* * * * * The M. E. Conference at Nacogdoches, Texas, opened by singing “And are we yet alive!” ECONOMIC. During the last few days Negroes, generally known as “freedmen” from the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, have paid over $50,000 to the commissioner to the five tribes of Indians at Muskogee for land. The “freedmen” were allowed to select enough land to bring their allotments up to forty acres, paying for it the appraised value of the land. This appraisement was made by the government several years ago, and is about one-fourth of the actual cash value of the land now. The Negroes were given this preferential right to buy by a special act of Congress and their right expired December 1, which caused the rush. * * * * * A colored church in Atlanta has opened a labor exchange. * * * * * A number of Omaha colored men have incorporated the International Railroad Safety Pipe Coupling Company. It will manufacture the Harris coupling for cars. This aims at enabling coupling of steam air brake and emergency pipes without compelling a man to go under the cars and risk being crushed. The appliance is made to go under the Janney coupler. A. H. Harris of Denver is the inventor, and an Omaha foundry is making the castings for railways to try out. * * * * * Attorney-General Foy of the Province of Ontario, Canada, has included the name of Delos R. Davis in a new list of king’s counsels for that province. Mr. Davis is a colored barrister before the Amherstburg bar of long standing, and will do honor to his new title of “K. C.” * * * * * It required 55,000 enumerators to take the census; of these 1,605 were Negroes, and 1,295 of these Negroes were in the Southern States. Secretary Nagel said, a few days ago, that he had not heard a single complaint against them. Ten years ago there were no Negroes at all taking census in South Carolina, but this year 131 colored were employed. ART. The playing of Miss Helen Hagan at the concert of the Second Company, Governor’s Foot Guard Band, has been the subject of much enthusiastic comment during the past week. Many of the best musicians of New Haven were present, and their opinions constitute for Miss Hagan a “judgment of her peers.” Miss Hagan is a “prize student” of the Yale department of music and has been heard several times in concert work accompanied by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Her playing has always brought down the house. On the occasion of the Foot Guard concert she appeared twice upon the program in solos by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and MacDowell, and responded to vehement demands for encores with compositions by Grieg and Mosznowski.