Part 4

During the first week in October we set apart Wednesday as a day of fasting and prayer. On the following Sabbath we commenced a series of meetings, which continued three weeks. Brother H. W. Conley stopped off here on his way from Marion back to Talladega, and preached and labored very faithfully with us several days. Brother J. W. Strong came down and labored with me, preaching the word almost every night for over a week. Brother Jones, of Childersburg, paid us a short visit, and Rev. F. J. Tyler, of this place, pastor of the Union Church (white), preached for us. Last of all came Rev. G. W. Andrews, who preached several times.

Every evening, one half-hour before services, a number of Christians would assemble in the inquiry-room and converse with those who came to inquire of the way of salvation. I must say that the inquiry meetings were the means of great and untold good, as much or more than the sermons, perhaps.

Well, the meetings closed with twenty-one conversions reported. Last Sunday fifteen came forward, entered into covenant with the church, and were baptized, on profession of their faith. _All_ of the candidates for baptism preferred sprinkling—the first instance, to my knowledge, where we did not have to immerse some out of so many uniting at one time; and, more singular than all, a Baptist father and mother presented their infant boy for baptism. When reminded by some of the Baptist brethren that they had “broken the rules of the church,” they replied by saying that if they had five hundred children, they would have them baptized, because it was right in the sight of God. The work has a more hopeful outlook for future prosperity than ever before.

Some eight or ten are to unite by letter, the first opportunity, who did not get ready in time to join last Sunday. Our total membership will then stand about fifty.

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TENNESSEE.

A Student Aided.

REV. E. M. CRAVATH, FISK UNIVERSITY.

Our readers will remember a plea for student aid made by President Cravath in the MISSIONARY for October. Soon after its publication this description of the first young man thus aided came, but has been delayed by the special matter which has claimed our columns. There are many more such at all our institutions awaiting similar help.

The first answer came in the shape of a draft for fifty dollars from a good friend of Rochelle, Illinois. On the same day with this answer a young man from Abbeville, S. C., came to Fisk University for the first time, and as he was a good representative of the class of young people for whom our appeal was made in the October MISSIONARY, we assigned him at once to this scholarship.

A brief sketch of his personal history may encourage some of the readers of the MISSIONARY who are yet hesitating to give a favorable answer to our appeal. Mr. Richard J. Holloway was born in Abbeville, South Carolina, in 1857, and was a slave up to the close of the war. He brought to the University the following testimonial from his former master, dated Abbeville, S. C., Sept. 8, 1879;

“The bearer of this, Richard J. Holloway, is a young man who was born in my family. I have known him from his birth to the present time. He early exhibited a desire for knowledge, which he has pursued under great difficulties. Notwithstanding he has made considerable advance, his laudable desire seems to be unsatisfied, and he leaves this section of the country to avail himself of advantages offered elsewhere. So far as I know, his moral character is good. He is commended to the favorable regard of all to whom this may come.” The first year after the war, being a lad of nine years, Richard had the opportunity of attending a school in Abbeville for five or six months. After this he was under the necessity of working with his parents, but contrived to study by himself so that he made considerable progress. During the fall of 1875 he happened to see, upon the table of his minister, a circular which had been sent out from the school established by the Am. Miss. Assoc. at Greenwood, S. C., which was then, and is still, taught by that most faithful and zealous missionary laborer, Mr. Backenstose, of Geneva, N. Y. Noticing that the tuition was only fifty cents a month, there dawned upon him the possibility of realizing his long-cherished desire of securing a good education. Inspired by this thought he left home and hired out on a plantation to earn some money with which to go to Greenwood.

By working three months he earned money enough, so that by buying his food and doing his own cooking he was able to attend school about the same length of time. He then went to one of the upper counties of South Carolina and taught a private school for two months, after which he worked for two months in a cotton-gin near by, while remaining to collect the money for his teaching. Being compelled to use considerable of the money he had earned to help his parents, he again secured a public school for two months, at fifteen dollars a month, and boarded himself. He then went over into Georgia and taught a public school, for which he was fortunate enough to receive twenty-five dollars a month. He was then able to return to Greenwood, where he was again under the instruction of Mr. Backenstose for nearly three months. Under the advice of his teacher, he determined to get to Fisk University if possible and take a thorough course of study, but not succeeding in earning much money by his teaching during the spring and summer, he stopped for five months of last year at Biddle University at Charlotte, N. C. He then undertook teaching again, determined to earn what money he could during the spring and summer, and to get to Fisk University if possible at the opening of the next school year. He only succeeded, however, in getting a three months’ school in Georgia, for which he has only received payment in part. As soon as his school closed he started for Nashville and reached here on the 7th of October, just as the answer came from our friend in Illinois which told us what to do. Mr. Holloway is a member of the African Methodist church, and his desire evidently is to secure an education that he may use it in Christian work among his people.

We are confidently hoping that we shall receive similar answers enough to enable us to provide for at least a hundred such young men as this.

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Health—Business—School—Church.

PROF. A. J. STEELE, MEMPHIS.

November 1st found Memphis dull, spiritless, and wearing a half deserted appearance, its streets strewn with autumn foliage and dry grass, so that the rustling of leaves beneath the feet was a more familiar sound than the rumbling of wagons or drays on most of the streets. Business men who had returned, in most cases without their families, wore a troubled and doubtful look. Many were discouraged and without hope for the future of the city, either as a business point or a place of residence. A few, like the boy in the dark, made a pretence of courage by “whistling.”

Although the Board of Health had declared the fever ended, there were still a few cases, with constant rumors of many more. After the cold spell of October 30, the weather became and continued unusually warm. Little or no cotton was being received, and orders for goods came not to waiting merchants. Laboring people returning to the city found no employment, and many suffered for the necessaries of life.

This state of things continued till the middle of November, when, after a few frosty nights, and with bright clear weather, the entire aspect of affairs changed, and rapidly took on a most hopeful and promising appearance. Cotton, the staple and life of business, began to come in rapidly, until before the end of November the daily receipts became the largest ever known at this point, placing Memphis as a primary cotton market scarcely second to New Orleans. With this revival of activity the empty talk of a hundred or so self-constituted newspaper correspondents and pretended scientists ceased to be heard on the corners and to be seen in the papers. The city authorities and a committee of citizens began a careful and thorough canvass of the city to ascertain its condition and needs. Under the advice of a committee of experts from the meeting of the American Sanitary Association held at Nashville, a system of sewerage and general sanitary reform was promptly adopted, and it is now expected that the Governor will convene the legislature to empower the city to make the needed changes. There is little doubt but that the hard and painful lessons of the past two seasons have finally been learned, and that at least another epidemic will not be invited next year by the criminal negligence of the authorities.

The school opened November 17 with about forty students. This number on December 2nd had increased to over 100. We are now receiving new students every day, of these ten are in the senior or graduating class. We note with interest a revival of the early desire for education and the culture which it brings; not _just_ the early desire of ignorant and foolish expectation, but a steadily deepening conviction of the need and advantage of patient, continued study and training for better things in the future. We hope to foster this feeling, and to do what we may to realize the expectation, by building up honest, manly and womanly characters in our students. Many of the pupils have taught during the vacation months; some have not yet completed the term for which they were engaged. So far as we know, all have labored earnestly to exert an influence for good in the communities where they have been located. A few during the sickness were employed by the Howards or other societies as nurses, one young man saving about $200 at this work, and gaining an enviable reputation as a nurse.

Our public library is demonstrating its influence and usefulness in a gratifying way, in awakening in many laboring people a love of reading and of thought, aside from the great advantage it is to the school directly and indirectly. During the summer months, considerably over one hundred volumes were drawn and read. Among many others several white persons of most excellent standing availed themselves of its privileges. Of these latter, one is principal of a boys’ and girls’ school in our vicinity.

I cannot close this letter without a word concerning the church here. During the epidemic, one of its most earnest, reliable members fell a victim to the scourge. By thrift and saving, every family belonging to the church, except one only, got through the long summer of idleness without aid in the way of charity, and before the return of the teachers, and in the absence of the pastor, the church voted to send a delegate to the Conference at Athens, raising money at once to pay his expenses. If this is not an example of commendable church devotion and courage, show us one that is so.

We look for a fuller, stronger school this year than ever before. I sometimes think these people have become so accustomed to adversity and trial, that they come out stronger under it than from any other experience. May it not be that God is leading them through rough ways to better things than we think?

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THE INDIANS.

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THE S’KOKOMISH AGENCY.

Homes and Schools—Lands and Titles.

EDWIN EELLS, AGENT, S’KOKOMISH.

The favor of a kind Providence has preserved us from any unusual calamities, and general good health, peace and prosperity have attended us and the Indians under my charge. It has been rather a quiet year, with nothing very startling, either good or bad, to affect us. Among the Indians generally, their habits of morality appear to have been growing stronger. Their general deportment is very good, and their style of living in their houses is improving all the time. Their general health, in consequence of their improved manner of living, has never been better than during the past year. Most of their houses have been ceiled and good tight floors put in them during the past winter, so that they are quite as comfortable as the average of white settlers throughout the country. There has been some land cleared by them, a decided advance in the kind of fences built by them, and I have furnished 1,000 fruit trees, which they have set out, nearly all of which have lived.

Our schools have been well attended, and the progress of the scholars in their studies has been quite satisfactory. The average attendance of the two schools has been something over fifty. One feature of improvement at the Agency, which deserves mention, has been the employment of apprentices, at small wages, at the various shops at the Agency. We have had five of our former school-boys employed in this way during the summer, and they have done very well.

Among the Indians who live off from the Reservation there has been an increasing desire to take up or acquire land for themselves. One band living at Clallam Bay, about 160 miles distant from the Agency, have purchased a tract of 154 acres of land, and have a favorable prospect before them of doing quite well. Ten individuals contributed the money to make this purchase. Some other individuals have taken up homestead claims and are improving them. One has completed his five years’ residence and obtained his title to his claim.

The delay of the Government to furnish the Indians on this Reservation with titles to their allotments of land, has operated to discourage them very much in the improvement of their farms. They also had reason to fear that there was danger of their being removed from here and consolidated with other tribes, speaking different languages, and to a distance from the home of their childhood and the land of their fathers. This has added to their despondency and unnerved them for effort. With this cloud of despondency hanging over them, it has been up-hill work to induce them to make sufficient effort to insure any progress. Their faith in the Government failing, their religious faith has also weakened, and while it has not led them to any bad practices, it has prevented them from making progress in Christianity. They reason in this way: If there is a God who rules the world, and institutes governments over men; if these governments are unjust and oppressive, it must be an unjust God who causes all this; and why should they love and worship such a being? This is the Indian mode of reasoning, and under the present circumstances there is a barrier raised in their minds against the Gospel.

As the treaty is soon to expire, and as some of the safeguards they have heretofore had will be removed, it seems to me very important that this measure should, if possible, be immediately consummated.

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THE CHINESE.

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“CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION.”

Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association.

PRESIDENT: Rev. J. K. McLean, D. D. VICE-PRESIDENTS: Rev. A. L. Stone, D. D., Thomas C. Wedderspoon, Esq., Rev. T. K. Noble, Hon. F. F. Low, Rev. I. E. Dwinell, D. D., Hon. Samuel Cross Rev. S. H. Willey, D. D., Edward P. Flint, Esq., Rev. J. W. Hough, D. D., Jacob S. Taber, Esq.

DIRECTORS: Rev. George Mooar, D. D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. E. P. Baker, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, Rev. John Kimball, E. P. Sanford, Esq.

SECRETARY: Rev. W. C. Pond. TREASURER: E. Palache, Esq.

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THE SANTA BARBARA MISSION—CHIN FUNG.

BY REV. W. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO.

Among the compensations attending my service as Superintendent of our Chinese Missions is the annual visit I am called to make to Santa Barbara; and, notwithstanding the great void I found in the absence of my greatly beloved brother, Rev. Dr. Hough—now returned to his former flock at Jackson, Michigan—no visit ever made there was more pleasant to me than my last. The movements of the steamers were such that it had to be an unusually long visit; and I gained thus the opportunity, not only to see more of the homes and hearts of our English-speaking brethren, but to get much closer in Christian affection and confidence to the Chinese who have begun to believe in the Saviour. Of the six that from this mission, several years since, united with the Presbyterian Church, only two remain; but three others were found who have never yet been baptized, and who seemed to give good evidence of being born again. My conversations with them greatly interested me. There seemed to be a simple faith, a hearty and practical consecration, a readiness to testify, to work and to give for Jesus, which certainly looked like true tokens of a new life—the eternal life—begun. I expect that they will be baptized and received into the Congregational Church at its next communion. The following sentences from a letter written me by one of them express what appeared to be the spirit of them all: “Our school is grow up nicely, and have very good teacher now. Only one thing I be very sorry. I will tell you about. Some school-boy go to bad way, and disobey our Lord Jesus Christ. I, in myself, have no strength to make them to love Jesus Christ. * * * Oh, I hope you pray for them, and ask God to send the Spirit to change their heart, and make them to ’member Jesus Christ died on the cross for us, and make them to ’member continue in heart wherefore the heathen too. [_I. e._, if I understand him, make them consider wherefore they should continue heathen at heart.] Oh, we are ’member you always in heart, because you very kind to our countrymen. I have nothing to recompense you. But I pray to God for you, and ask God to bless you and comfort you, and give you reward in Heaven.”

The anniversary of the mission was held on Sunday evening, October 26. A large audience was present, and great interest was evinced. Besides the exercises by the pupils, there was the annual report, and brief addresses by the pastors of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches. The exercises indicated some good progress made during the year. I remember especially a recitation of the 115th Psalm, a responsive recitation of John, xiv. chap., and a little dialogue about our mission schools, and what is learned in them—“not only the English language, but about Jesus Christ our Saviour from sin.” One pupil recited the Apostles’ Creed, another the Ten Commandments, and none except one or two very recent comers were without some Gospel text, which, fastened in the memory, was recited in intelligible English. Sacred songs, in both English and Chinese, were interspersed, and the half-hour was fraught with blessing, I am very sure, to all concerned. I have never been so hopeful of the best results from our Santa Barbara work as I am just now.

CHIN FUNG

is one of our earliest fruits, a bright intelligent young man whom, years ago, I invited to become one of our helpers. He declined on the ground of being too little acquainted with Chinese, having had little, if any, opportunity of attending school in China. But I remember that he said, “I have wished very much that I could be prepared to go as a missionary to my countrymen at home.” I confess that I did not realize how deep that feeling was. Such expressions are frequent among our brethren, and I never have doubted their sincerity, but I have generally thought of them as consciously a wish for the _impossible_, and consequently never likely to grow to a controlling purpose deciding the life-work. But it was not so with Chin Fung. With the hope of this he has been saving all these years, with rigid economy, the slender earnings of his work as a house-servant. At length, encouraged by the excellent Christian lady by whom, of late, he has been employed, he determined to go to Hartford, Conn., and commence his course of study. Before this letter reaches you, I trust he will be there.

He did not get away without a struggle. The agony of inward conflict into which he was thrown by the representations of heathen kinsmen, as to the wrong he was doing his family, the difficulties and calamities in which he might involve his older brothers if he should thus turn his back on China, and disregard a possible betrothal which his elder brothers, it was said, had made for him, (although, with this great plan in view, he had charged them not to involve him in any such responsibility,) called forth my intense sympathy. But I felt that it was the Master’s call to which, these years, he had been listening, and that to go back to China in obedience to the summons of his brothers would be to turn his back on Christ. He himself saw it so at length—saw it _for himself_, and from that instant there was no hesitancy, “I will start tomorrow,” he said, with an emphasis which marked the conflict ended and the victory won. He certainly has some qualities which under skilful training would tend to make him a useful missionary.

IN GENERAL.

What I have written about the Santa Barbara school, I might have written of almost all of them. We have an excellent corps of teachers, and though one or two of our schools are suffering because our reviving business prosperity involves their pupils in evening work, others are steadily increasing in size, and increasing still more, I trust, in usefulness. At the last communion at Bethany church seven were baptized. A much larger number than that have recently united with the Association of Christian Chinese, thus avowing themselves as Christians, and coming into the process of test work and training, which we feel to be necessary before they are finally accepted in the church. But we need to do much more: to enter new fields, to send forth more laborers, and meanwhile in fields already occupied to bring to hear as never hitherto, the zeal, the wisdom, the living spiritual power of Him whose name is “God with us.” Brethren, pray for us.

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CHILDREN’S PAGE.

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AMATEUR HEATHEN.

The small-boy who has been well and piously brought up hates the heathen, though policy compels him to conceal his feelings. He envies the heathen small-boy, and at the same time looks upon him as a selfish and remorseless absorber of Christian pennies. This is natural and inevitable. The small-boy is told that his heathen contemporary goes constantly barefooted, wears very little clothing, is never washed, never goes to school, and is never taught anything that is good and useful. Moreover, the heathen small boy lives in a country where tigers and other delightful wild beasts abound, and where the exciting spectacle of a widow burning to death in company with her husband’s corpse—an attraction which no circus in this country has had the enterprise to offer—is frequently exhibited free. Of course, the small-boy of Christian lands envies the blessed lot of his heathen brother, and would give worlds had he, too, been born a heathen. Now, when this envious small-boy is compelled to give 50 per cent. of his pennies to the heathen, he feels that it is both unreasonable and unjust, and his anger burns against the heathen small-boy who, although rolling in every kind of heathen luxury, meanly absorbs the scant wealth of small-boys who have had the misfortune to be born in Christian countries. He cannot avoid noticing that the grown-up folks who think that he should give one-half of his pennies to the heathen, do not divide their own property in that way, and he never drops a copper in the collector’s box without feeling that he is the victim of moral blackmailing.