Various

“ If this is not an example of commendable church devotion and courage, show us one that is so.
We look for a fuller, stronger school this year than ever before. I sometimes think these people have become so accustomed to adversity and trial, that they come out stronger under it than from any other experience. May it not be that God is leading them through rough ways to better things than we think? ”

“ In our Salutation to our friends, we spoke of the call for the enlargement of our work that confronts us on all sides. During the struggle of the past few years for the payment of our debt, we could have but one answer for the pressing appeals that came to us for more room and better accommodations—an answer which was hard to give and hard to receive, for those who saw so clearly the great good that would result from a comparatively slight expenditure of money. ”

“ There is a temperance lodge in Camden of one hundred and forty members.
It was a bad county where I taught. I was careful about teaching there. They never had a school before. No land is owned by colored people. There is much opposition to their education. The immorality of the place is explained by the fact that they formerly had stills there. Preachers are not moral men. They are opposed to “foreign” teachers. Poor whites create a good deal of disturbance. Land is owned by those who owned it during slavery times, and they will not sell it to white or colored. ”

“ Africa looms up with more distinctness as a field of Christian labor. Not only triumphant exploration and crowding missionary enterprises stir the Christian heart, but the very difficulties and disasters arouse new zeal. Our hopeful endeavors to introduce the colored man of America as a missionary to the land of his fathers adds a new element of hope and activity. ”

“ Commencing with points of etiquette, dress, sketches of lives of famous women, announcing the latest fashion items when they happen to be suitable, and so winning the confidence and arousing the interest of the class, it is comparatively easy to come to graver counsels concerning morals, health, danger of association with people of loose principles, the lowering of standards of personal honor, and finally the teaching properly due a daughter from her mother’s lips. ”

“ The whites, on the whole, are better to the teachers than the colored people are. I succeeded in getting six men to stop using tobacco while attending school, and then they said if they could stop fifty-five days they could all their life-time.
Somehow they looked at me like they looked at Columbus when he first came to America. Preachers are all intemperate men, and some of them said they could not preach well unless they had some whiskey in them. I taught four times in the same place, and have had a larger school each time. The morals of the colored people depend on the morals of the whites. ”

“ If there is a God who rules the world, and institutes governments over men; if these governments are unjust and oppressive, it must be an unjust God who causes all this; and why should they love and worship such a being? ”

“ Our public library is demonstrating its influence and usefulness in a gratifying way, in awakening in many laboring people a love of reading and of thought, aside from the great advantage it is to the school directly and indirectly. During the summer months, considerably over one hundred volumes were drawn and read. Among many others several white persons of most excellent standing availed themselves of its privileges. Of these latter, one is principal of a boys’ and girls’ school in our vicinity. ”

“ We’ve got a first-class old idol, and we don’t believe in nothing no more. So, if you please, Sir, will you please tell them Christian boys to fork over half of all the money they’re got, and to remember how blessed it is to consecrate it to real genuine heathen.”
There is no instance on record in which a heathen has been converted as quickly as was Master Jaggars. The Superintendent held him by one ear, and at the tenth stroke of the cane Mister Jaggars renounced his heathenism and promised to smash his idol and return to the Christian faith without a moment’s delay. ”

“ As teachers became better acquainted with the needs of their fields, sewing lessons were given, or sewing schools established in connection with daily work. While teaching deft use of the needle, to mend old garments and cut new, there is opportunity to speak apt words about love of finery, habits of wastefulness or extravagance, and improper hours, all of which find quick lodgment in minds eager for new ideas. It is no slight gratification to teachers that, in large assemblies, they can select their students by a more quiet, suitable dress and dignified bearing. ”

“ We have no such opportunity for reaching those under our educational care as is offered by a boarding-school. The parents of most of our pupils are connected with some church, and the children themselves with Sunday-schools. The kind of instruction they receive is one of the necessities of our continuance. The growing intelligence of the colored preachers, and the attractiveness of the large congregations which gather about them, make our beginning less attractive to the young, who otherwise might prefer our place of worship. ”

“ The most encouraging outlook before us, however, is in the deeper spiritual and prayerful interest which our work awakens. Among other signs of this fact are the aroused attention of the praying women of the North to the woes and wants of the colored women and girls in the South, the increasing volume of [Pg 2] prayer going up from the churches of the North for Africa, and the prayer and consecration awakened in its behalf among the colored people of the South. ”

“ Of special agencies for training colored girls to better habits, boarding schools claim the first place. If there had been seventy, instead of seven homes of this kind, we could to-day report a fairer record of virtue and purity. Under the constant supervision of faithful teachers, who regulate the hours, walks and visits of those in their charge, there is opportunity to acquire a love for systematic ways and a pure home life. With the instinctive imitation of their race they adopt the manners and sentiments of the ladies living under the same roof and sitting at the same table. ”

“ Most everybody uses whiskey and tobacco. I talked on temperance, distributed temperance papers and read to them. Took the New York Witness and read it to the people. I think I did some good among the children. The children of the poor whites are knocking about on the road all the time. They had a school one month, then gave it up. Young men spend Sunday in gambling; guess they are doing it right now. Some said I was not teaching them anything because I did not use the blue-back speller. The houses of poor whites are just like the colored, but their clothes are not so good. ”

“ They realize, as we do, that there is always some peril in going to the West Coast, especially for a white man; but the professor is in his prime, of sound health, and we believe will be so prudent in all matters of exposure and of living that we have no great fears for him. And yet, when we remember those who have fallen, we pray the Lord, and beg all the friends of Africa to join with us in the prayer, that He will keep these His servants from harm, will prosper them in their mission and bring them back in health. ”

“ Had a prayer meeting which was largely attended. Poor whites use more whiskey than the colored people. Whites seem kind to blacks, lend them money and horses, and help them in every way.
I had an average attendance of thirty-three and a night-school of fifteen. Taught on an old plantation, on which there used to be five hundred slaves. Ignorance has great sway there. People have good stock, but cannot buy land. ”

“ The young people were especially urged not to be content with a little schooling, nor even with a good common school education, but to press forward with a determination to secure the very highest education that can be secured. The idea that the schools at Chattanooga, Athens, Florence and Memphis ought to be feeders of Fisk University was well brought out. These schools cannot give the high education that can be gained at Fisk, and their success should be measured largely by the number of students they send to Fisk University. ”

“ Parents want teachers to teach from early dawn to candle-light, and even to beat knowledge into the pupils.
2. Intemperance and licentiousness abound to a fearful extent, not only among the laity, but also among the clergy.
3. The poor whites need education and moral and religious instruction as much as the colored people, and our students are reaching some of them in their influence.
4. Public school privileges in the South are limited, and it will be a long time before suitable buildings are provided and efficient teaching secured. ”

“ Members and officers of churches are engaged in the trade, and scruple not to advertise conspicuously that branch of their business, which we regard as exceedingly immoral. Yet there are some churches, both white and colored, whose rules and discipline would delight the heart of a Puritan. ”

“ Every day’s developments make this the more plain. In like manner the rights and wrongs of the Indian never forced him upon public attention with a more imperative demand for answer. So, too, the right of the Chinaman to a home and legal protection on the Pacific coast, has never become more clearly defined or more intelligently recognized. Constitutional enactments and hoodlum mobs have only set forth his wrongs more sharply and made our duty more plain. ”

“ Moreover, the heathen small boy lives in a country where tigers and other delightful wild beasts abound, and where the exciting spectacle of a widow burning to death in company with her husband’s corpse—an attraction which no circus in this country has had the enterprise to offer—is frequently exhibited free. Of course, the small-boy of Christian lands envies the blessed lot of his heathen brother, and would give worlds had he, too, been born a heathen. Now, when this envious small-boy is compelled to give 50 per cent. ”

“ It is the exceptional small-boy of this variety who heads expeditions against the Indians and organizes gangs of juvenile highwaymen. That these enterprises do not meet with success is due to forces beyond his control, but they display the greatness of his intellect and the boldness of his character. Of this type of small-boy is Master Jaggars, of North Meriden, Conn., who lately devised an ingenious and entirely novel scheme for arresting the flow of American copper coins toward the heathen pockets of juvenile India. ”

“ We have an excellent corps of teachers, and though one or two of our schools are suffering [Pg 25] because our reviving business prosperity involves their pupils in evening work, others are steadily increasing in size, and increasing still more, I trust, in usefulness. At the last communion at Bethany church seven were baptized. A much larger number than that have recently united with the Association of Christian Chinese, thus avowing themselves as Christians, and coming into the process of test work and training, which we feel to be necessary before they are finally accepted in the church. ”

“ We shrank from meeting our full responsibility in this direction, and nerved ourselves to the task only when circumstances convinced us that it was an imperative duty. The ordinary study of physiology is good, but in colored schools something more is needed. Teach young girls to reverence the body, to regard all its functions as gifts of God, and the possibilities of motherhood to be sacredly guarded, and they are transformed from animals to thoughtful women. ”

“ It was natural that the spirit of independence which found full scope among the Freedmen should seek for a church organization and connection with an ecclesiastical body whose history was not tainted with oppression. This disposition, however, has sometimes asked for more license for fleshly indulgences than pure Congregationalism permits. In this city it is impossible for your Superintendent to find a provision store having any considerable variety of goods that does not include among its principal commodities wines and liquors. ”

“ More sensible and healthful modes of dress, increasing discretion of manners and modesty of deportment, are immediate results of a plan that a few regarded as an innovation, but which has abundantly justified itself. ”

“ The Advance is a constantly mediating and co-ordinating agency for all the interests which specially concern the churches, binding all the “causes,” missionary and others, into one cause, so as to bring to bear the momentum of the total Christian movement of the time in aid of every specific Christian endeavor.
6. It purposes to be as helpful as possible to all pastors.
7. It keeps in view all the wants of the family, and with a warm sympathy for both parents and children sincerely endeavors to make itself welcome in every home.
TERMS.—Single subscribers $3 per year in advance. ”

“ At present we are obliged to receive many primary scholars, not only to relieve the public want, but also with the view of raising up normal scholars, for whom the Institute has been specially designed. We regret the seeming necessity that is laid upon the colored parents of taking their children from the public schools. We do not advise their [Pg 18] action. The feverish desire for education which seized the body of colored people immediately after emancipation has subsided. ”

“ Colored people have from one acre to 2500 acres of land, and are about as well educated as the whites. Children are compelled by their parents to come to Sunday-school. I kept up a Sunday evening prayer-meeting. Several of the children acknowledged Jesus and turned over to the church. ”