For over thirty years about four hundred colored students have annually gathered here for the training which was to fit them for life's work. For many years all grades, from the primary to the high school and normal course, were maintained, but in later years the primary and intermediate pupils have been excluded, their instruction being amply provided for in the public and numerous private schools of the city, thus leaving the Institute free to devote itself to higher grades and normal work, in which Avery has been from the first conspicuous and eminently successful. Its graduates now number nearly four hundred and are found in almost every department of human activity. Some are distinguished in professional life, others in trade, or in business. Among them are doctors, skilled and eminent in their chosen fields of labor, clergymen of acknowledged ability, and teachers of long and successful experience. About two-thirds of all its graduates choose teaching as their special vocation; and nearly all prove their skill and ability in the schoolroom, and have reflected great credit on their alma mater and have been a blessing to their race. There has been for the last ten years a steady and growing demand for colored teachers of ability and with special training for their work; and there is not a county in the state to which our graduates do not go as teachers, and in the lower counties and along this malarial coast nearly all the schools for colored children are taught by Avery graduates. In many places conditions are such that no one can undertake this work without jeopardizing health or risking life itself. But there are not wanting those whom zeal and devotion lead into these dangerous fields. Names might be given of those who have even given up life itself at work in these malarial districts, proving their zeal and the missionary spirit which actuated them.