acing these three schools on a
firm financial basis, the Institute hopes to continue its good work,
helping in the whole South to increase the number and to add to the
efficiency of all of our parochial schools.

I should not forget at this point of my address to give brief but hearty
mention of the blessed Christlike work for the negroes, which is being
done by Mrs. Buford's Hospital and Home in Brunswick County, Va., St.
Peter's Hospital, Charlotte, N. C., and St. Agnes Hospital and Training
School, for Nurses, a department of St. Augustine School, Raleigh, N. C.

What are we doing to evangelize the negroes and build them up into
Christian men and women? I will tell you a little of the work which I
know myself, in my own State of North Carolina, in our two dioceses and
our one missionary jurisdiction. Bishop Atkinson--our great Church
Father during and after the Civil War--felt his responsibility for the
souls of the black folk; and he and his successors have been in more or
less degree pressing the work of the Church among the negroes. We have
now in the State two arch-deacons, thirteen clergymen, 1,400
communicants and 35 parishes and missions. Each arch-deacon goes all
about his own diocese, visiting the colored parishes and missions,
consulting with the clergy, and opening out new fields. The clergy are
doing just the same kind of work among their people that the white
clergy are doing in their white parishes and missions, with the
exception that the colored clergy are giving more of their time to
educational work. I have about the same size classes for Confirmation
among the negroes that I have among the whites in the Churches of the
same numerical strength. I have been Bishop of East Carolina about two
and a half years; and I have confirmed 106 negroes and 644 white people,
being an increase of 25 per cent. for the negroes and 18 per cent. for
the whites. I am really proud of my staff of negro clergy; they are men
of high moral character and are doing good and effective service. Work
like this I have described in North Carolina is going on in every one of
our States, larger or smaller as the Church of the white people has been
larger or smaller in strength and numbers, and as the Bishop has been
more or less interested in this special work.

In this purely missionary field many of us are trying to develop and
utilize Catechists, men of age and character without the necessary
literary qualifications for the min