Part 3

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 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.

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THE FREEDMEN.

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

FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

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NORTH CAROLINA.

License of a Minister—Severe Winter—Good Progress—Poverty.

REV. ALFRED CONNET, M’LEANSVILLE.

On the 23d of January the church licensed John M. Brooks to preach Gospel, the license to extend till the time of the meeting of the State Conference at this place next May. It is expected that the Conference will be asked to examine him and renew his license. He is industrious, economical, has good talent, is a good student, one of our most advanced pupils, a zealous Christian, a member of this church, and anxious to gain a thorough education, that he may preach Christ to his fellow-men.

He has no resources but his own labor. He earned nearly but not quite enough during vacation to carry him through this school year. He asked my advice whether he should stay at school or go and teach a school that is offered him. I advised him to stay while his money lasted, believing that when that is gone the Lord will send more. Ten dollars will meet his wants.

This has been an unusually severe winter. The colored people have been poorly prepared for it, both in regard to comfortable houses and clothing.

Our January communion was postponed, on account of the severe weather, till the first Sunday in February. We are expecting some additions to the church.

Our pupils have never made better progress. The deep snow which lay about four weeks kept some, chiefly primary scholars, away. Those who did come have done good work. We have among our pupils nine teachers, several others preparing to teach, and two preparing for the ministry.

A young lady, three miles distant, is sick with consumption. Mrs. Connet and I called upon her Saturday. She spent a year at Hampton, as student, and some years laboring at Waterbury, Ct., the last sixteen months as chief cook at the St. John’s School. Her health failed and she came home. She said she did not want to be buried so far away from her people. She and her sister were working and saving their wages to buy a farm for their parents, near the church and school. Her greatest trial now is that she will have to give up this cherished object of her life. We read and prayed with her, and commended her to him who healeth all our diseases.

It is sad to see the sick and dying in such uncomfortable hovels. This young lady is an invalid in a log house. In many places the daubing is out. The floor is of rough plank, with cracks between. The joists are partly covered with loose plank, while large spaces are not covered at all. There is no window, and the door is left open most of the time for light. The room is about eighteen by twenty feet. At one end is a fire-place, which answers the double purpose of cooking the simple fare and heating the small apartment. The bed of the sick is at the other end.

The above, with slight variation, is a description of the houses in which all the colored people live.

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GEORGIA.

Thanksgiving Letter—Sequel to Begging Letter.

MRS. T. N. CHASE, ATLANTA.

I confess that it is with some regret I must inform you the 26 rooms are all furnished, for this very morning the post brought me these words from dear old Massachusetts: “My Willing Workers, a society of nearly 70 young people, earnestly desire to send $25 to furnish a room in response to your letter in the October AMERICAN MISSIONARY, but fear it is too late. * * With kindest wishes for abundant answers to all your begging letters, I am yours, sincerely,

Mrs. W.”

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 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.

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ALABAMA.

Emerson Institute.

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 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.

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MISSISSIPPI.

A Changed Home.

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 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.

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TENNESSEE.

Cabin, “Frame House,” and “Little Brick.”

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 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.

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TEXAS.

“The African Congregational Church” of Paris.

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.