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THE CRISIS

ground, cost $550,000, and is regarded by many to be the finest public educational institution for colored students in the country.  The auditorium has a large stage, and a seating capacity for 1, 500, with provision made for presenting motion pictures.  
  Among the innovations offered are a pipe organ for the auditorium, a large swimming pool, and a lunch-room, having a modern kitchen for the preparation of hot foods, and tables and seats for 350 students.  
  Five pianos are provided for the music department, also large gymnasiums for both boys and girls, with dressing rooms furnished with shower baths and the most up-to-date equipment, and balconies provided for visitors.   
  A printing plant, with an equipment valued at $4,000, s another attraction.  A banking department, with its necessary safe and windows, and modern facilities for bookkeeping and accounting, has been installed for classes in business practice.  
  The school also has a department for instruction in domestic science, which includes a dining-room and living-room having modern furniture so that the girls may learn by actual experience how to lay a table, arrange furniture, and keep house.   
  Practically the entire basement floor is devoted to laboratories and lecture rooms for teaching botany, zoology, chemistry and physics.  The school has a particularly fine set of apparatus for physics, which is the result of many years' collection.  A wireless outfit is to be added in the immediate future.  
  Drawing rooms occupy the third floor, while on the second floor is a spacious library complete in appointments, with a capacity for 4,337 volumes, and improved library facilities for the accommodation of 185 students.  On the first floor is the administration offices, and a study hall with a seating capacity for 106 students.  
  The Cadets have a large armory under the auditorium, the space allotted being sufficient for several companies, and also a rifle range for target practice.  
  The school has 35 class rooms, 5 retiring rooms, an emergency room, 7 locker rooms, and locker accommodation for 1,500 students.  A greenhouse and roof garden are yet under construction, and it is hoped that this year an appropriation may be secured for building a stadium in the rear of the school.  
  The school was named the Dunbar High School by the Commissioners of the District of Columbia on the seventeenth of January, of the present year, in honor of Paul Laurence Dunbar.  

TO THE DUNBAR HIGH SCHOOL (A Sonnet)
by ANGELINA W. GRIMKE

AND she shall be the friend of youth for aye:
Of quick'ning youth whose eyes have seen the gleam; 
Of youth between whose tears and laughter stream
Bright bows of hope; of youth, audacious, gay, 
Who dares to know himself a Caesar, say, A Shakespeare or a Galahad.  The dream To him is real; and things are as they seem, For Beauty veils from him the feel of clay. 
How holy and how wonderful her trust-
Youth's friend-and, yes, how blest.  For down the west
Each day shall go the sun, and time in time
Shall die, the unborn shall again be dust; 

HEROES OF DEATH

[[image - The Late Bishop Walters]]

THE LATE BISHIP WALTERS

ALEXANDER WALTERS

THE death of Alexander Walters, senior bishop of the A.M.E. Zion Church, on February 1, 1917, deprives the Negro race of a forceful figure.  It is unfortunate that Bishop Walter's biography, "My Life and Work" (F.H. Revell Company), was not begun until he was too sick really to finish it properly.  The part, therefore, covering his active life, his courageous but unsuccessful attempt to divide the Negro vote, his connection with the Afro-American council and other matters of that sort-are treated only in a fragmentary and unsatisfactory manner.  On the other hand, we do have an instructive picture of the early life of an American Negro preacher of the better type.
  Alexander Walters was born at Bardstown, Ky., August 1, 1858, in a little room behind the kitchen of the leading hotel.  He was of Negro descent but also had in his veins soe of the best blood of Kentucky and was possibly a blood-relative of Abraham Lincoln.  His formal schooling was limited; two terms in a private local school, one term in the school taught in the frame church of his town and finally, several terms under Rowan Wickliffe, who turned the boy's attention definitely toward the ministry.  Then his education stopped for a while.  He worked on a farm, was a river hand and a waiter in a hotel.
  His "conversion" had best be told in his own words:
  "I received my first religious awakening, when but a small boy, on reading the Book of Revelation.  I felt sure that I was doomed to  be lost.  About this time, dreaming for two nights in succession of the Judgment Day and the horrors thereof, I was so frightened that I began to pray in earnest."   
  In 1879 he was ordained deacon and soon became a full-fledged country preacher.  After that his rise in the church was rapid.  He held many charges in Kentucky and California.
  Then comes further religious experience; "On Saturday night, while upon my knees making preparation for the Sabbath service, I had what I suppose some people would call a vision.  It seemed that someone in spirit-form entered the room, proffering to me an exalted office; I realized that it was the bishopric of the church.  I shrank from the responsibility and said, 'I am not sufficiently prepared to accept such a sacred office.' Assurance was given me of divine help and constant guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit.  I thereupon burst into tears, and said: 'Thy will be done.'"
  In 1892, at the General Conference which met at Pittsburg, PA., Alexander Walters was elected bishop of the church amid great enthusiasm, at the age of thirty-four.  Here his public career began and it is so well-known to our readers that it need not here be discussed. 
  Personally, Bishop Walters was peculiarly pleasing, anxious to make friends and disliking to offend anyone.  He was at the same time impulsive and enthusiastic; these characteristics combine to explain all that one could say in praise and in blame of this striking figure of Negro-American history.  

CAROLINE PUTNAME
ON Friday, January 19, in Baltimore, Md., at one of the cemeteries, was created the body of Miss Caroline Putnam

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