They are

sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones. clothed in a living, human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, its love. Then their presence is a power. Then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with a gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame."

New Orleans is the centre of a vast area of territory and of millions of people, the entrepôt of sixteen thousand miles of navigable waters bordering twenty-two States and Territories and conveying a vast internal commerce. Mexico and Central America and South America and the West Indies are her neighbors. Canals and railroads are to cross the isthmus. The great Northwest and Southwest are demanding a Gulf outlet and a capacious harbor. The soil of Louisiana is equal to the Delta of the Nile. The possibilities of the future are committed, in some degree, to your hands. The responsibilities of legislators are proportionate to their opportunities. What is to come of such boundless resources is to be determined, not by stolid ignorance, but by enlightenment and virtue.

At the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, in Egypt, the English army had a terrible night-march over the sterile desert. In the pitchy darkness, without natural or artificial objects by which to direct the course, rigorous silence being enforced, Lieutenant Rawson, chosen as the directing guide, was instructed to keep his eye fixed on a certain star, and regulate by that the forward movement of the column. At break of dawn the fierce charge was made, under a shower of bullets and across the deep trenches, with the steady tread which has immortalized British valor. After the victory, among the dead and disabled piled in ghastly confusion, was found Lieutenant Rawson, mortally wounded. When Sir Archibald Alison, who commanded the advance, was told of the sad fate of the gallant lieutenant, he went at once to see him. "Did n't I lead them straight, sir?" were the last faint words of the dying man, faithful to duty even unto the end. I trust that when your account shall be rendered to constituents and to the fast-coming future, which may enter upon the fruition of developed capabilities, you will be able to look back upon institutions of learning and well-endowed appliances for universal education, and proudly say: "Did n't I, in that time of uncertainty and peril, lead the people straight and nobly?”

THIRTIETH MEETING OF THE TRUSTEES.

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 1891.

THE Trustees met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in New York, on October 7, at 12 o'clock noon.

There were present: Mr. EVARTS, the second ViceChairman, and Messrs. WHIPPLE, HAYES, DREXEL, Green, PorteR, MORGAN, COURTENAY, HENRY, and SOMERVILLE; and Dr. CURRY, the General Agent.

In the absence of Mr. WINTHROP, the Chairman, Mr. EVARTS presided. The records of the last meeting were read and accepted, when a prayer was offered by Bishop WHIPPLE. After some remarks by Mr. EVARTS, expressing the regrets of the Board at Mr. WINTHROP'S absence, the Secretary read the following letter:

Letter from the HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, Chairman.

HON. SAMUEL A. GREEN,

BROOKLINE, 26th September, 1891.

Secretary of the Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund.

MY DEAR MR. SECRETARY, I had most earnestly hoped to be with the Trustees on the 7th of October next, and to preside once more at their Annual Meeting. But it has been ordered otherwise. The infirmities which heralded my eighty-second birthday in May last, and the positive illness which soon followed, have proved more serious than was expected, and my physicians have warned

me that my health is not yet sufficiently restored for me to encounter the fatigues of a journey to New York and the requisitions of such a meeting. They have even discouraged me from the preparation of any formal Introductory Address for the occasion. The Trustees will therefore be spared from a considerable part of the detention to which they have so long been accustomed, and which, I am bound to say, they have always borne with so much seeming satisfaction and pleasure. But I cannot content myself with entire silence.

The Report of our General Agent will supply the Trustees with the details of our operations and expenditures during the past year, with which it is enough for me to express my great gratification. That Report leaves it only for me to call attention to the important step which Dr. Curry has taken in accepting the charge of the Slater Trust in addition to his duties as our General Agent. I am free to say that, in my judgment, nothing more desirable could have been effected than this committal of the Peabody and Slater Trusts to the same hands. The Trusts will be kept entirely separate, and will do their respective works independently and according to the terms of their Founders. But obvious advantages cannot fail to result from such a combination, on which I need not enlarge.

In furtherance of this combination, I may remark that Dr. Curry has been made one of the Slater Trustees, and in that capacity is to have a full share of the responsibility of the management of that Trust. We could hardly pursue precisely the same course, even if it were thought desirable. Mr. Peabody's Instructions, as originally construed, and as executed and fulfilled so successfully for so many years, clearly contemplated a separate General Agent, distinct from the Trustees. I should be unwilling to recommend a change of this arrangement at this late day. The

General Agency of the Peabody Education Fund has a dignity of its own, which was imparted to it by Dr. Sears, and which has been worthily sustained and enhanced by his successor. Meantime, however, I would venture to propose, in view of the new relations of the Peabody and Slater Trusts, that the Hon. J. L. M. Curry be henceforth, and as long as he remains our General Agent, an Honorary Member of our Board, with all the privileges and dignities of membership, and subject to be appointed as a Member, or as Chairman, of our Executive or other Committees. Such a position will be a great convenience to him and to ourselves in the execution of our respective duties, and will give him substantially the same standing in relation to the Peabody Trust as has been wisely assigned him in relation to the Slater Trust.

I have great hope that out of this latter arrangement will come a more effective introduction of Industrial Education into the Schools for Freedmen. But that topic has been abundantly discussed in Dr. Curry's Report to the Slater Trustees, and I pass from it without further remark.

I turn to our own great work of training Teachers for all the Southern Schools by Normal Colleges, Schools, and Institutes, which I am glad to say has been systematically and most successfully pursued, and for which our faithful and efficient Treasurer, Mr. Pierpont Morgan, promises to place at least Ninety-five Thousand Dollars at our disposal for the year on which we are entering. Of this amount a large part will be expended in connection with our Normal College at Nashville. I may be allowed, therefore, to dwell on this Institution for a moment, and to make some remarks suggested by the discussions at our last Annual Meeting.

It would seem to be imagined in some quarters that we are building up a great institution for the city of Nashville or for the State of Tennessee. Others have suggested that

we are engaged in erecting at Nashville a permanent monument to George Peabody. Now, both of these ends may be in the way of successful accomplishment, but they are not the purposes of our proceedings in the fulfilment of our Trust. They are only the incidental or accidental results of our legitimate work. A great Tennessee college or university and a worthy and well-deserved monument to George Peabody will have resulted from our appropriations and labors for training teachers for the whole South. The preparation of teachers for all the Southern States, through scholarships at a common university or college, has been and still is our great aim, and the Normal College at Nashville is only in the legitimate line of Peabody work while it provides for the training of such teachers. All its provisions for other objects and larger culture must come, and hitherto have come, from other sources than the Fund which we hold in trust.

We certainly did not establish our Normal College at Nashville with any view to favor Tennessee above other Southern States. Its location was entirely accidental, arising, indeed, out of circumstances which left us no alternative. We were willing to have gone to Atlanta, and came very near going there in 1881. But the vexatious controversies which so disturbed the last year of good Dr. Sears's life, and his subsequent death, led us inevitably to Nashville, and we have had no cause to regret it. No other city or State has reason to be jealous, or to complain of any seeming favoritism. Our whole object was the training of teachers for all the Southern States; and for this object we adopted the only locality which at the moment offered itself favorably to our consideration. We should gladly at any time have helped Normal Colleges or Schools in other States, but there were then none to be helped. As fast as Normal Schools or Colleges have been instituted in other States, we have gladly recognized and