Part 2

But left alone, without outside aid, they will be compelled to work for their daily bread, and for them their school days will have forever passed. Is it not worth while to say to these young men: “Come back to the University, and the Christian benevolence of the North will see you through one, two or three years more of study, and then we shall claim you for the college, for the church, and for the work of God. Henceforth you are not your own, but must go wherever God shall call you, and stand in the forefront of every great and good movement for the elevation of your race.”

To-day, if a worthy Christian young man or woman appeals to us, “Can you not aid me to keep on in my studies?” our answer is a sorrowful one, “There is no fund that can be appropriated to that purpose.” Will not good men think of this and make a grand possibility of good a fact gloriously realized?

W. S. ALEXANDER.

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A STRONG APPEAL.

We present below a forcible appeal for student aid. Such aid is essential, and the question of obtaining it in sufficient amount to meet the demand lies at the bottom of the whole possibility of educating the colored youth of the South. If scholarships and educational funds are important to the white students of the North, how much more to the colored students at the South, where employment is so poorly paid, and the money so hard to be collected when earned! This appeal is but a sample of the cry that comes from all our institutions—Atlanta, Talladega, Tougaloo, New Orleans, and the rest. An illustration may be seen in the foregoing article by Rev. W. S. Alexander, President of Straight University.

But we must warn our patrons not to divert their contributions from our ordinary work to this special object, for if this is done, we might as well furnish this student help directly from our treasury. Then where would be the money to sustain the teachers?—and _they must be sustained_, or the schools closed. The only solution of the problem is for the friends of the Freedmen to enlarge their contributions to meet both wants. We most importunately urge our patrons not to starve the teacher in order to aid the scholar, but help both.

What Shall We Do?

Will a goodly number of the readers of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY tell us?

The case can be best set forth by giving a single illustration. On the Saturday evening preceding the Monday on which the new school year of Fisk University was to begin, a young man was brought to my room by one of our former students, who introduced him as being from Montgomery, Alabama. I found on inquiry, and from a letter which he brought from a prominent colored man of that city, that he had determined to get an education, and having but little money, had made up his mind to walk from Montgomery to Nashville, a distance of three hundred miles, with the hope of finding some way by which he might be admitted as a student in Fisk University. Fortunately, a prominent citizen of Montgomery was able to secure him a pass on the railroad, one hundred miles, to Birmingham, and a student of Fisk University who happened to meet him at Columbia, Tenn., used the little spare money he had in his pocket to help him on his way twenty miles toward Nashville.

What do the friends of education among the colored people of the South wish us to do with such cases? The University has no means of its own with which to help such young people, and this instance is but an illustration of very many similar cases which we are compelled to decide every year.

From the correspondence of teachers, and through the cases known personally by the comparatively few of our old students who have already returned from their summer’s work, we could number up to-day, which is only the fourth day after the opening of the school, at least forty instances of young men and young women of known character and ability who are eager and anxious to come to Fisk University to fit themselves for teaching and other Christian work among their people, who cannot come because they have not and cannot get sufficient money. The number will be doubled by the time this article reaches our friends through the AMERICAN MISSIONARY. In many cases they can pay from five to seven dollars of the twelve dollars a month required for their board and tuition. We find from actual experience that an average of fifty dollars will help at least one such struggling student to support for a year in Fisk University. The balance and the money necessary to purchase books they can generally provide for themselves. We ask the readers of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY what we shall do with these cases. Any one who will send us a thousand dollars will answer the question for at least twenty. Every fifty dollars will give the answer in the case of one. Our hearts ache when we are compelled to refuse, for the want of money, these eager applications. Every one who has an answer to give us can send it to H. W. Hubbard, Assistant Treasurer of the American Missionary Association at New York—and we know the answer will suffer no long delay in his hands—or to E. P. Gilbert, Assistant Treasurer of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. All students helped will in due time communicate by letter with those who thus befriend them.

Will not every individual or Sabbath-school that contributed last year to help aid students continue that help for the coming year, and give us the earliest possible information of such intention?

E. M. CRAVATH, _Pres. Fisk University_.

THE LANGUAGE OF EQUATORIAL AFRICA.

Great interest has been awakened in the geographical discoveries that have been made in Central Equatorial Africa during the last twenty-five years. This vast and newly-explored country is no doubt the choicest portion of the whole African continent. The inhabitants, with the exception of a few mixed tribes along its outer borders, all belong to one great family. A line starting from the Cameroon Mountains on the western coast, second degree north latitude, and drawn, with some slight variations, directly across the continent to the same degree of latitude on the east coast, divides the negro race into two distinct families, perhaps of nearly equal size. The one, occupying the country north of this line to the southern borders of the Great Desert, is known as the Nigritian stock, from the fact that they are to be found mainly in the valley of the Niger. The other, and the one to which our article mainly refers, is known as the Ethiopian or Nilotic family, from its supposed descent from the ancient Ethiopians, whose chief residence was the banks of the Nile.

One general language, with great divergence as to dialects, prevails over this whole region of country. There are not only verbal resemblances, but there is a peculiar grammatical structure, scarcely known to any other language, that pervades and characterizes all the dialects of this one great family. A very large number of words are common to the Mpongwe dialect on the west coast, and the Swahili on the east, as may be seen from a grammar of the Mpongwe, published by the missionaries at the Gaboon years ago. If the words used by three or four tribes along the coast of Southern Guinea could be fully collated, they would be found to contain not less, perhaps, than four-fifths of all the words used over the whole of this vast region.

But apart from these verbal resemblances, there are certain features of orthography that establish the relationship between these dialects quite as clearly. To mention no others, the use of _m_ and _n_—as if they were preceded by a sort of half-vowel sound—before certain other consonants, at the beginning of words, is very peculiar. _M_ is constantly used before b, p, t, and w, as in the words _mbolo_, _mpolu_, _mtesa_, and _mwera_. So _n_ is constantly used before k, t, y, and gw, as in the words _nkala_, _ntondo_, _nyassa_, and _ngwe_. The combination of _ny_ occurs in the names of most of the great lakes, as _Nyassa_, _Nyanza_, and _Tanganyika_. A still more striking feature of relationship between these dialects may be found in the combinations by which proper names are formed. The names of a large proportion of the tribes encountered by Stanley and Cameron on their journeys across the continent commence with the letter _u_, as _Uganda_, _Unyoro_, and _Ujiji_, &c. Now, by prefixing _ma_, and dropping the initial _u_, we have _Maganda_, a person or citizen of _Uganda_; _Manyoro_, a person or citizen of _Unyoro_. So by prefixing _wa_ instead of _ma_, we get _Waganda_, they, or the people of _Uganda_. Now, in the Mpongwe dialect, _ma_ is simply a contraction of _oma_, person, and _wa_ or _wao_ is the personal pronoun for _they_, showing how these proper names are formed. Again, many of the names of these tribes terminate in _ana_. _Ana_, in the Mpongwe dialect, is an abbreviation of _awana_, children or descendants. If the names of Bechuana and Wangana could be analyzed, they would be found to mean the children or descendants of _Bechu_ or _Wanga_, this being the way of giving names to any particular family that separates itself from the parent stock.

But the peculiar character of this language is more remarkable than its wide diffusion. Taking the Mpongwe dialect as a specimen, we have no hesitation in saying that it will be difficult to find any language, ancient or modern, that is more systematic or philosophical in its general arrangements, more marked in the classification of its different parts of speech or their relationship to each other, or in the extent of its inflections, especially those of the verb. The existence of such a language among an uncultivated people is simply a marvel. As many as three hundred oblique forms can be derived from the root of every regular Mpongwe verb, each one of which will have a clear and distinct shade of meaning of its own, and yet so regular and systematic in all its inflections, that a practiced philologist could, after a few hours’ study, trace up any of even its most remote forms to the original root. It is not intended to convey the idea that all these forms are habitually used, for that would indicate a much more extended vocabulary than could reasonably be expected among an uncultivated people. But there is no form of the verb, notwithstanding its extensive ramifications, that would not be distinctly understood by an audience, even if they had never heard it used before.

It will be seen, therefore, that the vocabulary may be expanded to an almost unlimited extent. It is not only expansible, but it has a wonderful capacity for conveying new ideas. The missionaries laboring among these people, after they had acquired a thorough knowledge of the structure of this wonderful language, were surprised to find with how much ease they could use it to convey religious ideas. In their native state the people had no knowledge of the Christian religion, and, of course, used no terms for saviour or salvation, for redeemer or redemption, etc. They had, however, the terms _sunga_, to save, and _danduna_, to redeem, or pay a ransom. Now, according to a well established law of grammar, _ozunge_ is a saviour, and _isungina_ is salvation; similarly from _danduna_ comes _olandune_, the redeemer, and _ilanduna_, redemption:—so that they could at once get a tolerably correct idea of these terms, and there was no need (as there is in most unwritten languages) to call in the aid of foreign words. Without multiplying illustrations of a similar character, it will be seen that the language is not only flexible and expansive to a very remarkable degree, but is suitable beyond almost any other known language to convey religious instruction to the minds of the people. It has been preserved, no doubt, by a wise Providence for this very purpose.

The providence of God towards this great family, therefore, seems to be very marked and significant. They have been preserved for centuries in great numbers and vigorous manhood, notwithstanding their perpetual intestine strifes and the cruel desolations that have been occasioned by the slave trade, along both their eastern and western borders. They are in possession of a country that is not only healthful and productive, but whose navigable streams seem to have been traced out by the finger of Divine Providence for the twofold purpose of facilitating intercommunication among the people themselves, and of furthering the rapid diffusion of the Gospel wherever it has once gained a footing. Then their language, with all its wonderful characteristics, seems to have been kept by the Divine hand as an easy channel through which the light and blessings of the Gospel might, in God’s own good time, reach their dark and benighted minds.

J. LEIGHTON WILSON, in _The Catholic Presbyterian_.

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A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY.

BY MRS. H. G. GUINESS.

A wealthy farmer who cultivated some thousands of acres, had, by his benevolence, endeared himself greatly to his large staff of laborers. He had occasion to leave the country in which his property was situated, for some years; but, before doing so, he gave his people clearly to understand that he wished the whole of the cultivated land to be kept in hand, and all the unclaimed marsh lands to be enclosed and drained, and brought into cultivation—that even the hills were to be terraced, and the poor mountain pastures manured—so that no single corner of the estate should remain neglected and barren. Ample resources were left for the execution of these works, and there were sufficient hands to have accomplished the whole within the first few years of the proprietor’s absence.

He was detained in the country to which he had been called very many years. Those whom he left children were men and women when he came back, and so the number of his tenantry and laborers was vastly multiplied. Was the task he had given them to do accomplished? Alas! no. Bog and moor and mountain waste were only wilder and more desolate than ever. Fine rich virgin soil, by thousands of acres, was bearing only briars and thistles. Meadow after meadow was utterly barren for want of culture; nay, by far the larger part of the farm seemed never to have been visited by his servants.

Had they been idle? Some had, but large numbers had been industrious enough. They had expended a vast amount of labor, and skilled labor, too; but they had bestowed it all on the park immediately around the house. This had been cultivated to such a pitch of perfection that the workmen had scores of times quarreled with each other, because the operations of one interfered with his neighbor. And a vast amount of labor, too, had been lost in sowing the same patch—for instance, with corn fifty times over in one season, so that the seed never had time to germinate and grow and bear fruit; in caring for the forest trees as if they had been tender saplings; in manuring soils already too fat, and watering pastures already too wet. The farmer was positively astonished at the misplaced ingenuity with which labor and seed and manure, skill and time and strength, had been wasted for no result. The very same amount of toil and capital expended according to his directions, would have brought the whole demesne into culture, and yielded a noble revenue. But season after season had rolled away in sad succession, leaving those unbounded areas of various but all reclaimable soil, barren and useless; and, as to the park, it would have been far more productive and perfect had it been relieved of the extraordinary and unaccountable amount of energy expended on it.

Why did these laborers act so absurdly? Did they wish to labor in vain? On the contrary, they were forever craving for fruit, coveting good crops, longing for great results. Did they not wish to carry out the farmer’s views about his property? Well, they seemed to have that desire, for they were always reading the directions he wrote, and said continually to each other, “You know we have to bring the whole property into order;” but they did not do it. Some few tried, and ploughed up a little plot here and there, and sowed corn and other crops. Perhaps these failed, and so the rest got discouraged. Oh no! the yield was magnificent; far richer in proportion than they got themselves. They clearly perceived that, but yet they failed to follow a good example. Nay, when the labors of a few, in some distant valley, had resulted in a crop they were all unable to gather in by themselves, the others would not even go and help them to bring home the sheaves. They preferred watching for weeds among the roses in the overcrowded garden, and counting the blades of grass in the park and the leaves on the trees.

Then they were fools, surely, not wise men?—traitors, not true servants to their lord?

Oh! I can’t tell! You must ask him that. I only know that the Master said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” And eighteen hundred and seventy-seven years after they had not even mentioned that there was a Gospel to one-half of the world!—_China’s Millions_.

ITEMS FROM THE FIELD.

MEMPHIS, TENN.—Thus far, during the epidemic of this year, none of the scholars of the Le Moyne Institute and none of the members of the Second Congregational Church (colored) have suffered.

ATLANTA, GA.—The Storrs School was opened on the first of September, with 250 scholars, under the continued principalship of Miss Amy Williams, who is assisted by Misses Abby Clark, Julia Goodwin, Amelia Ferris and F. J. Morris. Miss M. E. Stevenson has been transferred from the position of a teacher to that of lady missionary for the city, representing the ladies of the two churches of Oberlin.

BRUNSWICK, GA.—Mr. Morse writes: “My school has been free the entire year. We have averaged over ninety for the year of ten months. I think many have been made wiser and better. Some have connected themselves with the churches there. We are having a season of great Christian interest in the Congregational Church of this city, under Brother Clarke’s care. Two of our Sunday-school scholars, and now supernumerary teachers, have given their hearts to the Saviour. Our hope is the schools; take them away and I would not give anything for Congregationalism among the colored people. I had no idea of touching this matter when I began to write.”

MACON, GA.—Rev. S. E. Lathrop, who has been at Atlanta for three months, running down to supply his church meantime, in a private letter, describes a day of work as follows:

“Brother Young wrote me from Byron to come down there and baptize some candidates for him. In the morning I went out from Macon (seventeen miles by rail), rode three miles from the church to the creek in a lumber wagon with fourteen _other_ colored folks, getting caught in a shower on the way. Arrived at a grist-mill, in which I changed clothes (preparing for immersion), with the flour-dust half an inch deep everywhere. Waded into the creek and immersed four candidates, three men and one woman, all of whom behaved excellently well, without any shouting or gymnastics; the seal of _sprinkling_ being set upon us by another sudden shower just as we came out of the water. Rode back to the church, preached, administered communion, received the four persons to membership, and baptized an infant. Had just time for a good dinner of ‘chicken fixins,’ and took the train back to Macon, arriving at six p. m. of a close, sultry day. Walked one and a half miles and back through the sweltering heat, to see a sick girl who wants to join our church. Got back just in time for evening service, and preached. Came back here yesterday, and have felt ‘bunged up’ ever since.”

NO. 1 MILLER’S STATION, GA.—“On the 27th of August, one of the members of this church died; or, perhaps, I should express it better if I said he fell asleep—for it seemed more like sleep than death. The brother had not been a member of the church for one year yet; but all who saw him before his death felt sure that he was a saved man. He was over 76 years of age, and was one of those who had left off drinking since I came here. He was so determined on leaving it off that he would not take the communion with us the last time he was present at our services. He said he was afraid it would lead him to rum drinking again. In his case was shown the power of the Gospel. He had lived in sin for 75 years; yet, by the grace of God, and the power of His word, he was set free from the power of Satan. During his short Christian life he was kept from the sin of strong drink, and when he died he went to live with Jesus. A few hours before his death he said to me: ‘All I want now is to see my dear Jesus; I have given up all for His sake; do, blessed Jesus, come and take me when you are ready.’”

“THE FIRST COMMENCEMENT ON THE OGEECHEE” is the way in which Pastor McLean, of Ga., announces the closing exercises of his parish school. Never before had those rice swamps caught the echoes of the children’s eloquence. In the twenty-eight orations and two dialogues there was not a failure. And when the fathers and mothers had a chance to express their gratitude, it was a burst of “God bless you, brother.” Best of all, of the ninety-five who have been connected with the school during the year, twenty-five have become the disciples of the Great Master since the school was opened.

TALLADEGA, ALA.—The Catalogue of the College for the last year reports 214 students in all the departments. This number includes the dozen theological students who have been under the training of Prof. G. W. Andrews. Their names are Andrew J. Headen, P. W. Young and W. S. Williams, who were graduated this year; and also these, who are to study one year more, though they have all been licensed, J. B. Grant, Byron Gunner, John W. Strong, John R. Sims, Yancy B. Sims, J. W. Roberts, H. W. Conley and Spencer Snell.

LAWSONVILLE, ALA.—While the people of this place are engaged in building a church, they are enjoying a season of revival under their Talladega minister, Rev. J. W. Strong.

MT. SPRING, ALA.—Rev. Alfred Jones, of Childersburg, having preached a week at the out-station, Mt. Spring, was permitted to rejoice in the conversion of fourteen persons. A half dozen have also united with his church at home upon profession.

THE COVE, ALA.—Rev. J. B. Grant has been assisted at this place by his fellow theologues, Y. B. Sim, T. T. Benson, J. R. Sims, and by Rev. P. J. McEntosh, in a series of meetings which have resulted in great good.

NEW ORLEANS, LA.—Rev. D. L. Mitchel, who is in charge of the Presbyterian Book Depository in this city, is supplying the Central Church (Rev. W. S. Alexander’s) during the summer vacation. He writes thus under a recent date: “The congregation is quite regular in attendance, about seventy, and the attention is excellent. The prayer meetings are also well attended, and the spiritual condition steadily improving. I think this one of the most important fields in the South, and one of the most hopeful. May the blessing of our heavenly Father abide with your corps of Christian workers and give them abundant success in their self-denying labors.”

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GENERAL NOTES.

The Freedmen.

—Of 142 cases of yellow fever reported at Memphis during the week, August 18th to 24th, 79 were of colored people—about one-half. About three-eighths of the total population are colored.

—Among the colored refugees in Kansas is an entire Baptist church of 300 persons led by the pastor and deacons. They were from Delta, La.

—Sojourner Truth, the famous colored woman, who is now 103 years old, is at Chicago, en route to Kansas, to make a study of the colored exodus.

—Governor St. John, of Kansas, believes that the colored exodus has only begun; that it is not unlikely that it will soon re-open, and reach to hundreds of thousands in its numbers.