Part 3

—In the coming fall, twenty more girls will be added to the number of Indian students at Hampton. Their due proportion is regarded as essential to the success and value of the effort. When the Indian prisoners from St. Augustine returned to the Territory, and their wives and families turned out to welcome them home with rejoicing, the long dreamed of meeting proved such a shock to the reconstructed braves that some of them broke from the company and ran away to the woods, refusing to have anything more to do with their affectionate but very dirty squaws. The situation was humorous but tragic, and withal very natural. How could they walk “the white man’s road” in such companionship? And how could they walk it alone? The co-education of the Indian boys and girls, with its lessons of mutual respect and helpfulness in the class-rooms and work-rooms, is the hope, and the only hope, of permanent Indian civilization.

—The Secretary of War has turned over to the Department of the Interior the U. S. Army barracks at Carlisle, Penn., to be used for the purpose of Indian education, under charge of Capt. R. H. Pratt, who has been sent West to collect 100 Indian youths for his school, as well as the girls for Hampton. Captain Pratt’s wise, Christian philanthropy toward the Indian prisoners at St. Augustine was the origin of the present movement for Indian education, and has demonstrated his eminent qualifications for the work.

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Africa.

—Mr. Mackay gives most interesting accounts of his intercourse with Mtesa and his chiefs. Every Sunday, after Wilson left, he conducted service at the palace for the king and chiefs, speaking in Suahili without an interpreter, and Mtesa interpreting into the Uganda language for the benefit of those who did not understand Suahili. On Christmas day a special service was held, all the chiefs being in “extra dress,” when Mackay explained the great event of the day. He regards Mtesa as most intelligent, and quite inclined to listen to the word of God. Gratifying instances are mentioned of the influence already exerted upon him. Some Arab traders arrived to buy slaves, offering cloth in exchange, and saying they had come from the Sultan of Zanzibar. Mackay vigorously opposed them, informed the king of the Sultan’s decrees against the slave traffic, and of the cruelties perpetrated upon its victims. Then he gave a lecture on physiology, and asked why such an organism as a human body, which no man could make, should be sold for a rag of cloth which any man could make in a day. The result was not only the rejection of the Arabs’ demand, but a decree forbidding any person in Uganda to sell a slave on pain of death! By another decree Mtesa has forbidden all Sunday labor, and the question of the evils of polygamy has been seriously discussed by him and the chiefs. He was on capital terms with the chiefs, and was teaching numbers of people to read, having made large alphabet sheets for the purpose. He describes the Arab traders as most bitter against the Mission. They are distilling ardent spirits from the plantain, and drunkenness is spreading in consequence.

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THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOS. E. ROY, D. D.,

FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

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PART OF A TOUR THROUGH THE CAROLINAS.

A new administration was to be inaugurated in the Avery Institute. The way was found open, and the new Principal, Rev. S. D. Gaylord, one of the foremost educational managers of the interior, was greeted on the first day, the 29th of September, with an attendance of 258, which was an advance of 40 or 50 upon former opening days. The prospect was for a continued accession through the month. The _News and Courier_ gave a handsome notice. I found that the Avery was an occasion of city pride, not only on the part of colored but of white citizens. The authorities of Claflin University, at Orangeburg, S. C., have visited and complimented the institute, seeking to pattern after some of the methods. Prof. A. W. Farnham, who has been at the head of the Avery for four years, bringing it up to its high standard, will do a like work on a more general scale in the Normal department of Atlanta University. The Plymouth church, during the Summer, under the care of the pastor’s assistant, Rev. Mr. Birney, a former fellow-servant with the members, had been prospering. Under the lead of Rev. Temple Cutler, the church will enter upon a career of enlargement. The new principal and the Field Superintendent preached in the Centennial M. E. and the Zion Southern Presbyterian churches, the largest for the colored people of the city, as well as in the Plymouth. These three churches form the bulk of the constituency of the Avery.

At Orangeburg a repeated visit and a preaching service prepared the way for the coming of the new pastor, Rev. T. T. Benson, a graduate of the Talladega theological department. A pleasant church and a rallying people were ready to greet him.

On the way I stopped off at Chester, S. C., to visit my seminary classmate, Rev. Samuel Loomis, who, in ten and a half years, has gotten under way his “Brainerd Institute,” and has helped to plant nine Presbyterian churches within that county. Blessed is the man who is permitted to lay foundations in that way. At Charlotte, N. C., I ran out to visit the Biddle University, which is the principal collegiate and theological institution of our Northern Presbyterian brethren in the South. Rev. D. S. Mattoon, the president, is supported by Rev. Messrs. R. M. Hall and S. J. Beatty. Rev. Thomas Lawrence, of Penn., is to take the place of Rev. Dr. John H. Shedd, who has returned to his mission work among the Nestorians. The current catalogue shows eight students in theology, twenty-one in the college classes, and a total of 155. This institution is for males alone. Its mate, for females, is Scotia Seminary, at Concord. The glory of the Biddle is, that in these ten years it has planted a whole Presbytery of thirty churches in the region round about, besides raising up teachers and preachers for the regions beyond.

In the back country of Randolph County, N. C., twenty-five miles away from the railroad, I looked up Rev. Islay Walden, a former slave in that region, a recent graduate of New Brunswick Seminary, N. J., who had been ordained by the classis of New Brunswick. The A. M. A. had sent him down to make a field in his native State. The Field Superintendent assisted him in organizing a Congregational Church of thirty members. The ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper were administered. This is in the neighborhood of one of the churches of our antebellum missionary, Rev. Daniel Worth, whom all our colored friends and some of the whites remembered affectionately. His church, a former Wesleyan, has been taken up by the M. E. Church, so that they are well cared for.

We were waited upon by two committees, one from Hill Town, seven miles away, and one from Troy, the county seat of Montgomery, thirty miles off. The former had one man to offer three acres of land and timber in the tree for all the lumber needed for a church school-house, and that man was an ex-slave. The latter committee consisted of three men, who were the trustees of the “Peabody Academy,” whose erection they had secured at Troy. They wanted a teacher and a preacher. Living twelve or eighteen miles away from Troy, they intended to send in their children and have them cared for in a boarding club by an “Aunty.” In token of their good faith, all of them interesting men, they united with our new church, intending to transfer their membership to their own localities when we get ready to organize there. Who could forbid that their requests should be granted? So we organized a circuit for Brother Walden, one Sabbath at Troy, and the other at Salem Church and Hill Town, with one sermon at each place. The Quakers promise a school at Salem. A public school will serve Hill Town for the present, and a competent teacher must be secured for the Academy. It was a delight to witness the pride of the people in their educated _fellow-servant_. Even the old master gloated over the diploma of his “boy.”

Running into McLeansville early this Monday morning, thinking to make it a minister’s rest-day, with only this article and other letters and a sermon for the night on hand, I found the church at the opening of a protracted meeting with the visiting preacher announced for forenoon, afternoon and evening; house crowded all day, with two hundred people in it by count; all remaining with lunch in hand, between the first and second services, and many holding over between the second and third. And this is the habit of the people at such a time. All unnecessary work is put aside and the entire time given up to religious service. This habit they take from that of the white churches, with the exception that the colored people have added the third service. Pastor Connet had held a similar meeting in another part of his field this fall, and yesterday, as a result of it, twelve members were added to this church. One of those converts, an old man, testified, bearing himself with the air of a conqueror: “I have fought the devil, and I’ve got the victory. Jesus helped me. I have fought the devil, and I’ve got the victory.” The meetings are orderly and solemn—congregational, only warmed up by the African glow. The membership now numbers one hundred and fifty-six. Pastor Connet is also superintendent of the school, which is doing a good work in raising up teachers.

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CONTRASTS.

The Past and the Present.

L. A. P.

“Reminiscences” in the October MISSIONARY have recalled a host of buried memories concerning the days of pioneer work, with its swiftly-changing experiences of humor and pathos.

I might draw a picture of the good man who often asked the Lord to “bless these teachers that have left their homes in foreign lands and come a far distance to destruct us;” of the old aunties who came to inquire about friends and old masters in Virginia and the Carolinas, thinking we must know the history of each family, because “didn’t you come right by there on your way down from the North?” of the romances and tragedies connected with the hundreds of letters we wrote inquiring for lost friends, sold away in the days of slavery; but one picture is more vivid than others, and as the days of quaint prayers are rapidly passing, I am tempted to commit it to print.

Almost a dozen years ago, I found myself one of two teachers in a night school varying from forty to sixty pupils. The roughly-ceiled room was long, low and dimly lighted. The scholars were hard-working men and women who walked one, two, three or four miles, after the day’s labor, for the sake of acquiring a bit of book learning. At ten o’clock lessons closed with a Bible reading, singing and prayer.

One evening, after books and slates had been laid aside, my attention was attracted by a voice, liquid and rollicking, as it carolled a popular “spiritual.” In the gray room—for the light wood fire was nearly out, and the two lamps in the rear gave little brightness—it was some time before I distinguished the singer.

He was a jaunty little man, very black, very lithe and very much dressed up. A blue round-a-bout coat was trimmed with two rows of yellow braid; a crimson dress braid made his neck-tie, the long ends of which floated over the shoulders. His hands were folded over a stout walking-stick; his head nodding and feet patting time to the music.

My thoughts instantly went back to childish days, to a certain tree where a golden oriole’s nest used to swing, to a field of red-winged, chattering bobolinks, not one of which ever seemed so deliciously happy in his song as my dusky scholar. I liked to look at him. It put me into communion with friends and influences hundreds of miles beyond the piny woods.

He often spoke and prayed in the regular prayer-meetings. We soon learned the words of his petition, for it was always in the same form, reverently intoned with an indescribable, inimitable cadence:

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as is in heaven. Father, Father—this evening—of all grace, look down upon us and hear us and bless us. O Saviour, come riding around this evening upon the milk-white horse and wake up sinners. Touch and tender about every heart. Teach ’em that they have a soul to be saved or to be lost to all eternity. Bless my old mother. Teach her that she has a soul to be saved or one to be lost to all eternity. Strike her with the hammer of conviction. Shoot her with the arrow of love. Bless families and families’ connections. Give us more grace, more faith, more love. Make us humble. Teach us to pray, and teach us to love it, too. Be our guide and leader and protector. Bless the sinners who are standing with one foot upon the grave and one upon the land of the living.

“Father! Father! when Gabriel shall stand with one foot in the sea and one upon the land to blow his horn, and he shall say, ‘How loud must I sound?’ and Thou say, ‘Sound calm and easy so as not to disturb My children,’ then shall we link and lock our eagle wings to march upward to the golden gate.

“And when You see us fail below, help us to say, ‘Here, Lord, I give myself away, ’tis all that I can do. Welcome dis solisted band and bear my soul away.’ And when You have done suiting and serving Thyself of us here, hand us to our graves in peace, where we shall praise the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a world that never ends, is _my_ prayer for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”

At that time this man was one of the more intelligent of his people.

In contrast, let me introduce a younger man of the same size and color, also endowed with unusual gift of song. Neatly dressed, quietly mannered, he seems no kin to the earlier types of his race.

From under the very shadow of Yazoo he writes these lines: “I have subscribed for the _New York Tribune_. My school numbers 112 pupils, with a daily attendance of 85 or 90. I have Cutter’s Physiology, from which I give oral lessons daily. I will state the studies of my most advanced pupils: Robinson’s Practical Arithmetic, Harvey’s Grammar, Swinton’s Geography and Educational Readers. School closes next Friday with a concert. I do wish you could be with us Thursday and Friday to attend the examinations.”

Lest any one may infer from the above that “the schoolmaster is abroad” in the land, let me quote one sentence of a prayer uttered a few months ago by the pastor of a large church in a leading Southern city: “O Lord, bless us individually and _respectfully_.”

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GEORGIA.

An Economical Industrial Department.

MRS. T. N. CHASE, ATLANTA, GA.

The demand for industrial departments connected with our schools of learning has developed so rapidly of late, that it appears like one of the fever heats of our American civilization that may soon subside.

Friends of the A. M. A. institutions have been specially anxious that their students should learn trades and home industries while at school, fearing that they would have little opportunity to learn them except from their Northern instructors, and thinking that they could be acquired from them outside of school hours without much thought, time or trouble.

On the other hand, some have felt that our immediate, pressing need was young colored men and women with minds developed by long and thorough training in the text-books used in our schools and colleges. They are not ignorant of the students’ deficiencies in practical knowledge, but feel that close and continued application of the mind to books is the best and surest way to acquire all knowledge. They believe that if the brain power of a child is developed, the hoe, the cook-stove and the sewing-machine will be well managed when occasion requires.

Again, these students are to be the teachers of their race in the South. These friends believe that nothing will so quickly convince the intelligent men of the South that the negro has power which they are bound to respect, as to see him well versed, not only in the sciences he teaches, but his mind broadened by a familiarity with subjects beyond. To secure this training, through an ordinary course suitable for an average teacher even in Northern schools, with supposed superior material, has generally been found to require all the time and strength of pupils under 18 years of age. Principals of the different schools, however, differ much both in theory and practice, in regard to combining manual with literary work.

In Atlanta much has been done during the past ten years in a quiet way, by the business manager, matrons and preceptress, toward giving practical instruction in a variety of home industries, making specially prominent the importance of _good_ work. Every student, during the entire course, works an hour a day, generally with careful supervision. While visiting the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst, recently, I learned that less time for manual labor was required of its students.

During the past year, however, at Atlanta, it was thought best to give more time and thought especially to sewing, cooking and care of the sick. How to secure a practical knowledge of these without much expense of material or instruction, and without taking much of the student’s time from literary pursuits, was the problem. The sewing was arranged in this way: Sometime before graduation the girls are required to make, under the eye of the preceptress, a small garment of calico or other inexpensive material. This garment is to contain all the varieties of plain sewing, machine-stitching, hand-hemming, ruffling, etc. More than this, it must have the bugbears of all beginners in sewing—a buttonhole, a patch and a darn. Each girl writes her name in indelible ink on the garment, and it is kept in the institution as a record of her standing in sewing.

In a catalogue I received lately from the hands of the matron of the Mt. Holyoke Seminary are these words: “It is not part of the design of this seminary to teach young ladies domestic work. This branch of education is exceedingly important, but a literary institution is not the place to gain it. Home is the proper place for the daughters of our country to be taught on this subject, and the mother the appropriate teacher.” I think I remember reading the same words from a catalogue twenty years ago, and presume they were first penned by the immortal Mary Lyon. So we hoped the emulation created by the prospect of leaving a beautiful specimen of needle-work upon graduation would inspire our girls to faithful painstaking in sewing at their homes even before entering school. The matron has the graduating class spend their required hour of work in learning to make good bread and to do other plain cooking. When any student is ill, opportunity is given for practical instruction from the preceptress in nursing the sick. In addition to this, the time of one recitation was taken during a part of the year for giving instruction in household science. A teacher prepared talks upon general rules for good housekeeping, general principles of good cooking, care of the sick, care of children, economy, etc. The class took notes, and were examined from their notes before the visiting board at the close of the school. We hoped thus to convince them that we were not educating our girls above the homeliest duties of the household, as some of them had accused us of doing.

I have given these details to show how much may be done in this direction without any additional expense.

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Revival—Work and Results.

S. B. MORSE, SAVANNAH

The Congregational church of this city has been blessed with a visible outpouring of God’s Spirit. Many of our old members have been quickened in their religious feelings and have reconsecrated themselves to their Lord and Saviour. Many who have been lingering and shivering on the brink of doubt, and many, too, who were waiting a plainer manifestation of their acceptance with God by “dreams and travels,” suddenly, as the truth struck them, yielded their ways to _His_ ways, and are now, we trust, walking in accordance not with their own, but with God’s plans.

We had an extra series of meetings for over two weeks, which were well attended by Christians of all denominations. These meetings closed last week. On Sunday morning, September 7th, one was baptized by immersion, and at night five others were by sprinkling. Still another was received who was a fallen member of some other church. Five children were at the same time baptized, after which all those who loved the Lord Jesus, and who wished, met around His sacramental board and feasted with Him. The church was so crowded that many were compelled to stand outside. It was a high day in Israel. Many hearts were gladdened.

Most of those we received were young people. Some of them teachers of our Sabbath-school, and nearly all of them at some time had been under the influence of some good Northern lady teacher. Perhaps those teachers were disheartened and feared that their good seed had fallen upon stony ground, but in this they were deceived. We are too anxious often to see results. God’s logic extends through years, but His conclusions are nevertheless sure and true.

Rev. Floyd Snelson officiated at the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. Bro. Clarke was directly instrumental in bringing about this revival.

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ALABAMA.

Our New Church Building.

REV. WM. H. ASH, FLORENCE

Our new church is getting on nicely. The outside is nearly finished, with the exception of the belfry, which I hope will be done this week. The work has been carried on strictly with reference to economy as well as to the finish, and yet it is so well done that it is simply beautiful. Almost everybody has something to say about the church. One says, “You are going to have a nice church, and your church will be well attended when it is done.” Another says, “This is the greatest thing the colored people ever accomplished in Florence.” I am constantly greeted by my white fellow-citizens with, “You are going to have the only modern church in town;” and they visit the scene of the building to watch the progress of the work and speak friendly of it. A gentleman who lives in Fryar’s Point, Miss., and belongs to one of the first families here, has just asked me to let him look at the plan. He said, “This is going to be a credit to the town.” I have put on a large portion of the first coat of paint myself.

The people have made great sacrifices to build their house of worship. I don’t believe that the same number of members in any church North could have done better with all the discouraging circumstances. They have struggled hard to help themselves, giving when really they needed it at home.

We shall need a bell and pews, also a communion service, and money to buy paint for the finishing of the inside and out. Who wants to help those who help themselves?

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Letter from a Student—Vacation Supply at Mobile.

J. W. ROBERTS, TALLADEGA.

Our protracted meetings lasted during three weeks. The Holy Ghost has given us five souls for our hire; besides He has warmed up our hearts with His sacred love as a church. I am thankful to Him that my health is kept all right.

Since and during our revival our audiences have been steadily increasing both at afternoon and evening services. There is also an unusual interest in our Thursday praise meetings. In short, the “fold” is in a good condition if the shepherd will come soon.

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AFRICA.

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THE MENDI MISSION.

Annual Meeting of the Missionaries—The Board of Counsel and Advice.