Avery has cost large sums of money; to maintain such an institution by charity through a third of a century is no small undertaking, requiring faith and consecration. But it has repaid more than a hundred-fold all that has ever been expended. Here in this historic city, surrounded by lowlands of rice and cotton, the negro was found in overwhelming numbers, and after emancipation, in utter ignorance of book lore or a pure gospel. To this people the American Missionary Association, through the Avery Institute and its consecrated workers, has brought the light of knowledge and a pure gospel, and awakened aspiration and hope of a better life. The beneficial effects of this work upon such a people, and indirectly upon the city and state, are incalculable. Intelligent Christianity and Christian education has ever been the motto of Avery, and faithfully has it been realized in the lives of its graduates, and exemplified by them in all the relations that affect good citizenship and true manhood. Race conflicts in this city have been unknown since the days of reconstruction, and it is not too much to claim that this better condition of things here is largely due to the influence exerted by Avery. [Illustration: NORMAL CLASS OF 1900, IN CHAPEL.] Although it is in the strictest sense a school, in which all studies in every department are prosecuted under a high pressure, which knows no relaxation, yet religious teaching has ever been a prominent feature, and the Bible is considered the best text book in the school. It has never been sectarian, but always Christian in its teaching and influence. No year passes without numerous conversions among its pupils, and every church in the city has been blessed in some measure by accessions to its membership from the students of Avery.