It was a long and wearisome journey to Tennessee. I was never sure of making a railroad connection, as we do on the grand trunk lines. Le Moyne Institute has an interesting history. Dr. Le Moyne, the noted Cremationist, was the generous benefactor of this institution. Without him, it would not now exist. I was too late for the examinations, but in time for the Commencement exercises. They were held in the pretty Congregational Church, and were highly creditable. I found here a company of live, enthusiastic teachers. The mission-house is a most home-like place, and it was not difficult for me, on inquiring of citizens, to ascertain that Le Moyne Institute is thoroughly prized in Memphis. With the same corps of teachers as now, they can hardly fail of success. Here, as in many other points in the South, dormitories are urgently needed. They cannot secure, without them, the best class of students, and the school will remain, at best, a High or Normal School, when it might be the College, in West Tennessee, for the colored people. If some man of Dr. Le Moyne’s generosity would put up a fine building for a dormitory, he would be planting seed-corn which would yield many harvests in the coming years. A fact which touches our hearts at every repetition of it, is that, years ago, during the yellow-fever epidemic, two of the teachers heroically remained at their posts and ministered to those smitten with the fever, and cheerfully paid the forfeit with their lives. Such men and women are made of “good stuff,” and the cause they represent has a right to popular sympathy and support.
With regard to our general work in the South, I was glad to notice everywhere quickened zeal, followed by greatly increased prosperity. I believe the good work among the freedmen was never so efficient as to-day, and never so richly deserved the hearty sympathy and generous benefactions of the good people of the North. As it is no time to sound a retreat when an army has gained its earliest victories, so it is no time, in the work of education and evangelization among the freedmen in the South, to repress zeal or to slacken effort, or to retrench where retrenchment would be fatal; but to push forward till the highest results are achieved.