he had
prepared herself for this work by benevolent labors in teaching poor
children. The third is a young woman of African descent, of olive
complexion, finely cultured, and attuned to all beautiful sympathies, of
gentle address, and, what was specially noticeable, not possessed with
an overwrought consciousness of her race. She had read the best books,
and naturally and gracefully enriched her conversation with them. She
had enjoyed the friendship of Whittier; had been a pupil in the
Grammar-School of Salem, then in the State Normal School in that city,
then a teacher in one of the schools for white children, where she had
received only the kindest treatment both from the pupils and their
parents,--and let this be spoken to the honor of that ancient town. She
had refused a residence in Europe, where a better social life and less
unpleasant discrimination awaited her, for she would not dissever
herself from the fortunes of her people; and now, not with a superficial
sentiment, but with a profound purpose, she devotes herself to their
elevation.

At Coffin Point, on St. Helena Island, I visited a school kept by a
young woman from the town of Milton, Massachusetts, "the child of
parents passed into the skies," whose lives have both been written for
the edification of the Christian world. She teaches two schools, at
different hours in the afternoon, and with different scholars in each.
One class had read through Hillard's Second Primary Reader, and were on
a review, reading Lessons 19, 20, and 21, while I was present. Being
questioned as to the subjects of the lessons, they answered
intelligently. They recited the twos of the multiplication-table,
explained numeral letters and figures on the blackboard, and wrote
letters and figures on slates. Another teacher in the adjoining
district, a graduate of Harvard, and the son of a well-known Unitarian
clergyman of Providence, Rhode Island, has two schools, in one of which
a class of three pupils was about finishing Ellsworth's First
Progressive Reader, and another, of seven pupils, had just finished
Hillard's Second Primary Header. Another teacher, from Cambridge,
Massachusetts, on the same island, numbers one hundred pupils in his two
schools. He exercises a class in elocution, requiring the same sentence
to be repeated with different tones and inflections, and one could not
but remark the excellent imitations.

In a school at St. Helena village, where were collected the Edi