Part 3

_Saturday, Jan. 20._—Be sure and find us when you take your pleasure trip to Washington, and we will show you better than we can write, the need of missionary work among its 60,000 colored people. This is one of our winter’s worst days. It rains fast, and the streets are full of snow and water. Breakfast over, I hastened to market for meat to make broth for the sick, and to the grocery for bread. While picking my way over the slippery pavements, a grandmother calls after me with a request that must be heeded. On entering my room in the Mission, a barrel from Brooklyn awaits unpacking. God bless the dear friends of the North who so nobly respond to my appeal for help. They never will know how much good the old clothes do. Before I’m half through, knock number one brings old Auntie Bennett, afflicted with a disease so offensive that she cannot attend our gatherings. When leaving with her bundle of warm garments, in steps Auntie Harris, always so trustful in the Lord, and yet she says, “I sat all yesterday without any fire”; her husband and crippled son unable to provide. Thankful for a little relief, she goes out to carry a big bundle to another poor creature, who, with her old man, have scarcely a crust, and nothing but a leaky shanty for shelter. Caller No. 3 is a young woman, bringing a note from the police station and a certificate from her doctor, that tells of serious sickness, one two-year-old child, and nothing wherewith to help herself. I send her to see our Day Nursery, and tell her to bring her baby on Monday, and I will see what more can be done. Her dull, wan face brightens as she leaves. Tom C. comes next—my boy, who draws our Temperance blackboard illustrations, paints our signs, puts up Christmas decorations, &c. I’ve just received his fit in a suit; so, with a patch to mend the sleeves, and more work under his arm, he goes. Pinkie T. has framed some mottoes, and I ask her to hang them in the school room, paying her with a pair of nice boots. Annie C., our missionary girl from Howard U., comes to assist, and, as a member of the Doing-Good Society of the school, this P.M. brings a report from sick Mr. Green. After preparations for the afternoon, and a peep into the nursery, where the floors are being scrubbed and the children are taking their bath (for, though the Associated Charities have adopted this, my pet project of last year, and have appointed a committee of ladies, I have the daily supervision). I leave for lunch at 12½. The girl’s industrial school opens at 1½; 61 out of 130 scholars are present. We are divided into 15 classes, each with a teacher, if enough ladies are present. I appoint a girl to attend to callers. We open with singing, and sew until 3 o’clock. Some are making bags for their work, some patch-work, some, fancy-work, while others are mending or making garments and learning to cut them. We intersperse sewing-songs. They help the pupils to remember instructions. From three to four we have various exercises, such as talks on health or manners; Bible lessons, repeating the Child’s Creed or the Commandments, with responsive chant or a Psalm and the Lord’s prayer. To-day, we have an object lesson in house-keeping. A table is placed on the platform and Annie C. is asked to prepare it for tea. She arranges the cloth, dishes and food, with criticisms from the scholars. Then, she invites four girls to sit and eat while she acts as waitress. After eating she removes the dishes for washing and folds the cloth. A few more callers and the busy week closes. Thank God for the sunlight it has brought to us during our revival meetings in the conversion of two of our dear girls.

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VANTAGE GROUND NEEDED BY STUDENTS.

BY MISS JOSEPHINE KELLOGG, TOUGALOO, MISS.

We long for the time when these people shall obtain a little vantage-ground by industry and—still more essential—by economy and a prudent use of earnings, so that the children may begin the work of getting an education betimes and continue it until a respectable course of study is thoroughly mastered. We have some such, and we hope much from the earlier training and the favorable circumstance of their having parents interested in educating them and able to do it.

In the cases of a majority, they come to us already grown-up, something having given them an ambition for better things than they had known. They have their own way to make and can be in school only a part of each year, many of them working nights and mornings and one day of each week besides, to pay their board in whole or in part. As the time approaches when exhausted funds and worn-out clothing must compel them to go out and seek employment, thoughts will wander and there will be a relaxation in the matter of preparation and recitation of lessons in spite of themselves and the exertions of their teachers. No doubt there is a blessing connected with their struggles against adverse circumstances, and a manly and womanly self-dependence is fostered in this way, but it is not to be expected that a great number will complete the course in the face of such discouragements.

As year after year passes, and they get education enough to help them on somewhat in life and a knowledge that fits them to be useful in church, society and home, and they yet seem almost as far as ever from the goal of graduation which they once placed before themselves, they begin to be anxious to settle down to the real business of life, and they relinquish the hope of a completed normal course with, perhaps, a subsequent complete collegiate course.

While it is the few of those who enter that go on to the end of the course and the many drop out as I have described, yet we do not consider our labor in vain, but rather hope to claim the assurance “Blessed are ye who sow beside all waters.” If the teaching were only in the ordinary elementary branches we might think it of little avail unless carried on continuously to a more satisfactory issue, but much of it is more fundamental than even arithmetic. The entire mode of life is a lesson and a much needed one to most of those who come to us. The regularity of meals with the laws of the dining-room, the regularity of retiring and rising, the neatness and order of the rooms, the care of clothing, the personal habits, the sanitary regulations, the study and exercise, and the propriety of deportment required, not to speak of the regular work belonging to the industrial training, seem to new scholars to form a complete hedge, if not a bewildering labyrinth; but a very bright feature of our work is the spirit of subordination and respect for constituted authority, which greatly simplifies and lightens the enforcement of all necessary rules. This is an excellent and much-to-be commended trait in our students. I have asked some of those who go out to teach if the children in the public schools are easy to govern. Oh, yes, the answer has been, _they expect to mind_.

It is very edifying to note how those who come without any taste or neatness in their personal appearance, with sorry attempts at finery and painfully-laced waists, improve under the tuition of the lady principal and the influence of those who have been here longer, the expression of the countenance often changing more rapidly and noticeably than even the manner of dress. But, O! the patience and the faculty required for this most important work of training the girls in womanly virtues and housewifely ways!

With all the patience and with all the faculty possible, it is a great and constant strain to have the care of such a household, and the matrons and lady principals need the uplifting prayers and sympathy of the warm Christian hearts interested in these schools, in a special degree.

And then the instruction in the Bible, as “the only and the sufficient rule both of faith and practice”—the value of this work cannot be over-estimated. The case of a young man who came into school for the first time this fall, comes to mind. Living far back from the railroad, in the country, he had had no advantages of any schooling but a few brief sessions of the public school. He was entered in the Third-reader grade and was to all appearance a most unpromising specimen, although a professed Christian, and apparently a sincere one, with a real experience of trust in God, but wofully untaught as to Christian character and duty. As the Scripture was from time to time plainly and searchingly expounded, and the vices which are sometimes permitted under the garb of religion were exposed, it was plain to see that he was listening as to a new revelation. In school-room work there was a marked improvement, especially in the expressiveness of his reading, but the great benefit that came in his term of school was in the way of moral enlightenment. A month ago he joined the temperance society. The last prayer-meeting was taken up largely with speaking of the temptations that would be met at Christmas-time to violate the pledge, and one young man said that, in view of these temptations he would rather spend Christmas at Tougaloo than anywhere else. This young man then “spoke in meeting” for the first time, I think, and said he did not feel that way. It seemed to him that the principal thing he wanted to go home for, was to tell his people he had become a temperance man. He had been a good deal of a drinker, a member of church, too, and his people were all in the same way, and didn’t know any better, but now he would tell them that he had found a better way, and that they, too, must forsake the old bad way, or they would surely go down. He said, “If I can’t keep my pledge, I may as well find it out first as last, but _I do believe I can_. I does feel as if temperance _is grafted in here_,” laying his hand upon his breast. He hopes to return and bring a sister with him, but if he cannot get the means and never comes, is there not here a little bread cast on the waters?

The evening before school closed there was a beautiful Christmas exercise, consisting of recitations, Scripture and music, lighted by a large star of evergreen filled with burning candles. No doubt many a new idea concerning the universal holiday was imbibed. This was followed by an exhibition by the temperance society.

Thanksgiving day was a blessed occasion with us. Rev. Mr. Stickel preached on Tests of Character, dwelling upon the test of faith and the test of gratitude, basing his sermon upon the story of the ten lepers. An opportunity has usually been given, in connection with the morning service, for personal testimonies, and so many had given themselves to the service of the Lord and so many had been led into a fuller Christian experience since last Thanksgiving that there was a real eagerness for this service, and a somewhat wistful look on a good many faces when the meeting was closed without it. At the end of dinner, however, President Pope rose and said such an opportunity would be given then and there; that we could not spend a portion of the afternoon more profitably nor have a pleasanter sort of after-dinner speeches than in recounting the good dealings of God with us. Notwithstanding the fact that a Thanksgiving dinner is about as well calculated to promote a spirit of thankfulness as anything that can be mentioned, it was a little harder to rise from the table and speak in the dining-room than in the chapel. Yet, after the first momentary hesitation, the testimonies came, briefly but freely, of gratitude for health, for success in work, for the privilege of being at school, for the pardon of sins, and many other things.

One young man said he had felt all the year, as never before, that all his blessings came right from the hand of God. He had felt it in his teaching, and had thanked God for all his success. He thanked God for this school, and for those friends in the North who had established it, and for all the benefits it is conferring upon the people of this State. One youth said he was thankful he had learned the true object of man’s life—what he was made for. He used to think a man could serve God or let it alone—that his time and faculties were his own, and he could do as he pleased. But now he had learned that a man’s true calling is to serve the Lord. He was glad to know that the great God has something for every one to do, and has His eye upon the way he does it, and that his reward is according to his faithfulness, and not according to the greatness of the work. It seemed to make life worth living.

Prof. Salisbury was with us three days of the last week, in the tour of the schools which he is making to get his work in hand. He gave us a helpful talk in chapel one morning, and again gave an account of the other schools he had visited, and we trust his subsequent visits will aid in promoting the symmetry and efficiency of the work of this school.

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THE INDIANS.

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CHURCH AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK AT S’KOKOMISH, W.T.

BY REV. MYRON EELLS.

June 22d and 23d, 1874, this church was organized with eleven members, only one of whom was an Indian. But while there was only one Indian, it was hoped that God would bless the work so that others would be induced to come in, and we have not been wholly disappointed. Since that time twenty-eight Indians and half-breeds have joined it and our new church at Jamestown, near Dunginess, besides thirteen whites who have joined on profession, and thirteen more by letter, making seventy-five in all, including the first members. Forty-five Indian marriages have taken place here in a Christian way, and twenty-seven funerals. All of those married, who are alive, are still living together, owing mainly to the Agent. Christian services at funerals are something about which the Indians at first cared very little, and often have the dead been hurried off to burial without even letting me know that any one was dead; and their burying-ground with its small houses and clothes, cloth and other things, was a curiosity to visitors. But after a time, having made some slow improvements, they opened a new burying-ground, and when the first grave was made the chief said to me: “To-day we become white people. We do not like the idea of having cloth and other things around our graves, and we expect that there will be none of it here.” That was nearly four years ago, and there are now no such things visible. At a later day I was absent when one person died, and no white man was present at the funeral; but when I returned, the Indians asked me to make arrangements so that if I should necessarily be absent some Christian white man should go and help them bury their dead in a Christian manner.

A prayer-meeting was begun here as soon as the present Agent came (before there was a church or minister), which has been constantly maintained, and its influence has gone into all the Christian work here. But it has been too old for some of the children, and too far away and in a wrong language for many of the Indians; hence it has been supplemented by children’s, ladies’ and Indian prayer-meetings.

It has been my custom, as I have been able, to hold such meetings with the Indians at their logging camps. The following incidents show a change. About six years ago they said they did not know how to pray or what to say. So to help them we would say a sentence and let one whom we supposed to be the most suitable in heart repeat over the prayer, line after line. One evening something comical struck one, and he burst out laughing in the midst of his prayer. At another time a hunter came home during a prayer-meeting, and, without any regard to it, came in, throwing down his saddle and things, and talking very much as if there were no prayer-meeting there. That Indian of late has been one of the leading ones to pray. Another evening, when I was through and was leaving I said “Good night,” and the reply came, “Good night,” but as I was outside the door and shutting it, the words were added in a not very complimentary way, in a lower tone and yet so that I heard them, “old man.” That Indian, after going to great lengths in gambling, has been one during the past few months to try to induce his relations to enter the right road.

I have been reminded of these incidents lately by way of contrast, because of the earnest requests that have come to me, during the past few months, to go to the same place, and the earnest and apparently hearty thanks which have come from the same persons and the same camp for the same work.

About eight years ago an Indian was wandering around during Sabbath-school time, and was asked why he was not inside the church. His reply was, that the services were so much in English that they were dry to him. Only when the time came for singing the Chinook song was he interested. There was only one song, then, but the necessity for them seemed to grow until there were enough to make our little book, in 1878, “Hymns in the Chinook Jargon Language.” Indians living away from the Reservation have learned to sing them who have learned but little else about the Gospel, because they could not sing them without learning them. They have carried and sung them down the straits to Cape Flattery and across the straits to British Columbia, to Indians I probably never shall see, and some Gospel truths have gone with them. The Indians of both tribes, however, Twanas and Clallams, felt that another important step had been taken when last spring they could sing in their own native language.

In our Sabbath-school we have always followed the plan of having the scholars commit five or six verses a week to memory, and most of those who have done the best in this respect have come into the church. Eight out of ten of the highest on the list for 1878 are now members, and the same proportion holds good for some other years. In all, twenty-seven have come in on profession of faith from the Sabbath-school.

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THE CHINESE.

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COMITY.

REV. W. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO.

From the first I have conducted the operations of our mission on principles of denominational comity. There are five distinct missions at work for the Chinese of California, besides our own. The Presbyterian has schools in San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, San José, and, perhaps, I may add, at Napa and Santa Rosa, though I am not aware that the work done in these two places is directly connected with their Board; the Methodist mission has schools also in San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and San José, and one besides, at Chico; the Baptist and Episcopal missions conduct each one school in this city; the United Presbyterian mission has schools in Oakland and Los Angeles. The total number of schools sustained by all these missions—so far as I am informed—is thus 15. Our mission has six schools in San Francisco, and ten elsewhere. Sacramento and Oakland are the only points outside this city occupied by us and by other missions also. At each of these points our schools were first established, and we have not felt it due to comity to abandon our work begun and carried on for years because others came in to divide it with us. But we have never yet planted a school in any field already occupied, unless San Francisco be an exception, where the occupation was so incomplete, that we, ourselves, having one school, have established five others. I am led to these remarks partly because the facts, it seems to me, are worth reporting, and partly because, just now, questions of comity have been and are still before us to be answered. Thus, in accordance with a purpose expressed at the close of our last fiscal year, to do something this year for the large colony of Chinese that has established itself in the town of Chico, I visited that town last month. I heard of a school as already established—though its existence had been before unknown to the pastor with whom I had corresponded. I visited the school; found four pupils present, and learned that it was sustained by the Methodist Mission. There was room for so much more to be done that I made conditional arrangements for planting a school there. The condition was that the Methodist Mission should give us cordial welcome and divide the field with us territorially. But our Methodist brethren say that they would prefer to occupy the whole territory, and promise to do so in adequate force, and therefore we have withdrawn. The large town of Vallejo has a Chinese population somewhat exceeding 200, and no one was caring for their souls. I determined to put into that field the work which I had intended to do at Chico. I have made arrangements accordingly—renting a mission-house, engaging a teacher, and arranging for a helper to go there as soon as the building can be made ready. But the school will be in special relation with the Presbyterian Church, there being no Congregational Church, except at South Vallejo, nearly two miles distant. I have accordingly said to our Presbyterian friends that I would establish and carry on the school, subject to transfer at any time when their Board will assume the care of it, and will reimburse our treasury for expenses incurred up to the time of the transfer. At Los Angeles we had sustained a school for two or three years, and several of our pupils had been brought so clearly into Christian light and life that almost immediately after the establishment of a Presbyterian mission there and the transfer of our work to its care, they were baptized and received into the Presbyterian church. But the brother to whose care the work was committed removed, after about two years, to Oakland, and left it in other hands. This field has now become so large that it need involve no criticism upon the mission already existing there to say that there is room for another, and that souls in large numbers are walking in darkness that might be led into light, if we should resume the work we unwisely (I now think) laid down. I propose, therefore, to do this as soon as I can command the time necessary to visit Los Angeles, unless I should then find that the facts have been incorrectly represented to me.

Two principles of denominational comity suggest themselves as the outcome of my thought on these questions and these fields. The first is _no crowding_; the mission already at work in a field, to be left in sole possession, provided it will render the service needed there; the second is, _no possession without occupation_; no leaving of souls to perish because somebody’s dog is in the manger, and a field has been entered but not worked. Am I right?

SOUND DOCTRINE.

The following sermon-sketch was read for criticism by our helper, Lee Sam, at our regular exercise last Wednesday afternoon. I ventured to ask him whether he found what he had written in some commentary, or whether it came from his own study of the text and of related passages. He told me that it was what he himself had thought out in Bible study. It may be interesting to see what views of human depravity a thoughtful man unschooled in theology, unbiassed by ancient traditions, untrammeled by any standards or any creeds, has drawn forth for himself from the Word of God. The text was in Romans, 5:21.

“That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”