The American Missionary | Page 5

Talladega. We were in old times classmates and friends at Yale, when we called ourselves boys. "You must not stop in the Hall this time, but come to my home and we will talk over what Talladega is doing and what we ought to do," he insisted. Precious days were those, as I now recall them, with this scholarly man, so instinct with faith, so earnest and hopeful in his work, so happy in his family, and so full of plans for the time to come. We talked together of the interests of the institution which, within seventeen years, he had led on from a normal school to a college. Together we went through the various classrooms and heard the recitations; the mathematics cultivating the reasoning powers, the geography giving correct views of the world, the history widening the vision of it, the astronomy unfolding God's love of order and truth. We heard together the lessons in language, in ethics, in mental philosophy, and saw the students taking on strength and character, whom he had watched from grade to grade, from year to year. Not only in the theological department, where students were intent upon their calling, but in the farm work, in the industrial classes, everywhere, and on everything, was the stamp of earnest Christianity. So, through president and teachers, the highest ideals had been constantly held before the students. It was inspiration to me to meet once more the devoted teachers of the College, and the students, greedy for knowledge and willing to work for it, on the farm, in the industries, and in whatever way they could earn enough to help themselves through the year. When the time came for the "Goodbye," with the hearty invitation "come again," he did not know, nor I, that before a month should pass I should "come again" to look my farewell upon my silent friend who could no more welcome me. He had no word for me but I heard a word, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors and their works do follow them." Surely the works of this man of God will follow him. The slow procession on that funeral day moved out of sight, and the next day the usual College work went on, but the days for Talladega have been sad.
I would that I might extend the invitation to continue and visit a score of places with schools and churches on this journey, each of which gave to me its own suggestions. There is the unique and fruitful school at Cotton Valley, with its record of transformations; there are Selma and Tougaloo, Jackson, New Orleans, Mobile, Thomasville, Albany, Marshallville, Andersonville, Macon, Savannah, Charleston, Knoxville, Jonesboro, and others, where schools and churches, hand in hand, are saving the needy peoples. I can only say that as I visited these and other places I was constantly cheered both by the fidelity of the workers and by the efficiency of their work. The story of these workers together with God will never be fully told.
In many places I found deepest poverty. The greatest luxury of the poor people is the "schooling" of their children. Parents will go hungry for this. Many of the children trudged along barefooted for miles when ice was on the pools by the roadside. I found, as I have before, churches and schools leavening their communities with more intelligent manhood and womanhood, with better homes, with wiser industries and economies, with stronger and truer characters. Many times I said: "If the good people who have ordained and sustained this work until now could only see it and know it as it actually is, our distressing debt would vanish within half a year. Our Jubilee would come, and we should 'arise and shine and give God the glory.'"

A Home Mission Work Little Understood.
Secretary Frank P. Woodbury.
Those who have visited only the cities and towns of the South have not seen the black South. In the six Southern states containing what has been called the Black Belt there are four millions of negro people. Less than half a million of these live in the cities, towns, and villages, while more than three millions and a half of them dwell on the plantations of the country. Mr. Bryce in his work on America has called attention to the enormous difference between the colored churches of the cities and those of the poor negro districts, in some of which not merely have the old superstitions been retained but there has been a marked relapse into the Obeah rites and serpent worship of African heathenism. The rank superstitions, the beliefs in necromancy and witchcraft, the wild orgies of excitement, the utter divorce between the moral virtues and what is called religion, which