nclude the repairing in this estimate. At the head of
this department is a practical shoemaker from Boston. Each
department has a practical man at its head. We visited, not
all the first day, the blacksmith, wheelwright and tin
shops, and looked through the printing office, and the
knitting-room, in which young men are engaged manufacturing
thousands of mittens annually for a firm in Boston. These
two departments are in a commodious brick edifice, called
the "Stone Building." It is the gift of Mrs. Valeria Stone.
One of the most interesting departments is located also in
the "Stone Building"--the sewing-room. In it are nearly a
score, perhaps more, of cheerful, busy girls. The rapid
ticking of the machine is heard, and the merry laugh
followed by gentle whispers gives life to the room. These
young girls are the future wives and mothers; and the large
majority of them will be married to poor men. In the
kitchen, the laundry, and the sewing-room, they are
acquiring a knowledge and habits of industry that will save
their husbands' pennies, and thus keep them from living from
hand to mouth, making an everlasting struggle to save their
nose from the grindstone. In the schoolroom, they are
gathering up those intellectual treasures, which will make
them in a double sense helpmeets unto their husbands.
Standing in the carpenter and paint shops, and in the saw
mill, and seeing Negro youths engaged in the most delicate
kind of work, learning valuable and useful trades, I could
not help from feeling that this is an excellent institution,
and that I would like to have my boys spend three years
here, from fourteen to seventeen, grow strong in the love
for work, and educated to feel the dignity of labor, and
get a trade: then if they have the capacity and desire to
qualify for a "top round in the ladder," for leadership in
the "world's broad field of battle," it will be time enough
to think of Harvard and Yale and Edinburgh, or perhaps
similar African institutions.
Mr. George H. Corliss, of Rhode Island, presented to the
school in 1879 a sixty-horse power Corliss engine. Soon
after Mr. C.P. Huntington, of the Missouri & Pacific R.R.,
gave a saw mill, and as a result of these gifts large
industrial operations were begun. The saw mill i
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