The American Missionary -- Volume 35, No. 3, March 1881

Hon. Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, who has recently been elected U. S. Senator, has for a long time manifested an interest in our work. A short time since he gave $50,000 to an institution under the auspices of the Baptists, for the education of the whites. On the night before his election, in an address to the Legislature, he expressed his appreciation of the importance of education in the following words:

“I have the educational question very much at heart. Disguise it as you may, the New England States, with their schools and universities, have dictated laws to this continent. They have sent New England ideas all over the West, and they dominate there. Look at Prussia, that little Empire over which Napoleon rushed and almost obliterated. Hardly a generation passed before it had in turn humbled France and taken the power from its Empire. The bright-eyed boys in your mountains and wire-grass may represent you nobly before the world if you educate them. We must also educate the colored race, and they ought to be educated for the benefit of the Union, and by the friends of the Union. I would devote the proceeds of the public lands to this purpose on a basis of illiteracy. The colored people are citizens, and we must do them justice. Let us give them every legal right. Social rights will take care of themselves.”

It is felt by many of our missionaries South that their work would be facilitated by a creed, prepared under direction of the National Council, suited to the average intelligence of the Freedmen who apply for admission to our new churches. To this end, therefore, the Central South Conference, at its recent meeting in Memphis, drew up an overture setting forth the reasons why such creed should be provided, and presented it to the Council at St. Louis. After preliminary statements, the overture adds:

“Our eight colleges and our two score normal and high schools, with their more than 8,000 students, and these, with their 150,000 pupils in primary schools, where they teach, are rapidly preparing the material out of which churches of our faith and polity will be developed.

“These children of nature, with their ready faith but rude culture, coming into the inheritance of this New Testament way of the churches, need the ‘sincere milk of the word’—a declaration of doctrine that shall not be in the nomenclature nor[68] in the philosophy of a past age, but in the language and after the spirit of our improved New England theology. They need a form of sound words such as that when they have once learned it they will not need to be taught over again what it does not mean in spite of its phraseology.

“As a duty of brotherly love and of honest recompense we owe them the best things we have to give in the way of the freshest and ripest statement of the ideas and doctrines which have leavened the East and the West, and are now setting the South in foment.”

We trust the Committee appointed by the Council to formulate a statement of doctrine will meet the want.

Opposition to mixed schools in the South is not confined to the white race. Intelligent colored people see that these mean no opportunity for them as teachers, at least for some years to come. Those who would be willing to wield the birchen rod over colored children are as yet largely in excess of those who would consent to have a colored teacher wield it over them.

Mixed schools are needed in all the sparsely settled neighborhoods, which includes, of course, all the country outside of the larger villages, as none other can be effectively maintained. None others can be harmonized with the democratic ideas upon which our institutions are based, and it is safe to say that anything which is favored by every public and private interest, and is opposed only by prejudice, will in the end gain the day. Victories are being won with such rapidity that we can afford to wait patiently for this one, which when gained will prove the Appomattox of this war.

Almost all that can be gained for the negro by legislation has been accomplished; to overcome prejudices which wrong and hinder him, will now depend largely upon himself. The gratifying fact, attested by prominent men all over the South, is that he is playing his part with commendable manliness, and is gaining what will never be long withheld from those who deserve it—the respect of his white neighbors.

It would be well for those who complain of the slow progress made for better feelings and sentiments among the Southern whites in regard to the negroes, and their manifest unwillingness to accord to them their rights, quietly to digest a recent letter from the Superintendent of Schools in Cambridge, Mass., who explains that he has not employed properly qualified colored teachers in that city, simply because there is so much color prejudice among the people that he deems it inexpedient to do so.

We know of a young colored woman, a graduate of the high-school of the town in which she lives, admitted by all parties to be the best scholar of her class, and one of the best ever graduated from the school, who cannot find employment in the profession for which she has so ably qualified herself, only because she has a trace of negro blood in her veins. When Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and we may as well include the whole of New England, have reached and occupied sufficiently long to feel comfortable upon it, the ground which they insist the South ought to take at one bound, the South may be more favorably affected by their preaching of equal rights.

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There may be exceptions which, after all, confirm the rule to which they do not wholly conform, but to say that it is by exceptions the rule is to be proven, is to betray a blind adhesion to maxims whose claim to credence is their antiquity alone.

A partial and hasty generalization from two or three particulars suffices for the enunciation of a general law applicable to all cases. The declaration of a more careful investigator that a number of particular facts are not harmonious with the law as enunciated is met, not with a revision of the law, but with the assertion that exceptions do not invalidate, but prove the rule.

A naturalist in the tropics describes water as being under all circumstances a fluid. The solid block of ice which drifts for the first time into his field of observation he will not accept as disproving his doctrine, but as being the exception necessary to confirm it.

It becomes a matter of interest to know in what way exceptions do confirm what they seemingly disprove, and how many maybe admitted before we shall revise our classifications and re-state our general rule, because false in its old form. Unquestionably an indisputable exception proves at least that the rule is not universal, and suggests that there may be a thousand more facts out of harmony with it.

Anglo-Saxon prejudice and conceit have laid it down as a general rule, a law of race, that the negro is only a somewhat superior grade of monkey, incapable of any high degree of intellectual development; that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, and the best use he can be put to is to make a target of him for the training of our soldiers in musket firing.

The American Missionary Association has been engaged for the past score of years in developing exceptions to these dicta, and it is time to raise the question seriously whether these only prove the rule or demand its revision!

We respectfully submit that the experiments made show a large number of exceptions; in fact, the number has been numerous exactly in proportion to the largeness of our opportunities and facilities for developing them. A serious doubt ought by this time to take possession of the public mind whether $32,000,000 spent in Indian wars during the past dozen years is not rather expensive target practice, and whether the results shown by those who, under great disadvantages, have been attempting to civilize and Christianize the Indians, are not of such character as to demand most emphatically that our method of dealing with them shall be changed.

We also challenge attention to the results of our educational experiments in the South, as demanding in all fairness that they shall be made on a national scale, and not simply by the private enterprise of philanthropists.

It is time the old answer of ignorance and stupid imbecility that exceptions only prove the rule should be thrown to the dogs, and we should as a nation convert the dangerous elements with which we have so wickedly and foolishly dealt into sources of national power and safety.

It was a wild and weird scene that we looked down upon from the gallery of one of the prominent colored churches in a Southern city a few months since. The preacher had, at 10 o’clock, p. m., finished his part of the service, having[70] preached an excellent and very simple sermon, in which there was nothing calculated to produce the violent scenes which followed, and having come down from the pulpit, the brethren and sisters took the meeting under their own management.

Up to this time it had been as quiet and decorous as a deacons’ meeting in New England. A stentorian “son of thunder” now led the singing, and a general movement of the whole assembly at once began. Soon, nearly a hundred “seekers” were kneeling at the “mourners’ bench,” a row of seats extending across the church, in all stages of physical and spiritual abasement. Prayer and song followed each other in rapid and boisterous succession, while the congregation of believers marched and counter-marched, each one discharging at once his duty and a volley of counsel or encouragement to the mourners as he passed along the line.

Black was the ground and prevailing color. The lights were hardly sufficient to resolve this nebulous blackness into faces, black sun-bonnets of the sisters, and black-coated forms of the brethren moving to and fro through the room, while the singers sang, the exhorters exhorted, the mourners mourned in dismal howls, and the shouters shouted and leaped in ecstatic joy. Now and then, one would come to the surface of all this uproar, to tell what voices he had heard, what visions he had seen, what dreams he had dreamed, and receive the assurance from the minister: “I have no more doubt that he has got religion, than I have of my own existence,” which would be the signal for a general shout of “glory to God!” that made the preceding bedlam seem tame, and gave renewed impetus to the marchings and songs and prayers.

These meetings had been in nightly session for weeks, and continued for weeks afterward, prolonged often, as on this night, until 2 o’clock in the morning. As we left, about midnight, our driver, an intelligent negro, said: “You are going away too early. Things will get pretty warm after awhile. ’Ligion strikes a nigger first in the foot and then works up; it is just beginning to work, it will be lively after awhile;” of which there could not be much doubt.

One of our missionaries, some time since, was applied to by a colored woman for admission to the church. At her examination before the committee, she had a wonderful dream to tell as proof of her conversion. The committee, not deeming it sufficient evidence, refused her application. She went immediately to one of the old ministers, and the day of her immersion was duly celebrated by a great gathering, of which she was the heroine. As she clambered up the bank of the river, shouting aloud, she suddenly encountered one of the deacons whose church had refused her admission. Giving a sudden pause to her religious fervor, she thrust her clenched hand into his face, exclaiming: “There, I am baptized,” and followed up with imprecations upon himself, pastor, and church, which were, to say the least, not saintly, and then resumed her shout of glory!

To one who has seen the negro often under religious excitement, it is evident that he seeks it as many men do intoxication, for the mere pleasurable excitement; he neither feels nor hears, nor does he know of reasons for being a better man morally because of his religion; if it only makes him happier, it meets his need, and the only demand he has to make of it.

This is a just idea of what conversion was under the old-style minister among the negroes. Of course, there were many among them who preached a purer Gospel, and sought renewed spiritual lives among their people, especially before emancipation, but with freedom came the hope of political or other power, which could be gained most easily by the preacher, and many sought and secured such[71] positions who were utterly unscrupulous as well as ignorant. It is such a ministry as this which, more than anything else, opposes to-day our work among the Freedmen.

Dr. Sears stated last spring, in his address at the School Superintendents’ Convention, that he knew of the presence of one trained normal teacher in a village to necessitate the dismissal of seven old-fashioned teachers. Contrast and comparison revealed sad deficiencies before unknown, and the committee was forced to get rid of the poor teachers. And so it is chiefly by what we compel others to do, that we are to estimate the value of our intelligent and largely undenominational work in the South. The Freedmen are beginning to see that religion is something different from dreaming dreams or seeing visions, or shouting, or anything of the kind; that it means honest, pure, industrious lives, inspired and controlled by the spirit of Jesus Christ. Education is securing something better than such conversions, in fact is making them impossible with the new generation.

We deem it inaccurate to say “inconsiderate charity,” for such giving is not charitable giving. “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” The obligation is as imperative that we shall give intelligently as that we shall give at all. The intolerable tramp nuisance with which we have been so grievously afflicted, was nourished and built up by the illy considered sentiment which found expression in the declaration of a well-known minister, who said he would refuse to give anything to the cause of missions before he would refuse a gift to the poor fellow who asked at his door for help, and in the custom of a good woman of wealth, who bought a set of crockery for tramps, and always kept a large coffee-pot full of that delightful beverage on the stove ready for the use of her frequent guests, a dozen of whom she has been known to feed in one day. There can be no doubt that a ready and full supply of this kind will develop an almost infinite demand.

A lady, prominent and well-known in New York city, whose habit was never to give to any one asking at the door, but to take the address of the applicant and investigate the case, said that in seventeen years’ experience she had never found a single deserving one among the many who had so applied; in every case a fictitious address had been given.

We can do no safe and really charitable work until such work is intelligently organized, so that deserving cases are supplied with just the kind of aid needed, and fictitious and unworthy ones are exposed and punished. We must know, either by ourselves or accredited and trusted agents, what we are doing if we are to benefit rather than curse our fellows by our so-called charities.

The friends of the negro are in danger constantly of being imposed upon by impostors, who rob the cause they desire to promote of much-needed funds. It is very easy for one who comes soliciting aid for a prospective college or church to secure testimonials that said institution is greatly needed, and that the solicitor is seeking money for a most important purpose.

It is not necessary to show, which is by no means the case, that all who come from the South asking aid for such causes are frauds, in order to give weight to our words of caution. Many of these are attempting honestly a most important work, and ought to have sympathy and material aid, but the individual to whom application is made has neither time nor facilities for making the proper investigations[72] to establish this fact. True, the applicant has testimonials, but they need investigation no less than the applicant himself.

We know of several cases where funds have been contributed, and have been expended in the erection and maintenance of schools, which are doing honest and most valuable work, concerning which nothing but praise should be spoken, and yet nothing but the life of one man stands between this present use of these funds and an utter perversion of them. The school property is the personal property of the individual who procured the funds, and at his death will of necessity pass into the hands of others, who can do what they choose with it.

We know of one case where a wealthy man from New York, spending the winter in the South, became interested in a negro public school near his hotel. He converted the rude building into a New England school-house, supplied with first-class apparatus, and took great satisfaction in what he had done for the poor negroes. Next year the negro school was transferred to another building, and the whites made this one, with its books, globes, and philosophical apparatus, the foundation of a higher school for their own race. We believe it best for the friends of negro education to work, through some one of the various organizations which are doing this work, who are in position to do it more wisely and efficiently than they could do it; and would call attention to the following suggestions from a correspondent of the New York Tribune, as being wise and of urgent importance:

GEN. S. C. ARMSTRONG.

The Indian problem is upon us as never before.

The wrongs of the Poncas, both in themselves and as illustrating our country’s mode of dealing with the red race for generations, have touched and stirred the people.

The sum of six generations of slavery has been to the negro, oppression, offset by steady progress through it all, and only injury to the white man. The sum of six generations of Indian treatment has been a succession of wrongs, offset by little real advantage, and the steady gain of the white man.

The negro acquired our language and ways, and by becoming the industrial reliance of the South, became, even more than his master, capable of taking care of himself. We have destroyed the reliance of the Indian, his game, and have[73] put nothing in its place. With all the justice and humanity intended in our annual outlay for the red race, there is a pauperizing, weakening tendency that is full of danger. Practically, has the politician been any better guardian than the slave-holder?

The country is waking up to a sense of justice. The shameful record of violated treaties and untold wrongs for the past hundred years is being brought out. From the outraged negro, for whom the country can now do nothing but help educate him, and who, indeed, needs nothing but intelligence to fit him to hold his own, our people are turning to the Indian and demanding that Government open before him the only way to manhood and citizenship—rights and education. It must be done.

In the “Century of Dishonor,” just published by the well-known author, “H. H.,” she states that “To write in full the history of one of these Indian communities, of its forced migrations, wars, and miseries, would fill a volume by itself.”

As this shall be better realized, a stronger public sentiment will be formed and felt. Other forces are at work. The three hundred and fifty Indian youth who have come voluntarily from the West, many of them children of chiefs, and entered the Carlisle and Hampton schools, have already proved their capacity for mechanical and agricultural, as well as for mental and religious improvements. Not but that this has already been abundantly shown; but the work has been done at our doors; the evidence is thrust upon us.

How many know that of the 275,000 Indians in the United States, 150,000 are already self-supporting, 84,000 partly so, while only 31,000 are entirely dependent on the Government; that their numbers are hardly diminished since the landing of the Pilgrims?

Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, says: “The North American Indian is the noblest type of a heathen man on the face of the earth. He recognizes a Great Spirit; he believes in immortality; he has a keen intellect; he is a clear thinker; he is brave, fearless, and until betrayed, he is true to his plighted faith; he has a passionate love for his children and counts it joy to die for his people. Our most terrible wars have been with this noblest type of Indians and with those who have been the white man’s friends.”

Nearly three years’ experience at Hampton has shown that the chief danger, the death-rate, while serious, is not discouraging. Our 80 Indian pupils are now in better health than ever before. They need in bodily ailments careful, prompt treatment; with that there is little danger. It is clear that the death-rate is not increased by transplanting them to the East.

Is not the story of our last communion service which I sent to the Missionary last week evidence enough to stimulate Christians to the greatest effort for this race? I write this paper especially to urge upon the American Missionary Association and its friends some effort for Indians in connection with their institutions for colored people.

The mingling of races at Hampton has worked admirably. Our colored students increased in number last year by 37 in spite of the 70 Indians for whom separate and special pecuniary provision was made by Government and by friends.

Bringing Indians to negro schools is like putting raw recruits among old soldiers. The former are pushed along by a thousand indirect helpful influences; they are improved by contact with those always ahead of them in the march of[74] civilization; and the latter are ennobled by what they do for their needy brethren. It works well; such mingling will strengthen and not weaken your schools, if Hampton experience is safe to go by. To make men of the savages on our frontier and to save their souls by putting them with the ex-slave of the country is a grand work, if it has been called “sensational.”

Why not take these twenty Indian children that the Indian department are ready to give you? This would be safe; then feel your way along. Let them study mornings and work afternoons, and play Saturdays. We do so. The labor is one of some delicacy and difficulty. But the Indian is like everybody else. That’s our experience. Treat him firmly, fairly, kindly; give him no second-rate teacher; he is keen and appreciative.

Why not go ahead? The Government will place them at your doors free of expense, and give you $150 a year for twelve months’ schooling and care—which will barely pay for their food and clothing. That’s all we can get. The people must pay in part the cost of such education to get it done. We try to obtain a yearly seventy-dollar scholarship for each one and have been fairly successful. You can get these by working for them. You say, “We have no room for them; where is the money with which to erect buildings?”

We hope next fall to have thirty more Indian girls, making fifty boys and fifty girls, and are now trying to raise twenty thousand dollars to put up next summer a suitable building for the girls, that shall have every appliance for practical education, including cooking, sewing, clothes-making, washing and ironing, and housework generally, furnishing room for seventy.

We have no idea where the money is to come from. We have faith that it will come, because such work is in the line of God’s providential movement. He who wisely works in that line cannot fail. The way to get it is to ask for it, prepare for it, push for it, be worthy of it, pray for it, and it will come. The people of the country will sustain a good work for Indians.

Some may object that it will trespass upon the negro. Has it been so here? How would our colored students feel to-day if our Indians were to be withdrawn? They would vote solidly against it; they would lose and not gain, and they know it. Is the mutual love and respect of these races of no account?

The American Missionary Association aims to destroy caste. This is our way to do it. Nothing here has ever filled me with more pleasure than watching our students’ recreations, in which race lines are utterly forgotten. They exist between them, and many feared, in consequence, disastrous results of their mingling. Two of our most important and successful Indian teachers are negroes, graduates of this school.

Three seventy-dollar scholarships are contributed by Virginia churches for this Indian work, from Petersburg, Portsmouth, and Hampton, respectively. Southern churches are aiding negro schools.

Have faith and go in for Indians!

—A French school of archæology, like those which already exist at Rome and Athens, will be established at Cairo. M. Maspero, Professor in the College of France, has charge of the organization.

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—M. L. Vassion, attached to the office of foreign affairs in France, has gone to Cairo; he will start from there for Khartoum and the river Blanc, where he will study the nature of the commercial relations which it will be possible to establish with Soudan.

—Dr. Pogge and his companion, M. Wissman, have sailed from Hamburg for Saint Paul de Loanda. The German Government has officially asked for them the protection of the Portuguese Government, by which they may traverse the African possessions on the western side.

—The mission of Algiers proposes to found two new stations between the great lakes and the Atlantic. The first will be upon the Congo itself, at the point where the river bends to the north; the second will be in the States of Mouata Yamvo.

—Messrs. Brazza and Ballay will descend the Alima in the transportable steamer which the latter has obtained from Europe, to complete the exploration of the Congo.

—The L’Afrique, in an article on the Sanitary Condition of Africa and the adjacent Isles, says, “Madeira is remarkably healthy, so that it has been for a long time chosen as a sanitarium for consumptives. Malaria is wholly unknown there; dysentery is rare and shows itself only in the epidemic form.”

—Bishop Crowther returned to Lagos, from a six months’ absence on the Upper Nile, just in time for his wife’s prayer, that she might die in his arms, to be answered. She did so, though unconscious of the fact, on the 19th of October last.

Adjai, afterwards Bishop Samuel Crowther, and Asano, afterwards Susanna, his wife, were children of the same tribe, kidnapped, rescued, and landed almost the same time, though not in the same party, at Sierra Leone, and were placed in the same church missionary school. They were married fifty-one years since, in 1829.

—A Kaffir Girl’s Worthy Example. One day a Kaffir girl in South Africa went to a missionary and dropped four sixpences into his hand, saying: “This is your money.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” replied the teacher.

“I do,” she answered; “and I will tell you how. At the public examination you promised a sixpence to any one in the class I was in who would write the best specimen on a slate. I gave in my slate and got the sixpence; but you did not know then that another person wrote that specimen for me. Yesterday you were reading in the church about Zaccheus, who said: ‘If I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.’ I took from you one sixpence, and I bring you back four.”

Sisseton Agency, Dakota Territory.—Mr. Charles Crissey, the agent, in a brief report, says:

There have been built since I came here in 1879 seven new frame houses, and three others finished that were not habitable when I came, besides a number of log houses roofed and floored. A new engine has been procured and put in place for the flour mill, and the building enlarged to double its former capacity. A[76] barn 21×70 feet has been built; the school building repaired, after six years’ use; the old engine converted into a portable saw-mill; and timber for a new church at Good Will sawed out. The people have been supplied with 95 yoke of work cattle, with yokes and chains complete; also with all the plows, wagons, harrows, etc., that they will need for some time.

I have also had thrown upon my care the Brown Earth Indians, formerly living here, 30 families, now 40 miles away, who are trying to get homesteads like white men. They have been supplied with 20 yoke of oxen, 20 wagons, all tools necessary, including portable forge and tools, also carpenters’ tools, and material for a new school-house.

The Drifting Goose Indians have been quietly disposed of and settled at Crow Creek, D. T., after being on my hands ten months.

Three Indians are now talking of building for themselves frame houses as good and large as the one I live in, provided the Government will furnish half the material required.

Our grain is not all threshed yet. From present indications it will reach about 28,000 bushels wheat and 10,000 bushels oats; potatoes, corn, etc., in abundance. I cut down the estimate on flour for this season 25,000 lbs. The Indians now furnish about 70 per cent. of what they eat.

My next step will be to introduce stock raising, by procuring cows and calves for this people.

Washington Territory.—Hon. John McReavy has fitted up a hall at Union City for church purposes, and the people have procured an organ and bell for the same object.

The Clallam Indians at Jamestown, near Dunginess, Washington Territory, have bought a bell for their church, the first church bell in their county, although it has been settled more than twenty years, and has a white population of over five hundred and fifty.

The members of the church at Seabeck, at the close of the services on the first Sabbath in December, presented their pastor, Rev. M. Eells, with a purse containing forty dollars and fifty cents; and the ladies of the place who are not members of the church, presented his wife on Christmas with a box containing articles of clothing worth about thirty dollars.

Two persons at Jamestown were received into our church in December, and two more at S’kokomish in January, all on profession of faith.

Washington, D. C.—The Memorial Church, recently known as the Lincoln Mission, has, as noted in the last Missionary, just blossomed into a church, and begins its life as such in a renovated hall on the corner of Eleventh and R streets. The A. M. A. and the trustees of the Mission decided last fall that the building must be repaired, and the work was so far completed that it was occupied again by the church on the first Sabbath of the new year. The room will seat about 800 people, and with the expenditure of $75 for matting in the aisles, would be very attractive indeed. Mrs. Babcock, city missionary, has opened industrial schools in connection with this church, both for mothers and the younger girls, and proves a great help in the spiritual work of the church.

Raleigh, N. C.—The winter has been unusually severe, and our people are so very poor and unprepared for it that the attendance at church services has been[77] very small. A part of the time it has been so cold and muddy that it was impossible for the people to get about. The Sunday-school numbers 128.

Woodbridge, N. C.—The young folks are wide awake and hard at work. There are three grades in school, the highest studying Mental and Written Arithmetic, Geography, Grammar, History, Physiology, Reading, Writing and Spelling. The school is working as never before. A Band of Truth and Purity has been organized, pledged to be temperate, truthful and chaste, and to observe the rules of good society. It meets weekly in a social way and strictly examines its members.

Macon, Ga.—Some idea both of the sufferings of the poor who could not possibly meet the increased expense, and also of the drafts upon our appropriations for our school work in the South, necessitated by the intensity of the cold, may be gathered from the statement of Mr. Lathrop, of Macon, Ga., when he says: “For a week or more the mercury stood below the freezing point, going down to zero one night, and ranging from 8 to 30 degrees above, most of the time. In some places wood could with difficulty be purchased for $15 per cord by those who had the money.” Pastor Lathrop has opened a library of more than 1,000 volumes, open to all classes at the cost of five cents per month to each member. The cold winter here, as at all points in the South, has materially increased the expense of school and church work, and at the same time hindered its progress.

Atlanta, Ga.—Mr. Francis writes: “I have just come from an Inquiry Meeting, which was attended by forty persons, most of whom give good evidence that they are earnestly seeking the salvation of their souls. We have had less faithful activity in religious matters thus far in our school year than usual, owing to a variety of circumstances, but during this week the attention of very many has been aroused, and we are walking under the shadow of the manifest presence of the Spirit. Quite a number have already given good evidence that they have submitted to Christ, and several now are apparently not far from the kingdom of God. We have a large attendance, there being 102 girls and about 90 boys in the family, and we hope to gather a large harvest for the Master. We shall hold some extra meetings, but do not expect to interfere with regular school work. Thus far the interest is quiet, deep and persuasive among the girls, and we trust will be equally thorough in the other household. Pray that we may have wisdom and fidelity to rightly care for the precious interests at stake.”

Lawrence, Kan.—The last number of the Missionary stated that a young colored man had been put in charge of the Second Congregational Church of Lawrence. He (Rev. H. R. Pickney) reports the outlook of that enterprise as in every way encouraging. Several have been received into the church by letter, and the church has been quickened under the manifest presence of the Spirit in connection with a series of meetings, in which Brother Markham aided the pastor.

Chattanooga, Tenn.—It has been awfully wet, muddy and cold all the month; the like has not been experienced here for many years. The great suffering among the poor for the want of food, fuel, clothing and shelter to keep them from the terribly cold weather, was fearful. It rained steadily through the week of prayer, and we were able to have meeting only one night.

Nashville, Tenn.—During the present term, a deep religious interest has obtained among the students in Jubilee Hall. It began soon after the opening of the fall term. New students, especially, seemed to be deeply interested in their[78] own spiritual welfare, and when the opportunity presented itself, offered themselves for prayers.

The week set apart by the International College Y. M. C. A. for prayer was observed by the members of the association in the Institution, in a half-hour prayer-meeting each evening. During that week several persons were hopefully converted. The meetings were afterward continued. Up to the time of writing fourteen students have made a profession of their faith in Christ, and others are inquiring.

The day of prayer for colleges was a good one. Several of the students are doing good work among their people in this vicinity, preaching where there is opportunity and holding prayer-meetings in private houses, so far as they can without interference with their studies, and with good effect both upon the people, and upon themselves as looking forward to their future work.

Flatonia, Texas.—A set of outline maps is needed for the school. Can anyone furnish a second-hand set?

Selma, Ala.—Rev. C. B. Curtis writes that he has been very busy holding meetings every night since the beginning of the week of prayer. He has been assisted by his brother from Marion and by Rev. Mr. Hinman, of Oberlin. Thus far there have been six conversions, a great many inquirers, and a great reviving of the members of the church.

Memphis, Tenn.—Through the kindness of Judge J. O. Pierce, the cabinet of Le Moyne Normal School has just been increased by the addition of a fine collection of minerals and fossils, numbering some hundreds of unusually fine specimens. A very interesting feature of the institution, added this season, is an experimental kitchen in which practical cookery is taught to the girls of the school. Besides this, classes are trained in needlework, etc., a room having been fitted up for this especial purpose.

MRS. T. N. CHASE, ATLANTA.

During the past three months so many such cheering, cordial messages have come in response to that October call, that I’m sure they have a mission to other hearts as well as mine.

Before ever the October Missionary reached my eyes, came this message from a tried veteran in the field who frequents the New York office: “I think myself fortunate in seeing the advance sheets of the Missionary, and in getting the first taste of your appeal; I think it my privilege to be the first to respond. Save me a light and cheery room, to be named my daughter.”

A few days later came the following from one who has made thousands of hearts glad during the past two years.

“I have just finished reading your letter in the October Missionary, and as I closed, proposed to my wife that we each respond with $25. She, good, dear wife that she is, at once assented, and enclosed I send you my check for $50.”

Next came an inquiry from one who had “just read” the appeal. He had furnished a room ten years before in memory of a brother, and now begged the privilege of naming another for a sainted sister. His consideration for others that made him fear the furnishing of two rooms was too great a privilege to be granted to one, made us question[80] whether the millennium had not really begun.

Later comes a check, and “The money is the gift of the Sunday-school, and they desire to have the room named for our old pastor,——-, who was one of the early abolitionists, and lived to see the slave made free. We feel it would give him pleasure could he know that we remembered him in this way.”

Again from the Ladies’ Department of a Classical School “way down in Maine.” “We number fifteen girls in our home, and are—some of us, at least—trying to work for the same Master as you in your Southern home. We bring our money regularly to our meetings, and soon expect to send you the money to fit up a room for some girl who shall in the future do good work.”

Still later, “Another of my dear Sunday-school scholars, a young lady of twenty, for whom I’ve labored, prayed and trembled for many long months, has been ‘born again.’ She is radiant with the new love in her soul, and when I think how long she was indifferent to all His entreaties, and know what an unsatisfactory life she was leading. I cannot thank and praise Him enough who has so transformed her. And so with the ‘song of thanksgiving’ on my lips I offer to Him through you this memorial of love and gratitude. Appropriate it, if you please, to the furnishing of a room in the new wing. Name it for me, if you choose, but know assuredly it will henceforth be to me a ‘Peniel.’”

But I must not weary you with extracts. The unwritten history of other gifts will doubtless touch our hearts even more deeply when revealed in the light of the Bright Hereafter.

Over 80 girls have already filled the new rooms. Next year it is hoped still another addition will be made. If so, writing another begging letter will be no burden while the memory of such prompt and delightful responses remains.

MISS EMMA R. CAUGHEY, MOBILE.

Emerson Institute, formerly occupying Blue College, which was burned in 1876, is now in the third year of its progress and growth, the present school building being dedicated in May, 1878.

During the years 1876-1878 the work never ceased; the workers having put their hands to the plow did not look back nor abandon the labor to which they had consecrated themselves. Under many difficulties and discouragements the school did not wholly lose its organization. For a time after the fire a small church opened its doors for its accommodation. It was afterward removed to a little corner grocery, which was secured and made as inviting as possible. The third removal was to rooms in the present “Mission Home.” Now we rejoice in a comfortable and convenient brick building, in a very pleasant part of the city, in the midst of a grove of pine and live-oak trees. This present year our work has been assuming new proportions, which, although a cause for great encouragement, involved us in new difficulties. Early in the year, for lack of room, we were obliged to refuse forty or fifty pupils admission to the intermediate and primary grades. In the course of a few weeks the A. M. A. sent us another teacher, and a new department was at once formed. But where should it find a home? Our walls would not expand. Again the basement room of a church near by furnished a haven, and the primary department, numbering between seventy and eighty, has been receiving instruction there. In the meantime, arrangements have been made for the removal of our own Congregational church from its old site to a place by the side of our school building, where it will be fitted up to answer the double[81] purpose of chapel and schoolroom; and the primary department will find more commodious and convenient quarters, and hope, in the course of a few weeks. Up to this time we have had enrolled 300 pupils, under the instruction of six teachers, two of whom are teachers in the Normal room, so that the pupils must all be seated in four different rooms.

Many friends from the North have been generous to us this year, and we wish to acknowledge their kind donations and express our hearty appreciation of their gifts through the columns of the Missionary. The cow purchased with money received by Miss Boynton from various friends at the North, has been a great luxury and comfort to us at the Home.

One five-dollar bill given to Miss Boynton, designed especially for table use, provided us with various essential articles: jelly cups being exchanged for drinking glasses, a needed coffee-pot, tea-pot, cups, saucers, etc. A set of silver teaspoons helped to supply a deficiency. Sheets, pillowslips and towels replaced worn out articles of prime necessity. Thus, while our personal wants have been so thoughtfully provided for, other friends have generously remembered the poor and needy Freedmen among whom we labor, very many of whom are suffering for the necessities of life. Within a week two well-filled boxes of good second-hand clothing came to Rev. O. D. Crawford, forwarded to him by friends in Dubuque and Waterloo, Iowa, the distribution of which has called forth tears of gratitude, and invoked blessings on the heads of the donors from many a poverty-stricken soul. I would that space permitted me to depict some of the distressing needs of the poor right at our own door, that the generous heart of the North might be opened to relieve. I shall hope to avail myself of a future opportunity to give a more minute account of our work, its growing needs and opportunities.

Miss Koons, of Tougaloo, Miss., relates the following interesting narrative:

Two of our young men, brothers, were converted last fall term. Their step-father was a hard drinker; their mother not a Christian. When they returned from their Christmas vacation, one of them, greatly troubled, told me what an unpleasant vacation they had had, so much so, that he felt as if he could not stay, but must come back to us. The step-father was drunk continually, and kept about him other drunken associates, abused the mother, and by his conduct so grieved the boys that they felt they could not endure it.

They went home in June and took charge of the farm. They held a little prayer-meeting every Wednesday evening and Sunday morning with the mother and step-father. They also went together to the house of a near neighbor—a terribly wicked man—and held a prayer-meeting with the family every Sunday afternoon. The story of the Prodigal Son was the means of the conversion of one of the brothers, and some weeks after his conversion he came in to ask where it might be found in the Bible, saying, “I have been hunting for it for two weeks, and can’t find it.” He says now, “I often read the Bible to my mother, and explained to her that story of the Prodigal Son, to the best of my knowledge.” During the summer the mother was converted, afterward the step-father, and then the neighbor for whom and with whom the boys had been praying. His face was of joy as he told of the conversion of his mother, who “could not bear the thought of her boys going one way and she another,” and he exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Koons, our home is a different place now!”

Both the boys were at work in the Sabbath-school—one at home and the other some miles from home, and neither[82] one missed a Sabbath from June to the time of their return to us in November.

I hardly need tell you that they are not among the silent members of our weekly prayer-meetings.

MISS ALICE E. CARTER, NASHVILLE.

My method of work probably does not bear the merit of originality, yet the work itself holds for me all the charm and freshness of novelty. Day by day draws me closer to the hearts of the people; day by day draws us together closer to that universal Heart, nearer to the Christ whom we try to serve.

To make a beginning of visiting seemed at first a puzzling and almost perilous matter. To attempt the mazes of the city—alleys where one cabin differed from another cabin only in its greater or less dilapidation without, and squalor within; to hazard a walk across the common and bottoms through the almost impassable mud, were equally difficult beginnings, and yet it is in these city alleys and in the bottoms and commons outside the city limits that the work is waiting—a harvest too great for the few laborers.

There were many ways, I soon learned, to make entrance to the homes of the people. The halloo at the gate would immediately bring the loud “come in,” and a simple excuse, as a wish to warm or rest, or to inquire where such a cabin might be, would gain for me a ready welcome. Then, with a few minutes’ chatting and close observation, it would be an easy matter to detect the special need there.

At first I chose for my visits only the cabins, or, in the parlance of the people, the shanties, but, as my work has widened, I have often learned of need and suffering in many a “frame house,” or “little brick.” Indeed, it seems as if the difference between those in the cabin and those in the frame house and the little brick lies here: the former have never tried to get above their wretched poverty; the latter have tried, and, with a measure of success, still remain poor. Those in the cabins need everything—food and clothing primarily, no doubt; but of paramount importance are their other needs, viz., to be elevated from their sloth and indolence and licentiousness by the forces of education and religion. Those in the frame house and little brick need encouragement in the path already chosen.

I was asked to visit one day in a neat brick cottage which I should have passed many times with no suspicion of need within. On entering, the first thing that attracted my attention was that the walls and ceiling were entirely unfinished; the walls were the bare bricks, and overhead were the flooring beams, and, where the walls and ceiling met, were wide open spaces for the wind to sift up from under the eaves. The inmates were a colored woman, unfitted for work by age and rheumatism, and her daughter; the daughter was her widowed mother’s only dependence, yet the poor girl was lying sick with pneumonia, and had been two weeks without medical treatment. They had no money, but pride kept them reticent of their affairs. To provide medicines, and later, little delicacies; to visit the sick girl every day and sometimes twice a day was my care for three weeks. She is now well again, and they are independent.

I have made, up to December 31, one hundred and twenty-five calls, and have succeeded in relieving some suffering with gifts of fuel and food, although the little accomplished in that direction is as one drop in the sea.

From barrels of clothing received from the North I have sold and given a great many garments; have oftener sold, because it seems always wiser, although the prices may be ridiculously small. This money helps me to purchase[83] medicine for the many sick persons. Let me add here, that with homeopathic remedies I have had most flattering success, always preparing the medicines myself, and carefully renewing them until the patients, without exception so far, are cured.

In addition to my visits, I have tried to reach the women by means of cabin prayer-meetings, and to help the girls and young women by the medium of sewing-schools. I have two schools in successful operation in different parts of the city. One numbers twenty pupils, the other nearly forty. We begin with prayer and short Scripture reading, and then with great eagerness the girls set about their sewing, or lesson in cutting, as the case may be. When a garment is finished, each girl purchases her own work for a dime or fifteen cents.

While they sew I read to them, if occasion permits, and sometimes they sing. They have begged to meet twice a week—a fact which proves their enthusiasm. My kind friends in Boston and Providence have done much toward supplying me with print, gingham and cotton cloth for my sewing-schools.

In Sunday-school work I have succeeded in drawing some strangers into my own class at Howard Chapel, and in forming some other classes for volunteer teachers from Jubilee Hall.

The origin of this church, back in the dark days of terror, in 1868, was so unique, so spontaneous, so much after the spirit and form of the New Testament Churches, that we think it worth while to make some record of the same. At that time the colored people were indeed “scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.” Separated from the old church edifices of the white people, they had not yet gathered themselves into their own churches. A Mr. Smith, from Illinois, who had gone through the war as a soldier, and who had settled in mercantile business in Jefferson, Texas, and whose life was soon after sacrificed in the turbulence of those times, came up through Paris lecturing to the colored people. He proposed a church that would accommodate all the Christians, and the result was the organization above named, with a regular constitution and covenant. Its preamble reads thus:

“We, the ministers and members of different Christian churches, feeling greatly embarrassed in our former church relations, and regarding those matters of difference which divided the churches to which we have belonged as being unimportant, mischievous in their tendency, and in discordance with the spirit of Christianity, do now, on this 15th day of March, 1868, unite in a new organization, the African Congregational Church. Thankful to God, our gracious and mighty Redeemer, for this right and privilege of choosing and adopting our own church forms, ceremonies, and government, and of worshiping God as our conscience dictates, we hereby solemnly pledge ourselves to God and to one another that we will maintain a Scriptural Christian character, and support such laws and regulations founded on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as shall be adopted from time to time by two-thirds of the members of this church.”

The Constitution provides in the five articles for the election of “discreet and faithful members” as trustees, deacons, a clerk and treasurer, who shall pay out money only by vote of the church upon an order from the clerk; for the use of either one of the three modes of baptism; and for the choosing of ministers, “who shall preside over all the deliberations of the church;” a Scriptural plurality of preaching elders, a “presbytery” in, and not over the church.

Not being acquainted with the technical[84] term of “covenant,” they bind themselves by five articles of “Church Fellowship.” The first requires evidence of a Christian experience; not stopping with the fact, of which they were not aware, that Congregationalism was, at first, a protest against receiving unregenerate members into the church, they go back to Acts xx., 20, 21. The third reads: “That, trusting in the promised grace of God, we will not indulge in our hearts, nor practice, any of these manifest works of the flesh” (see Gal. v., 20, 21); example: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, etc. The fourth binds them to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. v., 22, 23). In the fifth they bind themselves to obey the Scriptures (1 Thess. v., 11, 12), “by studying to be quiet in doing our own business, working with our own hands, walking honestly toward them that are without;” and also to discharge faithfully their Christian duties as subjects of civil law and authority in obedience to God (Rom. xii., 1, 2).

Here is the way by which, for lack of a council (of which they knew nothing), and for lack of authority this side of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they had taken as the Head of their Church, they ordained their first presiding pastor:

“Resolved, That we, the members of this church, in conference assembled, do call, set apart, and ordain our well-beloved brother, John McAdams, as the pastor of the church, to minister to us in spiritual things as the minister of the Gospel; that we hereby authorize our said well-beloved brother to administer the ordinances of baptism and the holy sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and to solemnize the rite of matrimony in accordance with the laws of this State; and that our well-beloved brother be furnished with a certified copy of this resolution.”

Four years later the church called to its aid Rev. Warren Norton, a Congregational minister then at Brenham, Texas, in ordaining brothers Albert Gray and Wm. Hamilton as their ministers in the Lord. And this last fall I was permitted to participate in a regular council for the ordination of Mr. J. W. Roberts as pastor in that same church, and of Mr. J. W. Strong as a pastor for the church in Corpus Christi. We had a sermon and all the other parts, including the solemn laying on of hands in prayer; but still we were only helping the church in a function which, in the first place, it exercised alone with a beautiful simplicity and all legitimate authority.

How has the church gotten along? Why, it ran up to a large membership. It paid $115 in gold for a lot, and built a church. It branched out into the Shiloh, the New Hope, and the Pattonville African Congregational churches, in neighborhoods about, and these four became associated in a quarterly conference. But, as the propagandists came along, they found in the walls of the mother church stones with old inscriptions. Baptists, African M. E., Campbellite, Northern M. E., and each pulled out his own and set up churches of those several sorts, so that now the original church building is the shabbiest of the lot, and the membership is only an average. But still, with a high standing for character, with an educated minister, and an educated teacher, Prof. S. W. White, with a new and more respectable site, purchased, with the old acre and a half to be sold, and with some members of property (two of them large farmers) and of influence in the community, they give promise of great usefulness, promise of realizing the expectations of the martyr founder.

A clergyman on his way to a missionary meeting overtook a boy, and asked him about the road, and where he was going.

“Oh!” he said, “I’m going to the meeting to hear about the missionaries.”

“Missionaries!” said the minister. “What do you know about missionaries?”

“Why,” said the boy, “I’m part of the concern. I’ve got a missionary-box, and I always go to the missionary meeting. I belong.”

Now that is what we want. Every child should feel that he is “part of the concern,” and that his work is just as important as that of any one else. Linch-pins are little things; but, if they drop out, the wagon is very likely to come to a stand-still. Every pin and screw should be in working order, and every child should be able to say, “I always go to the missionary meeting. Why, I’m part of the concern!”—Exchange.