The Sisters are putting up a large and fine edifice which will be ready for business in September, and will accommodate all the Catholic children, both white-colored and black-colored in the town and vicinity.  I am curious to know if this is the first instance in which children of both the dominant races will be educated under one roof.

Says the editor:  “How quickly the color-line disappears in the Catholic Church.”

* * * * *

NOTES BY THE WAY.

BY DISTRICT SECRETARY C.J.  RYDER.

Not long ago, I met a Frenchman in the halls of the Congregational House, who was looking for Secretary Coit of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society.  He evidently had a very limited knowledge of the English language, for he accosted me as follows:—­“You—­eh, you somewheres?  Ah!  I begs my pardon.”

This amusing bungle of the French brother fairly represents my condition during the past few weeks.  I have not been altogether sure that I was even “somewheres.”  Preaching one Sunday in Dover, N.H., the next in Talladega, Ala., the next at Santee Agency, Neb., the next on the Cheyenne River, Dak., then enjoying a communion season with Brother Hall at Fort Berthold, and the next standing beside the pastor of a New England Church at the same Lord’s table.

The days between these Sabbaths were filled with pleasant duties, in talking over the great work of our Association with the earnest and devoted missionaries.  But many things are impressed upon one’s thought by such a trip as this.  We realize more than ever that the American Missionary Association is a great National Society, limited neither geographically nor by any race restrictions; actually gathering in its schools and missions, Negroes, Whites and Indians, and Chinese and Japanese, and Hondurans and Cubans, and who knows how many other needy and destitute people!  Another fact that must impress one, is the thoroughness of the work done.  The examinations were thorough and exhaustive in the schools.  This was true, not only in the lower grades, but also in the advanced classes.  Dr. Andrews conducted the examinations in Church History, at Talladega, which would have done credit to any of our Theological Seminaries.  And Dr. DeForest’s classes in Mental Philosophy gave evidence of careful study and of assimilation of that which they had studied.  They had not only eaten, but had digested their mental food.  The same was true at Fisk.  What a grand thing it would be, if the good friends of the Association in New England, and elsewhere in the North, to whom our work is only presented through an appeal for funds, might visit some of these grand institutions in the South and West, and see just what is being done for these neglected people!  The work cannot be appreciated in its vast importance and magnificent results, except after such a personal inspection of the field.