American Missionary | Page 7

of the most promising scholars in the university. His oration is said to have been an unusually brilliant effort.
WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE.--In the South there are now 16,000 colored teachers, 1,000,000 pupils, 17,000 in the male and female high schools, and 3,000,000 worshipers in the churches. There are sixty normal schools, fifty colleges and universities, and twenty-five theological seminaries. The colored people pay taxes on nearly $200,000,000 worth of property valuation. This is a wonderful showing for a race that has two hundred years of slavery and four thousand years of barbarism back of it; it needs no silent sympathy or patient waiting, when in twenty years it makes such a showing. American generosity has done for the South in twenty years what statesmanship has failed to do in over a century; but generosity should not be depended upon, as even that can reach a limit.
SUCCESSFUL IN BUSINESS.--North Carolina has a colored man whose business success is hard to find surpassed by even the white people. The Concord Times, a white journal, gives the following interesting sketch of his career:
He was born a slave, and until he was twenty-one years of age, never had a copper of his own. Possessed of a keen and adaptable mind, he has by his energy and untiring efforts accumulated a competency, equalled by few of his race in the South.
Warren Coleman commenced business here in 1879. He has lost everything by fire three times,--one time meeting with a loss of $7,000 and no insurance. Various purses of money were made up and sent him at this time, all of which he very nobly returned. But by pluck and energy he rose again.
He owns four farms, amounting in all to some 300 acres of land, and employs on them twenty regular hands. He is the owner of ninety-eight tenement houses and is still adding to the list, having in his employ at this time twenty carpenters and eight or ten brick masons, laborers, etc.
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THE SOUTH.
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REVIVAL AT LE MOYNE INSTITUTE.
PROF. A.J. STEELE.
It has been my privilege and my great joy to write you often during my nearly twenty years of continuous service under the Association, of God's blessing upon our work. We are now in the midst of one of the most gracious visitations that I have ever experienced, and I recall "times of refreshing" not a few. In 1875, the first great revival in connection with this school saw over a hundred and twenty-five of our pupils hopefully converted to Christ, and the young converts, by their faithfulness, overcame all the fixed notions and ways of the old churches on the subject of early conversions.
I have since that time, year by year, followed many of these young people, and know that the great majority of them have proven faithful followers of the Saviour, and many have lived lives of exceptional influence and usefulness. Since that notable year in the history of the school, but one year has passed without most evident tokens of God's gracious presence in the conversion of pupils attending the school. In some years the number has been large, and in others not so many have made open profession of faith in Christ. I think I am safe in saying that not a year, nor a month, has passed in which the school has not been markedly under the influence of the Spirit, giving guidance and instruction, and drawing, as with cords of love, many of our pupils to see in the religion of the cross a peace and joy to be found nowhere else. To this influence, the school owes all its success in every direction. For myself I can truly say that in the midst of the sorrow that has been my constant and only companion, besides my Saviour, the joy of this work and the consciousness of its acceptance with God have alone held me to the task laid upon me these years. I rejoice now, with all my fellow workers, that we are in the midst of another season of reaping, after months of sowing precious seed.
During the past week, two members of the senior class, young men, professed their faith in Christ in the quiet prayer meeting of the school, as did also a young lady of a lower class, and now, this week, Brother Wharton is with us, and to-day, at the first meeting led by him in the school, sixteen of our students, three more of the senior class, quietly but hopefully profess to become followers of the Master, with scores more earnestly seeking to enter in.
Since writing the above, two days of great but quiet interest have passed in our work. Between thirty and forty of our scholars, including five of the seniors and nearly