored high school in the city of my direct observation, in the two respects of self-control and government of its pupils, and in its movement toward a collection of miscellaneous books for a school library--excellencies not ascribed, so far as I know, in anything like the same measure to any other public school. It is perhaps needless to add that the principal of this school, as well as the teachers of a large percentage of the other best schools of the city and county, have had their training in one of the "mission" normal schools above mentioned. To remove or weaken these centres of power would be to strike the most deadly blow at the education of the colored people. It would be the removal of so many nerve centres out from which still flow the stimuli needful to keep in active operation and growing power the entire system. John F. Slater and Daniel Hand and a hundred other individual benefactors have seen this vital fact and have done what they could to build up and strengthen such influences. The church will make a great mistake if it ignores this fact or relaxes its efforts in the support of the institutions so wisely planned and so greatly efficient for good in the past. * * * * * NOTES. CLOSING EXERCISES AT LE MOYNE.--Le Moyne Normal Institute, Memphis, Tennessee, closed on the 2nd of June. Not less than 2,500 people crowded the auditorium at the closing exercises. The large attendance betokens the influence of the school in the community and the esteem in which it is held.