and with the practical assistance of teachers. They are marked and
graded in this as in their school work. They are also making creditable
progress in general cooking, plain sewing and dressmaking.

"The students in the college range in age from sixteen to sixty
years. One of the latter took eleven years to graduate, keeping
two girls in school and a large family at home at the same time.

"The taste for reading must needs be cultivated in most of the
girls who enter our Homes. The gift of $100 from a former 'Kent
girl' and her husband, provides the nucleus of a library made up
of such books as girls need and enjoy; better still, it is reaching
more than our girls. Neither college nor village has library
opportunities for colored people, and so the supply at Kent Home
was made available to those outside." [Footnote: Woman's Missionary
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.]

* * * * *

"It was a Negro girl from Boylan Home, Jacksonville, Florida, who
went back to her cabin home to find no floor but the earth, and nothing
to sit on but home-made stools. But she had the equipment for producing
better things, and was soon conducting quite a dressmaking business for
the neighborhood.

"A frequent sign of progress is the request of a girl to buy a broom
to take home to her mother. Neither mother nor girl had known in the
past anything better than a bundle of twigs wherewith to sweep the
rough wooden or earth floor of the cabin."