"Congratulations to Father Uncles, of Baltimore, a priest, a gentleman, a scholar--and a negro. He has just celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his entrance into the Order of Abel, Abraham and Melchizedek. "Father Uncles was the first of his race in this country to be raised to the dignity of the priesthood. His was a unique position. The eyes of the American world were upon him. Though one of God's anointed, he was a "colored man," and thus more was demanded of him than of any of his white brothers. At the end of twenty-five years, he can, with his gentle good nature, laugh at the world's scrutiny. "For Father Uncles is gentle--a gentleman. In conversation with him, in association with him, one never thought of the color of his body. The beautiful whiteness of his soul shone so in the kindly lightning of his eyes, the courtesy of his speech, the correctness of his manner. "He was, and is, a scholar--not merely book-learned, for he was one of the first three in a class of sixty in Saint Mary's Seminary, but the man of parts that bespeak the student. "Yet he is a negro--of that long-suffering race that we first damned into slavery and then freed into servitude. But a man's a man for a' that, and from time to time the negro is proving that. Father Uncles was a pioneer in that line. For emancipation's sake he will not object to this projection of himself upon America's mental screen." In connection with the sketch given above the following account of the work of the Catholics at Van de Vyver College, Richmond, Virginia, from 1885 to the present time should also be interesting. Among the many signs of the progress of the colored people in the city of Richmond is the Van de Vyver College on North First street, which is equipped with all modern improvements, and has accommodations for five hundred pupils. This elegant plant was erected at the sole expense of the Catholics who, abreast of the times, met at every turn the requirements of an aspiring class of colored boys and girls. It was not erected with the idea of drawing the attention or of eliciting the applause of the people of Richmond; it is an institution which, by its growth and development, has marked time with the demands of the younger generation of the colored people, whose endeavor is to follow the higher ideals as they are set before them. This grand building, with its large auditorium, now covers the site, together with additional area, of a former two-roomed schoolhouse, which thirty years back first gave the Catholic Sisters from Mill Hill, England, a place and opportunity to show their zeal for, and their interest in, the future welfare of the colored youth of the principal city of the Old Dominion.