"It is hoped that the promising young manhood of the race will not be satisfied with anything lower than the highest and best that the schools have to offer. The first ten or twelve years of one's school life are of necessity so largely mechanical that very little of what is really education enters into them. Education is rather ability to produce something and to think consecutively and coherently, than capacity to receive something. Though a cultured mind may not create anything, it is distinguished by its ability to combine two or more elements in such a way as to form a new substance--to add something to the world. Man sits at the feet of nature, learns her laws, and then breathes into them his own soul, and nature becomes the living thing we call Art. In addition to developing power of original and independent thought, a liberal education prepares a man to enter into and appropriate all the wealth of the ages. Those who are really living in this grand and awful time, in this 'age on ages telling,' are persons who have, in a sense, lived through all time." Larger means would enable Talladega to give still more industrial training than she does. But her chief mission will perhaps always be to train leaders, to stand for higher education and to uphold the supremacy of the ideal and spiritual over that which is merely utilitarian and material. * * * * * THE PAST YEAR AT TILLOTSON, AUSTIN, TEXAS. BY PRES. MARSHALL R. GAINES. With the air full of vague rumors of yellow fever, and the consequent panic; with the quarantine and general confusion in the running of trains, and the withdrawal of many of them, the outlook last September for the eighteenth year of our school was not the brightest. While it is believed that not a single case of yellow fever occurred in Texas last year, almost everybody was of the opinion that it had broken out in the next town. Rumors were hard to trace and harder to refute. As a result, most felt that it was best to stay at home and await developments. School opened on time, however, with a somewhat smaller attendance than would have been expected under other conditions. Gradually the panic subsided, quarantine was removed, and our students came in as full numbers as in the preceding year, when the attendance had been unusually large. The number of boarding students diminished considerably, owing to our inability to find food for all who applied, but this falling off was more than made up by day pupils. A little uncertainty in regard to the continuance of the work of the high school for colored students gave us a number of well advanced pupils from that institution. Good health, with its attendant good cheer, prevailed throughout the year, and the work was earnestly and faithfully done.