Not as large a graduating class was sent out as usual, there being only nine in all--three young men from the college department, and six from the normal school, all young women but one. The parents of none of these students have graduated from Talladega. All of them were slaves, though most were so young at the time of emancipation as not to remember much of slavery days. The father of one of the college men, however, was, it is said, made by his master to run regularly before the bloodhounds to keep them in training. Sometimes it was hard running, and sometimes he had to take refuge in a tree to escape harm when the dogs had caught up with him. This young man, who carried off the A.B. degree, is planning to go to Yale for further study, and after a year or two to enter a Northern law-school. Another of the same department is in some ways an accomplished fellow. He has read widely and remembers what he has read; he plays the violin; he is an excellent pianist, and he is a member of the college male quartet, which is to spend the summer in the North, endeavoring to raise money for new buildings greatly needed at Talladega. After this summer campaign he also hopes to begin the study of law at Columbia or Harvard. The third young man of the college class expects to take for a year a principalship in the public schools of a neighboring city, and then enter upon the study of medicine. The young man who finished the normal course, being a good carpenter, has been for three years head of the college repair shop. For this summer he will return to a country school where he has taught for five consecutive summers, and in the fall hopes to enter a trade-school to perfect himself in carpentry and to learn what he can of architecture and building, purposing to devote himself to that line of work. It is a matter of congratulation to the school that so many students, after finishing some course here, are ambitious to pursue their studies further in the best institutions of the country. The young women who were graduated from the normal course are all to enter upon the work for which they have been trained, one or two already having positions in view in city schools, while the others will take up work in the country districts. It is not a large class, as has been said, but it is a good, earnest, ambitious class, in which there is large promise of solid usefulness. * * * * * COMMENCEMENT AT STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, LA. The exercises of commencement week began on the morning of Sunday, May 20th, with an interesting address to the Christian associations by Rev. A. S. Jackson, D.D., of Dallas, Texas. On the evening of the same day President Oscar Atwood delivered the Baccalaureate Address. The close attention which this address commanded showed how well chosen was its theme and interesting the presentation of its ideas.