Chapter 3

I went to Marion with some doubts upon my mind as to the results. The first evening after my arrival I was very sick and threatened with a severe attack of chills and fever, but I was helped to strength enough to preach with difficulty. Twenty-five inquirers asked for prayers. Some that night became "new creatures in Christ Jesus," and every night as the meetings progressed the interest deepened and spread, until other churches were reached by the influence and their services given up that their members might come to our church and share in the work and blessing. Every night large numbers of seekers came to Christ. On one night twelve expressed their faith in a new life. Among the many inquirers was one who for twelve years had been an anxiety to her friends on account of her state of mind, and her conversion caused great joy in the church.

Short morning meetings were held in the various schools in the town, and in a town-school seventeen seekers found the Lord Jesus precious to {103} their souls. Up to this time, during two weeks, more than one hundred profess to have been converted.

I am happy to report that now, with the exception of two or three of the students, all in the new A.M.A. school have been reached by the gospel and are rejoicing that God's love has been shed abroad in their hearts. This blessing can be traced in a great measure to the faithful Scriptural teaching which Rev. A.W. Curtis and his devoted wife had been giving previous to my coming among them, prayer meetings having been held in the church for some time beforehand, and women's meetings at the pastor's home, led by Mrs. Curtis, thus preparing the way for the nightly preaching of the gospel. I go next to Mobile.

JAMES WHARTON, Evangelist.

* * * * *

THE CHINESE.

RESULTS THAT ELUDE THE STATISTICIAN.

BY REV. C.T. WEITZEL.

There are some effects which cannot be put into statistics. A boy's progress in a study is but imperfectly declared by the monthly report or the examination "stand." Much of the work accomplished in a Chinese mission school, is impossible to tabulate. Like the marvelous clearness of the atmosphere in Santa Barbara on a bright morning after a night of rain, it quite eludes the statistician.

But effects may be felt, though we cannot represent them by figures. Go with me some evening through the Chinese quarter of our city; note the faces of the loungers in every door-way and at every corner. Watch the expression, or the want of expression, in these stolid, brutal, repulsive faces of opium-smokers and gamblers. Then step over with me to the Chinese mission-house two squares away. Before you enter, look in through the half-open door and take a survey of the scene within. The room is well-lighted, and contains, among other things, two long tables, a dozen benches, a cabinet organ, and a few chairs. The walls are bright with Scripture texts and illustrations from sacred history. About fifteen young Chinamen are seated at the tables, all reading and studying aloud in true Chinese fashion. Just as you enter the teacher, touches the bell. Books are closed and all take seats on the benches in front of the organ. A Chinese evangelist is present, and while he makes an impassioned address, accompanied by most expressive gestures, you are free to study the faces upturned to listen. What a contrast to the faces you have just left in Chinatown, idly staring at the passer-by, or, vacant of all interest, staring at nothing! At a glance you perceive effects which must be seen to be appreciated. You feel that not only is the whole atmosphere of this place essentially different {104} from that of the Chinese quarter, but there is also an essential difference between those who frequent the one and the other.

Socially, intellectually, spiritually, the Chinese mission-school does its beneficent work. It must be borne in mind that the Chinaman in California is away from home. He is exposed to all the temptations of a stranger in a strange land, removed from the restraining influences of a community where one is known. Subject an equal number of men of any other nation to this severe test, and I doubt much if they would bear it as well. The mission school serves the purpose of a strong social support. So far as possible it takes the place of a home. It practically separates its attendants into a community by itself. It does much to keep them from contact with their vicious countrymen in Chinatown. It does much to bring them into contact with those whose influence upon them will be good. It does much to furnish a healthy social atmosphere in which to pass the hours of the afternoon and evening, which every Chinese servant is at liberty to spend as he will.

Intellectually the work in the Chinese missions is already far beyond the elementary stage, and is growing more virile every year.

But everything is made but the means to the spiritual end. Not for an hour is this lost sight of. The whole drift of the teaching, the songs, the pictures, the Scripture text, is to make known Christ. Every evening's lesson ends with worship. For a month or more the Chinese preacher to whom I have referred, has held evangelistic services in the Santa Barbara mission. To-day he leaves for points farther south to do the same work elsewhere.

In no year, may I add, have there been so many conversions among the Chinese on this coast as in the one just past.

* * * * *

BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.

MISS D.E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.

WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS.

CO-OPERATING WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

ME.--Woman's Aid to A.M.A., Chairman of Committee, Mrs. C.A. Woodbury, Woodfords, Me.

VT.--Woman's Aid to A.M.A., Chairman of Committee, Mrs. Henry Fairbanks, St. Johnsbury, Vt.

CONN.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. S.M. Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Ave., Hartford, Conn.

N.Y.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C.C. Creegan, Syracuse, N.Y.

OHIO.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. Flora K. Regal, Oberlin, Ohio.

ILL.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C.H. Taintor, 151 Washington St., Chicago, Ill.

MICH.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. Mary B. Warren, Lansing, Mich.

WIS.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C. Matter, Brodlhead, Wis.

MINN.--Woman's Home Miss. Society, Secretary, Mrs. H.L. Chase, 2,750 Second Ave., South, Minneapolis, Minn.

IOWA.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Miss Ella K. Marsh, Grinnell, Iowa.

KANSAS.--Woman's Home Miss. Society, Secretary, Mrs. Addison Blanchard, Topeka, Kan.

SOUTH DAKOTA.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. W.H. Thrall, Amour, Dak. {105}

* * * * *

THE BLACK WOMAN OF THE SOUTH.

The Rev. Alexander Crummell, D.D., formerly a missionary in Africa and now Rector of St. Luke's Church in Washington, D.C., is a native of Africa, a graduate of one of the leading Universities of England, who adds to the strength and graces of a sound scholarship, the devotion of a noble Christian character.

From an address made by him upon the "Needs and Neglects of the Black Woman of the South," we quote his plea for "Woman's Work for Woman." Referring to the Negro woman in slavery days, he says:

"She was a 'hewer of wood and a drawer of water.' She had to keep her place in the gang from morn till eve, under the burden of a heavy task, or under the stimulus or the fear of a cruel lash. She was a picker of cotton. She labored at the sugar mill and in the tobacco factory. When, through weariness or sickness, she had fallen behind her allotted task, then came, as punishment, the fearful stripes upon her shrinking, lacerated flesh.

"Her home life was of the most degrading nature. She lived in the rudest huts, and partook of the coarsest food, and dressed in the scantiest garb, and slept, in multitudinous cabins, upon the hardest boards!

"There was no sanctity of family, no binding tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities and the endearing affections of home. Few of these things were the lot of the Southern black woman. Instead, thereof, a gross barbarism, which tended to blunt the tender sensibilities, to obliterate feminine delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her heritage from generation to generation; and it seems a miracle of providence and grace that, notwithstanding these terrible circumstances, so much struggling virtue lingered amid the rude cabins, that so much womanly worth and sweetness remained, as slaveholders themselves have borne witness to.

"Freed, legally, she has been; but the act of emancipation had no talismanic influence to reach to and alter and transform her degrading social life. The truth is, 'Emancipation Day' found her a prostrate and degraded being; and, although it has brought numerous advantages to her sons, it has produced but the simplest changes in _her_ social and domestic condition. She is still the crude, rude, ignorant mother. Remote from cities, the dweller still in the old plantation hut, neighboring to the sulky, disaffected master-class, who still think her freedom was a personal robbery of themselves, none of the 'fair humanities' have visited her humble home. The light of knowledge has not fallen upon her eyes. The fine domesticities which give the charm to family life, and which, by the refinement and delicacy of womanhood, preserve the civilization of nations, have not come to _her_. She has still the rude, coarse labor of men. With her rude husband, she still shares the hard service of a field-hand. Her house, which shelters, perhaps, some six or eight children, embraces but two rooms. Her furniture is of the rudest kind. The clothing of the household is scant and of the coarsest material; has oft-times the garniture of rags, and for herself and offspring is marked, not seldom, by the absense {106} of both hats and shoes. She has rarely been taught to sew, and the field-labor of slavery times has kept her ignorant of the habitudes of neatness and the requirements of order. Indeed, coarse food, coarse clothes, coarse living, coarse manners, coarse companions, coarse surroundings, coarse neighbors, both white and black, yea, everything coarse, down to the coarse, ignorant, senseless religion, which excites her sensibilities and starts her passions, go to make up the life of the masses of black women in the hamlets and villages of the South. This is the state of black womanhood.

"And now look at the _vastness_ of this degradation. If I had been speaking of the population of a city, or town, or even a village, the tale would be a sad and melancholy one. But I have brought before you the condition of _millions of women_. And when you think that the masses of these women live in the rural districts; that they grow up in rudeness and ignorance; that their former masters are using few means to break up their hereditary degradation, you can easily take in the pitiful condition of this population and forecast the inevitable future to multitudes of females, unless a mighty special effort is made for the improvement of the black womanhood of the South.

"I am anxious for a permanent and uplifting civilization to be engrafted on the Negro race in this land. And this can only be secured through the womanhood of a race. If you want the civilization of a people to reach the very best elements of their being, and then, having reached them, there to abide as an indigenous principle, you must imbue the _womanhood_ of that people with all its elements and qualities. Any movement which passes by the female sex is an ephemeral thing. Without them, no true nationality, patriotism, religion, cultivation, family life, or true social status, is a possibility. In this matter it takes two to make one--mankind is a duality. The male may bring, as an exotic, a foreign graft, say, of civilization, to a new people. But what then! Can a graft live or thrive of itself? By no manner of means. It must get vitality from the stock into which it is put; and it is the women who give the sap to every human organization which thrives and flourishes on earth.

"I plead, therefore, for the establishment of at least one large '_Industrial school_' in every Southern State for the black girls of the South. I ask for the establishment of schools which may serve specially the home life of the rising womanhood of my race.

"I want _boarding schools_ for the _industrial training_ of one hundred and fifty or two hundred of the poorest girls, of the ages of twelve to eighteen years.

"I wish the intellectual training to be limited to reading, writing, arithmetic and geography.

"I would have these girls taught to do accurately all domestic work, such as sweeping floors, dusting rooms, scrubbing, bed-making, washing and ironing, sewing, mending and knitting. {107}

"I would have the trades of dress-making, millinery, straw-plating, tailoring for men, and such like, taught them.

"The art of cooking should be made a specialty, and every girl should be instructed in it.

"In connection with these schools, garden plats should be cultivated, and every girl should be required daily, to spend at least an hour in learning the cultivation of small fruits, vegetables and flowers.

"It is hardly possible to exaggerate either the personal, family or society influence which would flow from these schools. Every class, yea, every girl in an out-going class, would be a missionary of thrift, industry, common-sense, and practicality. They would go forth, year by year, a leavening power into the houses, towns and villages of the Southern black population; girls fit to be the wives of the honest peasantry of the South, the worthy matrons of their numerous households.

"I am looking after the domestic training of the _masses_; for the raising up of women meet to be the helpers of poor men, the _rank and file_ of black society, all through the rural districts of the South.

"A true civilization can only be attained when the life of woman is reached, her whole being permeated by noble ideas, her fine taste enriched by culture, her tendencies to the beautiful gratified and developed, her singular and delicate nature lifted up to its full capacity, and then, when all these qualities are fully matured, cultivated and sanctified, all their sacred influences shall circle around ten thousand firesides, and the cabins of the humblest freedmen shall become the homes of Christian refinement through the influence of the uplifted and cultivated black woman of the South."

The above appeal is in the line of our American Missionary Association work. While we have higher schools and institutions for more thorough education, which these Negro women need as much as any women in the world, we are increasingly developing this idea which Dr. Crummell eloquently pleads.

We remind our friends and those Christian women who are interested in the uplifting of Negro womanhood, that the American Missionary Association, the _ordained agency_ of the Congregational Churches for this work, could do much more of it if the means were forthcoming. The marked success of the domestic training in our schools at Tougaloo, Miss., Talladega, Ala., Thomasville, Ga., Memphis, Tenn., and other points, shows the advantage gained in the twenty-five years' experience which the A.M.A. has had in its work for the Negroes.

We need the co-operation of all Christian women in carrying on these Industrial Schools already established, and to enable us to establish and carry forward _many more_.

* * * * *

{108}

YOUNG FOLKS.

WHAT SUSIE FOUND AT TOUGALOO.

(SEE FEBRUARY AMERICAN MISSIONARY.)

A roomful of girls of various sizes and complexions, all very much intent upon their work, and no one thinking just at that moment of a traveled fairy daughter, to adopt and love as her own, sent by a beneficent and tender-hearted northern "Fay." I doubt if Susie ever before saw so many "little women" laboring with needles and trying to set the troublesome stitches straight and even, to keep the thread from tangling and the seam clean. The results are far from perfection, but they are encouraging.

Some of the children _wear_ thimbles, and some set them upon their desks and _wiggle_ the needle through without their aid. Here is a child so tiny that no thimble in the box will serve her. She has a delicate face, with big brown eyes, and her fingers are the slenderest of appendages to her atoms of hands. Her sister, a year or so older, has a round, chubby face, with plump, dimpled, brown hands, but these fat fingers also must grow to the smallest thimble. Here is a quiet, modest little girl whose five baptismal names, Cynthia Ann Finetta Bloomfield Celeste, furnish her nothing prettier for every day use than "Lusty." She could not thread a needle or tie a knot when she joined the Hope Band, and the second year she wore one of the smallest thimbles with a bit of cloth inside for "chinking" to keep it on. Here Susie's sympathies are drawn out towards a thin, nervous-looking little Frances, who has a hand and foot crippled. She walks painfully along to her place and holds her work at a disadvantage in the poor little cramped left hand, but she likes to be there with the others.

Most of the heads are covered with little tight braids, on some heads standing at every angle, on some laid smoothly down, one braid tied to another. A few have their curly hair cropped close, and here is a little girl with a bushy mass overshadowing her lively face. She takes but a stitch or two until she goes up to the front and holds her work out for her teacher's inspection. Some time elapses before that lady can notice it and say, "That is pretty good, Lena; now go right on carefully." Lena returns slowly to her place, takes a stitch or two more and repeats the performance. When will the work be completed? O no, that is the way she used to do, but _now_--

A middle-sized "Topsy" comes pushing rudely forward, tossing her head and whispering disagreeable things to those she has to pass, and Susy hopes she will not be brought into any closer relations with _her_, when she happens to see her tenderly fondling a broken-armed, broken-legged dollie, while her work is being adjusted, and thinks somewhat better of her. There are several Lilies and Roses in this growing garden. The lilies are not white and the roses are not red, but more attractive and interesting to their teacher's eyes than the black pansies the flower gardeners {109} labored so long to produce. Their teacher is fond of flowers and has her windows full, even in winter, but she does not smile upon them with such a heartful of affection as upon these, nor can those bask in the light of her merry face more freely. As her short, round figure moves down the aisle and back, and Susie gets a good look at her, she says to herself, "Why surely this is Mrs. Santa Claus! How glad I am!" and it is not a strange conclusion, for her figure and expression _are_ like the poet's description of dear Saint Nick.

Here is a girl in one of the side seats a good deal taller than her teacher. Through the long, bright, warm summer she works in the cotton and the corn, alongside of father, brothers, uncles, men and women, boys and girls. Her hands are enlarged and roughened with toil, but she is taking pains to learn how to do this useful indoor work skillfully too.

There is a goodly company of these larger girls, but Susie does not feel any more afraid of them, nor of "the middle-sized bears and the wee tiny, small bears" than did little Silverhair in the nursery tale. She doubts, however, if these largest ones have not laid aside dollies, and thinks she must look among the "leaster" ones for the little _step-mother_ who will respect her own little Fay-mother's request to "take good care of her." But when the sewing-lesson is ended and she notices one and another bring to light a little dollie-daughter to hug in her arms as she walks homeward, and sees the sociable interest of all the rest, she feels no further doubt about the mother-love in all these little Southern bosoms and resigns all care as to which one shall be hers, leaving the whole question to Mrs. Santa Claus.

Perhaps some day we may call upon her when she is fully domesticated in her new home. There will not be many comforts and conveniences in that home. Possibly when we ask for Susie, her mamma will draw a little old box from under the head of her bed, as once when I called upon one of these little girls and asked her if she had a doll. It had lost some of its limbs and it was dressed in odds and ends, tacked together by the untaught little mother, but when I set the dollie on my knee and pretended to drink tea out of one of the tiny toy cups set forth from the same treasure-box, you could not find a more hilarious little mamma anywhere, though you should pick out one with all nursery stores at her command.

* * * * *

A LETTER FROM ONE OF OUR INDIAN PUPILS IN NEBRASKA.

SANTEE AGENCY, NEB.

_Dear Eastern Friends_:--We have had five good prayer meetings during two weeks, and I am very glad to tell you dear friends that some of our school-mates said they will try and do as God wants them to do. And some pray who never did before. No words can tell how I felt one evening {110} after we came home from meeting. Just before I went up stairs I asked the Matron if I could talk Dakota to tell my room-mate about the meeting. The subject was, "What must I do to be saved?" I told it to her the best I could. After I was through talking I asked her if she understood all what I meant and she said "Yes." We both were silent for one minute. I was praying to God in my heart to help me to help this dear school-mate of mine. Then in a little while she said, "I believe in Jesus and now I will always try and be a Christian." When she said that, I couldn't do anything more, I was so glad that my tears came. And before we went to sleep I ask her to pray after I did, and she did; this was the first time she prayed in her own words. It was so dark and I couldn't see anything but I knew she was crying by the way she spoke. After long time I thought she went to sleep; but all at once she call my name and said, "I wish tomorrow morning they would sing in Dakota, '_Ring the bells in heaven, there is great joy to-day_.'" Dear friends we kindly ask you to remember us when you offer prayer to our dear God.

Your friend,

----

* * * * *

RECEIPTS FOR FEBRUARY, 1888.

MAINE, $1,119.63.

Auburn. High St. Cong. Ch. 117.28 of which for Indian M. and 39.74 for Chinese M. 302.85

Augusta. Joel Spalding, to const. HON. WM. P. FRYE L.M. 30.00

Bangor. Central Cong. Ch. 75; Hammond St. Cong. Ch., 2, for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 77.00

Bridgeton. By Mrs. Hale, Pkg. Basted Work, for Selma, Ala.

Castine. Wm. G. Sargent, for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 5.00

Center Lebanon. Sab. Sch. Class., for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 4.10

Denmark. Box of C., for Mobile, Ala.

East Orrington, Sab. Sch. 2; Miss M.F. George, 1, for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 3.00

Edgecomb. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 13.00

Farmington Falls. By Miss Susan G. Crowell, for Freight 0.65

Hampden. Cong. Ch. 4.80

Harpswell. Mrs. John Dinsmore. for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 7.00

Island Falls. Miss D. Merriman, for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 2.50

Limington. Cong. Ch. 12.50

Monson. Rev. R.W. Emerson, for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 5.00

Newcastle. Mrs. Wm. Heath, for Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 1.00

New Gloucester. Ladies of Cong. Ch., Bbl. and Box of C., 1.75 for Freight, for Selma, Ala. 1.75

New Sharon, Cong. Ch. 3.00

North Bridgeton. Cong. Ch. 2.25

Norway. Mrs. Amos. I. Holt, Bbl. of C., for Wilmington, N.C.; ---- 2, for Freight 2.00

Orkland. H.T. and S.E. Buck, 20; Mrs. Trott, 3; "A Friend," 1 24.00