We have many features of encouragement connected with our work here.  Especially are we pleased with the work that is being done by a class of our advanced boys and girls.  There are ten of them out in the wooded country, teaching for three months those who cannot find their way to our school.  Every two weeks, these pupils come in to give a report of their work.  It is understood by them that it is a part of their duty to tell us just what work they do and how they do it.  We supply them with reading matter for their pupils—­especially are we careful to let them have Sunday-school books, etc.  These pupils will be out of school three months, and will then return to their school work.  Every one who is out is a Christian, and we feel that their influence for good is very great.  It is a joy to us to feel that our little school here in this town is spreading its influence out into darker portions of the State.  Each one of these pupils has no less than forty pupils in his school, so that the work of the school here at Marshallville reaches over six hundred souls!  This is indeed a dark portion of the field, but God’s loving care is about us, and we are content to labor here.

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ALBANY, GA.

BY MR. W.C.  GREENE.

Our school is overrun with pupils this school year.  I was compelled to turn away a large number because I didn’t have room for them.

The people on their part are manifesting a deep interest in education They are trying to take advantage of the opportunity as it is given them.  Many are going hungry to get a chance to send their children to school.

This last week has been one of profit in this part of the State.  The people have been made to see their duty to the colored man more plainly by the lectures delivered by Dr. Lansay and others in the Georgia Chautauqua.  There were some fine speeches made in behalf of the Negro.

Judge Hook was down one day and visited our school, and said that he was surprised and glad to see the rapid progress we had made here.

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GREGORY INSTITUTE, WILMINGTON, N.C.

A densely packed church of white and colored people witnessed the closing exercises of the Gregory Institute, a school of high grade for colored people founded and supported by the American Missionary Association, and aided by Mr. Gregory.  This school has been in operation some eighteen or twenty years, and has done a most excellent work among the people it was designed to benefit.  The writer of this article has attended public exercises of the Institute three times, and has been each time impressed with the dignified and self-respecting deportment of the scholars and visitors.

The neat programme called for graduating essays from six girls—­there were no boys in the class—­and there were six songs rendered by the whole school, or by the class, and every one present agreed with Dr. Pritchard when in his address he declared that such was the musical and literary excellence of the occasion that it would have done credit to any institution of learning in North Carolina.