how glad they will be when these little ones will be under the care of
their parents' former teacher.

Miss Richards estimates that in the years of school work, she has had in
her room an average of fifty pupils a term, although sometimes the
attendance overflowed to a much greater number. With eighty-eight terms
of teaching to her credit, the number of pupils who owe part of their
education to "this gentle and cultured woman" amounts well up into the
tens of thousands, enough to populate a fair-sized city.

We can not close this article with a better testimonial than the
following letter from one of her former pupils, the Honorable Charles T.
Wilkins, a lawyer and an influential white citizen, who addressed her on
the occasion of her retirement last June.


"_My dear Miss Richards_: The friendship of so long standing between
your family and mine, and the high esteem in which, as an educator, a
woman, and a Christian, you were always held by my father the late
Colonel William D. Wilkins, lead me to take the liberty of writing to
_congratulate_ you upon the well-earned retirement from active work,
which I have just learned from the press that you contemplate after so
many years well spent in faithful service to our community. As a citizen
and one who has always been most interested in the education of our
youth, I wish to add my thanks to those which are felt, if not expressed
by the many who know of your devotion to and success in leading the
young in the way in which they should go.

"Though your active participation in this work is about to cease, may
you long be spared as an example to those who follow you is the earnest