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ing them up from sixty to eighty cents at once. A new law also requires that all taxes be paid in greenbacks. The State paper has, at times since reconstruction, been sold on the street in Jackson at forty per cent. below par. The return to a cash basis, will, it is estimated, save twenty-five per cent. in the cost of government alone. A general movement in favor of "retrenchment and reform" on the part of the dominant party is manifest, and the restoration of the State's credit will be the natural result of this. Gov. Ames is firm in his measures, and is not surrounded, to judge from a brief look at them, with men who are inclined to misuse their opportunities. To his military régime succeeded the government of Mr. Alcorn, now United States Senator from Mississippi, and when Mr. Alcorn was sent to the Senate, Lieut.-Gov. Powers took his place. Alcorn, returning from the Senate last year, contested the Governor's chair with Ames, but, not succeeding in a reelection, returned to Washington.

The State Superintendent of Education informed me that there are about seventyfive thousand children now in attendance upon the State schools, fully fifty thousand of whom are colored. He believed that there was at the time of my visit a million dollars worth of school property owned in the State, which proved a great advance since the war. In counties mainly Democratic in sentiment, there is formidable opposition to anything like a public school system, but in those where Republican or negro officials dominate, schools are readily kept open and fully attended. The Superintendent said that he had in only one case endeavored to insist upon mixed schools, and that was in a county where the white teachers had refused to teach negro scholars. He had found it necessary to inform those teach-be ers that, in that case, they must not attempt to keep the black children from the white schools, since he was determined that they should receive instruction. The school fund is quite large; there are normal schools at Holly Springs and Tougaloo; and the blacks have founded a university named after Alcorn. It occupies the site of

the old Oakland College near Rodney, on the Mississippi river, and receives an annual appropriation of fifty thousand dollars. A successful university has also been in operation in Tougaloo for several years. First-class teachers for the public schools are very much needed. Large numbers of very good private schools are maintained in the State by those citizens who still disbelieve in free public tuition. The University of Mississippi,* at Oxford, an old and well-managed institution, receives, as does Alcorn University, an annual subsidy of fifty thousand dollars from the State, and its average attendance is fully equal to that before the war. It has been properly fostered and nourished by the Republican government, and the motley adventurers in South Carolina might learn a lesson in justice and impartiality from the party in power in Mississippi. As soon as the funds devoted by the State to educational purposes are paid in greenbacks, or, in other words, when the evil system of "warrants" is thoroughly extinct, Mississippi will make sterling progress in education, and, in proportion, will grow in thrift, wealth and importance.

Jackson has two flourishing newspapers, "The Pilot" being the Republican, and "The Clarion" the Democratic organ. Socially, the town has always been one of high rank in the South, although some of the rougher Mississippian element has at times been

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manifest in that section. The residence | rich in a luxuriant growth of pine, and once occupied by Mr. Yerger, who killed the military Mayor of Jackson, shortly after the close of the war, because that Mayor had insisted upon the collection of certain taxes, is still pointed out to visitors. There are many charming drives in the town; little beyond it, the roads are rough and the country is wild. A garrison is maintained at Jackson, and now and then the intervention of United States authority is necessary to quell disturbances in interior districts.

The State has made efforts to secure immigration, but, like many other Southern commonwealths, finds it impossible to compete with the North-west, and becomes discouraged in presence of the objections made by white laborers to settling within its boundaries. The southwestern portion presents really fine inducements for the cultivation of cotton, corn, tobacco, sugar-cane, peaches, pears, apples and grapes. In several of these southwestern counties the yield of sugar has been one thousand pounds to the acre. The average yield of cotton is a bale to the acre. Fruit culture could be made a paying specialty throughout that part of the State. The rich stores of pine, pecan, hickory, oak, walnut, elm, ash and cypress timber form also an element of future wealth. Those lands fronting upon the Gulf of Mexico offer, in orange orchards and the miraculous oyster-beds along the shores, rare prizes for the emigrants who will go and take them. The land in the counties a little remote from the coast is

there, too, the culture of sugar and the grape has already been successful. The stock grazier, also, can find his paradise there; and there the ample water power of the Pearl, the Wolf, the Pascagoula, the Escalaufa, the Leaf and the Chickasawha rivers can turn the largest mills. The average price of lands in the State, accepting the testimony of the government immigration agent, is five dollars per acre. The mighty resources of the Yazoo delta, and the country along the Big Black river, will be considered in another article. Life and property are probably as safe as in any other State in the South; the reputation of southern Mississippi has not always been of the best, in respect to law and order; but the State seems to have entered upon an epoch of peace and confirmed decency since the inauguration of the new government. To read the provincial press, one would imagine that the most revolutionary condition of affairs prevailed in all sections, but it is only where the ignorance of the negro operates as an actual hindrance to development, and where the turbulence of rough whites, and their prejudiced intolerance of the new régime, hinders development and leads to quarreling. Mississippi has, undoubtedly, suffered immensely, in a material point of view, since the close of the war, but is now on the road to an upbuilding, and would spring into astonishing growth if the vexed labor question could only be settled in some manner.

An immigration to the Mississippi sea

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board, where there is so much magnificent timber, would be peculiarly advantageous to young men possessed of small capital. Pascagoula river and its tributaries give a water line thirteen hundred miles in extent through a dense timber region. Millions of feet of good lumber are shipped from this section. The improvement of the harbor and the deepening of the channel at Pascagoula, and the elevation of that place and of Bay St. Louis into ports of entry, would greatly increase the trade of Mississippi in that direction. The people of the State have also long desired the connection of the Gulf coast with the central interior, by a railway line, and will demand it soon. Until it is accomplished, Mississippi will perforce pour streams of commerce into Mobile and New Orleans, while her own grand harbors remain unimproved and empty. Meantime, the completion of the network gradually covering the State goes on; and the Memphis and Selma, the Mobile and North-western, the Vicksburg and Memphis, the Vicksburg and Nashville, the Prentice and Bogue Phalia, and the Natchez, Jackson and Columbus roads are projected, and in some cases the routes have been partially graded. The Vicksburg and Nashville road had no very powerful reasons for existence, as its projected line was intersected at equi-distant intervals by three rich and powerful lines, in successful operation; and there has been a good deal of opposition to the surrendering to that road of the trust funds known as the three per cent., and the agricultural land scrip, amounting in all to some $320,000.

Along the line of rail from Jackson to New Orleans there is much growth of sub

stantial character. Mr. H. E. McComb, of Wilmington, Del., has built up a flourishing town not far from the Louisiana line, and named it McComb City. But the country is mainly still in a wild state, and one cannot help feeling, while borne along in the palace car through forests and tangled thickets, that he is gradually leaving the civilized world behind, imagining that each village which he sees, like an island in the ocean of foliage, is the last, and falling into a profound astonishment when he comes upon the cultivated and European surroundings of New Orleans. Northward, along the railway lines, it is much the same. All one day we rode along the line from Jackson to Memphis, and in the whole distance we came to only two towns of any mentionable size. The others were merely groupings of a few unpainted houses built against the hillsides, among the trees, and on the open plains.

The plantation life is much the same in one section of the State as in another, although the methods of culture and the amount of results may differ somewhat. The white man and the negro are alike indifferent to a safe and steady provision for the future by growing their supplies. The planters are nearly all poor, and very much. in need of ready money, for which they have to pay exorbitant rates of interest; and at the end of a year of pretty hard work,-for the cotton planter by no means rests upon a bed of roses,-both whites and blacks find themselves little better off than when they began, and feel sore and discouraged. The negroes have been pushed from this condition into flight, and the white planters complain very generally of the want of labor.

OUR NEW NORMAL COLLEGE.

TEN years ago the traveler approaching | New York City from the East, emerged from the railway tunnels at Yorkville, to look upon as uninviting a tract of shantycovered rocks, sunken squares converted into stagnant lakes by unfinished streets, barren commons, cattle-yards and similar abominations, as could be found on the continent. For two miles northward from

Forty-Second street, the squares between Lexington Avenue and Fifth, contained scarcely a respectable building, save those of Columbia College, then a long way out of town.

Now, this same strip of land comprises one of the most inviting portions of the city. The shanties have been torn down, the rocks blasted away, the lakes filled up,

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and the former site of unmitigated ugliness is covered with miles of handsome residences, interspersed with costly churches and public institutions, whose architecture corresponds with the importance of their several missions-hospitals, asylums for the young, and homes for the aged; the generous structure for the housing of the still more generous Lenox Library; and, not the least noticeable, the building figured in our illustration-the seat of our new Normal College.

Here, if the saying of the ancient schoolmaster is true, New York has in training her future rulers, for here the guardians of the coming generation are fitting themselves for their high calling. The future of our public schools is in their hands; and in the schools, to great extent, lies the destiny of the city.

Though perhaps the least known of the institutions of the city, our Normal College, from the nature of its mission, must be ranked among the most important.

Of the twenty-three hundred teachers. employed by the city, more than twenty

one hundred are women. From so large a number, the majority in early womanhood, it is inevitable that many, for matrimonial or other reasons, should retire from the service every year. The number thus lost to the schools is, in fact, from one hundred and sixty to one hundred and eighty a year; and at least an equal number of teachers must be annually added to the force to keep the ranks full. Whence shall we get them?

Experience, elsewhere as well as in this city, has demonstrated the impossibility of supplying so many vacancies suitably, unless special provision is made therefor. Formerly the majority of new teachers came direct from the grammar schools, whose range of study was altogether inadequate to secure the breadth of culture to be desired in teachers. And even if the requisite scholarship was forthcoming, the necessary professional training for the teacher's work was pretty sure to be lacking.

To save the younger classes, therefore, from the blundering experiments of novices,

and still more to ensure that uniformity in methods of teaching and modes of discipline so essential to a harmonious school system, it was imperative that the incoming instructors should be not only trained for their work, but, trained uniformly; to accomplish which there was no way so sure as to establish an institution like the Normal College, capable of graduating annually at least two hundred young women competent to enter upon the teacher's labors understandingly.

But this was not the only reason which led the city to undertake so costly a work. When the public school system was first organized, the founders wisely saw the need of a high school to carry on the education of the more deserving and ambitious of the pupils of the grammar schools, not only to give dignity to the system, but to serve as an incentive to and reward for industry in the lower schools. At that time women had not been recognized as the most suitable instructors of the young, and the demand for higher education on their part had not begun to be heard. The consequence was that the candidates for admission to the upper school,-the Free Academy, came wholly from the boys' schools, and in time the academy got to be looked upon as their exclusive privilege.

In the meantime great changes were wrought in public opinion in regard to the education of girls, and the employment of women as teachers. And though the higher education of the graduates of the girls' grammar schools promised infinitely more for the public benefit than that of their brothers,-nine-tenths of the public school teachers coming from their ranks,— the discrimination against them was continued until the Department of Education was created by Act of Legislature in 1869. By this time the demand for a girls' school of equal grade to that of the boys' high school, now called the College of the City of New York,-could no longer be disregarded. Accordingly one of the first steps of the new Board was to establish such an institution, the Normal and High School for Girls, in temporary quarters, corner of Broadway and Fourth street. The school was opened in February, 1870, and, though miserably lodged, soon demonstrated its right to be, by calling together upwards of a thousand young ladies, eager for higher culture than the grammar schools had offered them. The school, soon dignified by the title of Nor

mal College, remained at this place until last fall, when it removed to the new and elegant home prepared for it up town.

The site selected for the buildings occupies the block bounded by Fourth Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth streets, an area somewhat more than thirty-two full-sized city lots.

The engraving will convey a better idea of the architecture of the buildings than any written description can. It is enough to say, that it satisfies every reasonable demand as to beauty, solidity, convenience and durability.

The plan of the College building may be represented by the letter T, the top of the letter fronting Fourth Avenue. A building corresponding to the Fourth Avenue front is now nearly completed on Lexington Avenue, for the use of a Model and Training School, giving the combined structure a ground plan resembling an expanded letter H

The buildings are four stories in height. above the cellar, which contains a janitor's kitchen, store-rooms, places for furnaces, fuel, etc. The top of the balustrade is seventy-five feet above the street curb. The height of the main tower is one hundred and forty-two feet, and that of the observatory tower one hundred and twentysix feet. The last is surmounted by a revolving dome for astronomical purposes, the axis of the instrument being one hundred and sixteen feet above the street pavement.

The assembly hall, occupying the third and fourth stories of the main building, is, perhaps, the most spacious and beautiful room for its purpose in the world. Including the galleries, it will comfortably seat two thousand persons. Here the daily opening exercises of the College are held. In the first story of the same building is the calisthenium, fifty-one by seventy-four feet, besides a library, private rooms, storeroom, and janitor's residence.

The extension, or class-room building, contains ten class-rooms on each floor above the first,-thirty in all,-besides private rooms, wardrobes, etc., divided by halls fifteen feet wide running the entire length of the building, one hundred and twenty-seven feet. The first story contains two spacious lavatories, retiring rooms, a room for promenading, seventy-five by one hundred feet, and, most important of all, two rooms twenty-eight by thirty, furnished with extra heating apparatus for

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