The bulletin of Atlanta University, 1893 no. 45

              NUMBER 45.                                      ATLANTA, GEORGIA.                                 APRIL, 1893. Atlanta  University, A tlanta,   Ga. Has 600 students in College, Normal College preparatory, Grammar, and Primary departments, under 30 officers and teachers. Trains teachers and leaders of their race from among the sons and daughters of the Freedmen of the South. Gives industrial training in wood-work, iron-work, mechanical drawing, printing, farming, cooking, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, laundry-work, and nursing the sick. Has sent out 235 graduates from College and Normal courses, nearly all of whom, together with hundred's of past under-graduates, are engaged in teaching and other useful work in Georgia and surrounding states. Owns four large brick buildings, on seventy acres of land, one mile from, the centre of Atlanta., Ga., library of 7,000 vols., apparatus and other equipment — all valued at not less than a quarter of a million dollars. Having no endowment (except about 38,000, mostly for special objects), the Institution requires at least $25,000 a year in donations from its friends to continue the work now in hand, and a fund of about $500,000 to put that work on a permanent basis. Annual scholarships of $40 each are asked for to provide for the tuition of one student for one year. Subscriptions of $100 and upwards are-solicited for general current expenses. Legacies for endowment or for current expenses are greatly desired. Remittances of donations or inquiries for further information may be addressed to Pres. Horace Bumstead, D. D. Atlanta, Ga. THE  PATH -- A SONNET. There are no beaten paths to Glory's hight. There are no rules to compass greatness known ; Each for himself must cleave a path alone, And press his own way forward in the fight. Smooth is the way to ease and calm delight, And soft the road Sloth chooseth for her own; But he who craves the flow'r of life full-blown Must struggle up in all his armor dight. What tho' the burden bear him sorely down, And crush to dust the mountain of his pride. Oh! then with strong heart let him still abide, For rugged is the roadway to renown. Nor may he hope to gain the envied crown Till he hath thrust the looming rocks aside. Paul Laurence Dunbar. [See notice elsewhere.]                        THE  NORMAL DEPARTMENT. HlSTORY, Work of its Graduates, Methods, Needs.  HISTORY. In 1840 the Massachusetts Legislature provided for the establishment of the first Normal School in America. The appropriation was small, the school was small, and the outlook of the experiment was not hopeful. "Its methods were laughed at, its graduates looked upon with suspicion. The early curriculum was meagre, and much of the earlier work was spent in imparting the rudiments of knowledge rather than upon the professional work for which the school was organized. In fifty years the one small school has developed into five large institutions, sending forth each year into the teaching ranks more than two hundred graduates, from courses of two, three, or four years in length—graduates who are from the start valuable additions to the teaching   force of the state. Within five years the state has erected, at a cost of half a million dollars, three magnificent buildings, thoroughly equipped and furnished, for the housing of three of these schools, and plans are already under way for the erection of a fourth structure. Yet these schools are able to furnish but a small part of the teachers required to keep full the teaching corps. Georgia, nine times as great in area as Massachusetts and with a population nearly the same as that of the old Bay State, has cue Normal School a year old for white girls. For the children of the 700,000 colored people of the Empire State of the South, obliged by law to take teachers of their own race, there is absolutely no state provision for the professional training of teachers.  Yet a teacher prominent in the state, four years ago, in an article urging upon the legis- lature the establishment of the above mentioned Normal School, stated that the missionary schools for the colored were giving students in their Normal departments a training for teaching superior to that enjoyed by white teachers, while the present Commissioner of Education, commenting upon the work in the counties, stated that the colored teachers were in many quarters doing a work comparable favorably with that of the white teacher of the same counties. At the Convention of Educators of Colored Youth, held in Nashville, in 1891, Prof. Gibbs, of the State Normal School, Florida, read a paper upon Normal work in colored schools. In the paper the following statements were made concerning the Atlanta University, viz. : that Atlanta University was the first of the missionary schools to open a Normal department, and that the Normal department was the largest, and the Alumnae list the longest, of all the colored schools. The first catalogue of the school was issued in the Spring of .1870 and is entitled, " Catalogue of the Normal and Preparatory Departments of Atlanta University." It is difficult in the earlier catalogue to separate the students in the Normal Course from those pursuing an elementary English Course. In 1874 a distinction was made of courses, and a Higher Normal and a Normal Course were inaugurated ; the Normal Course so called was simply a Grammar School, and in 1880 was so recognized by a new organization when the Normal and Grammar Courses were re-arranged and so named. Since 1874, then, there has been a department covering a course of four years and doing work of a distinctly Normal character.    The   requirements are: that those who enter the course shall have cov-ered the ground of an ordinary Grammar school, and candidates must pass satisfactory  examination in  the prescribed