In connection with the cooking, there is work in the dairies, in the handling of milk and butter, the use of the separator, the proper care of the vessels, sterilizing, and pasteurizing. Everywhere is the slogan that cleanliness is next to godliness and the first requisite in the person and the home. Lately some of the girls have begun the care of chickens and eggs, and promise to carry on this new branch most. successfully.

"THE GIRLS HAVE BEGUN THE CARE OF CHICKENS AND EGGS'

The same class of women who resent the " over-training" of the Negro girl are those that also say: "We can't get any good servants now-a-days. They don't know how to do a thing. Before the war, the Negro women were noted for their cooking. They seem to have lost the art." It isn't the art that's lacking, it's the opportunity. Before the war, the Southern housewife, with a justifiable pride in her culinary department, patiently instructed and supervised her cook. The cook became proficient. She had young women, daughters and kin, to assist her. They were taught her methods, absorbed her lessons, inherited the knack she had acquired and, better, practised it daily. Then came the war, and these faithful Negro women were turned out of the homes, no longer able to support them, and thrown upon their own resources, which were few and pitiably meagre. squalid cabins or the shack of some white cropper who lived on "corn pone and sow's belly ", there was no chance to practise what

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they knew or to teach the younger generation. The young people grew up and had children of their own, reared for the most part in poverty and ignorance. What right, then, has the housekeeper, at the end of fifty years, to go to one of these squalid cabins, take therefrom a colored girl of eighteen or twenty years, put her into a kitchen, and, with a few vague directions, expect results that came from totally different conditions?

In order to know, there must first be given knowledge, and the better the equipment and opportunity for acquiring this knowledge, the better the result. Let the girl who has received the competent training of Hampton go back to her home town. With the missionary spirit that has been inculcated into every branch of her study, let her go into the poor, dirty, ill-kept homes of her people. With the love of her own race and the desire for their betterment strong within her, let her gently and wisely show these poor souls how even a six-by-eight cabin may be made roomier by a process of clearing out: let her show these people how to grow wholesome food in their small plots of ground;

hov to enrich what small area they own and make the most of it; how to can what vegetables or fruit they may produce and save them for future use. Let her, by example and practice, show the value and added comfort of a cleanly household; show her people how to

"HER HIGHER EDUCATION' HAS TAUGHT HER THE MANIPULATION OF THE SEPARATOR, BUT SHE IS INSTRUCTED ALSO IN THE USE OF THE LADLE."

cook food that shall make for strength; how to shine pans until they reflect faces also shining and clean. Her " higher education" has taught her the manipulation of the separator, but she is also instructed in the use of the ladle; so that, going to the poorest huts, she is able to help them to use what is at their very door, and is not dependent upon costly or unvailable material.

Let this leaven of usefulness spread. Let the propagation of cleanliness and self-helpfulness be carried on by the Hampton graduates among their own race- then let another fifty years pass, and you may look for definite results. The Negroes will have farms and homes of their own and glory in their comfort and progress; the number of available servants will be increased and of a distinctly higher grade, and the girls who go into service will go with a spirit of cheerful willingness, and do their work well because they have acquired the knowledge and are proud of their skill. When that time comes and it is not, after all, so far distant-will not the people of both races bless the young disciple of work who has gone into the movement with her whole heart and soul and who wears the principle of the dignity of labor as jauntily as she wears her spring "bunnit "; will they not praise her skill, her faithfulness, her courage and, through her, the spirit and work of Hampton?

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OR an example of the exterior of a small country schoolhouse in good condition, let us take one that stands a little back from the road in a lonely district with no other houses in sight. The trees behind and around it make a beautiful setting, and a flag waving from a home-made flagstaff invites one to go inside. The outside is in cheerful contrast to the dreariness of many schoolhouses. The ditch separating the yard from the road is clean, free from brush, paper, and rubbish. A bridge has been made across this ditch by the boys and their teacher.

At the side of the house is a barrel for rubbish. Broomsticks, with bent nails in one end, are used to help in picking up papers, etc. Sometimes the teacher makes a bonfire of the rubbish rather than burn it in the stove, much to the delight of the children.

Coming back to the front of the house, we find a pump with a neatly boxed standard, evidently home made and broad enough to hold pail and basin. The steps in front of the door are secure and one can enter with safety. Often the approach to a schoolhouse is over slippery banks and up very shaky steps, too far apart. On the step is a scraper, and at the entrance is a cornshuck mat, a child's work.

1 This paper is a leaflet published by Hampton Institute for the rural schools of the South and may be obtained in that form by addressing the Publication Office, Hampton Institute, Va. Miss Taylor is Superintendent of the Southern Industrial Classes of Norfolk Co., Va. Miss Walter is in charge of the Training Department of Hampton Institute.