Various

“ Another of my dear Sunday-school scholars, a young lady of twenty, for whom I’ve labored, prayed and trembled for many long months, has been ‘born again.’ She is radiant with the new love in her soul, and when I think how long she was indifferent to all His entreaties, and know what an unsatisfactory life she was leading. ”

“ Almost all that can be gained for the negro by legislation has been accomplished; to overcome prejudices which wrong and hinder him, will now depend largely upon himself. The gratifying fact, attested by prominent men all over the South, is that he is playing his part with commendable manliness, and is gaining what will never be long withheld from those who deserve it—the respect of his white neighbors. ”

“ We know of a young colored woman, a graduate of the high-school of the town in which she lives, admitted by all parties to be the best scholar of her class, and one of the best ever graduated from the school, who cannot find employment in the profession for which she has so ably qualified herself, only because she has a trace of negro blood in her veins. ”

“ To one who has seen the negro often under religious excitement, it is evident that he seeks it as many men do intoxication, for the mere pleasurable excitement; he neither feels nor hears, nor does he know of reasons for being a better man morally because of his religion; if it only makes him happier, it meets his need, and the only demand he has to make of it.
This is a just idea of what conversion was under the old-style minister among the negroes. ”

“ He recognizes a Great Spirit; he believes in immortality; he has a keen intellect; he is a clear thinker; he is brave, fearless, and until betrayed, he is true to his plighted faith; he has a passionate love for his children and counts it joy to die for his people. Our most terrible wars have been with this noblest type of Indians and with those who have been the white man’s friends.”
Nearly three years’ experience at Hampton has shown that the chief danger, the death-rate, while serious, is not discouraging. Our 80 Indian pupils are now in better health than ever before. ”

“ We ask ourselves, as we notice their quiet and decorous manner, if these can be some of the strange and uncouth people who came knocking at our doors two years ago, and as we watch the sweet, softening expressions stealing over their faces, telling of reverent and gentle thoughts within, we wonder still more if these are the very faces from which once it seemed impossible to win an answering smile. ”

“ From the outraged negro, for whom the country can now do nothing but help educate him, and who, indeed, needs nothing but intelligence to fit him to hold his own, our people are turning to the Indian and demanding that Government open before him the only way to manhood and citizenship—rights and education. ”

“ And so it is chiefly by what we compel others to do, that we are to estimate the value of our intelligent and largely undenominational work in the South. The Freedmen are beginning to see that religion is something different from dreaming dreams or seeing visions, or shouting, or anything of the kind; that it means honest, pure, industrious lives, inspired and controlled by the spirit of Jesus Christ. Education is securing something better than such conversions, in fact is making them impossible with the new generation. ”

“ He who wisely works in that line cannot fail. The way to get it is to ask for it, prepare for it, push for it, be worthy of it, pray for it, and it will come. The people of the country will sustain a good work for Indians.
Some may object that it will trespass upon the negro. Has it been so here? How would our colored students feel to-day if our Indians were to be withdrawn? They would vote solidly against it; they would lose and not gain, and they know it. Is the mutual love and respect of these races of no account?
The American Missionary Association aims to destroy caste. ”

“ To attempt the mazes of the city—alleys where one cabin differed from another cabin only in its greater or less dilapidation without, and squalor within; to hazard a walk across the common and bottoms through the almost impassable mud, were equally difficult beginnings, and yet it is in these city alleys and in the bottoms and commons outside the city limits that the work is waiting—a harvest too great for the few laborers. ”

“ Thankful to God, our gracious and mighty Redeemer, for this right and privilege of choosing and adopting our own church forms, ceremonies, and government, and of worshiping God as our conscience dictates, we hereby solemnly pledge ourselves to God and to one another that we will maintain a Scriptural Christian character, and support such laws and regulations founded on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as shall be adopted from time to time by two-thirds of the members of this church. ”

“ Anglo-Saxon prejudice and conceit have laid it down as a general rule, a law of race, that the negro is only a somewhat superior grade of monkey, incapable of any high degree of intellectual development; that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, and the best use he can be put to is to make a target of him for the training of our soldiers in musket firing. ”

“ Indeed, it seems as if the difference between those in the cabin and those in the frame house and the little brick lies here: the former have never tried to get above their wretched poverty; the latter have tried, and, with a measure of success, still remain poor. Those in the cabins need everything—food and clothing primarily, no doubt; but of paramount importance are their other needs, viz., to be elevated from their sloth and indolence and licentiousness by the forces of education and religion. Those in the frame house and little brick need encouragement in the path already chosen. ”

“ We have had less faithful activity in religious matters thus far in our school year than usual, owing to a variety of circumstances, but during this week the attention of very many has been aroused, and we are walking under the shadow of the manifest presence of the Spirit. Quite a number have already given good evidence that they have submitted to Christ, and several now are apparently not far from the kingdom of God. We have a large attendance, there being 102 girls and about 90 boys in the family, and we hope to gather a large harvest for the Master. ”

“ We came near making a bad mistake about Harry. The day that the minister had appointed to talk to the scholars who were to unite with the church was a crisp winter one, and the creek was covered with glittering ice. Harry went skating; almost the first chance he’d had since he left Dakota. There was no way to tell the time; he was having splendid fun. He stayed too long; when he came back it was too late for the meeting. The next day, when the minister kindly made an appointment for him by himself, one of the first questions he asked was, “Harry, do you pray?” “No.” “Not pray?” “No.” ”

“ It works well; such mingling will strengthen and not weaken your schools, if Hampton experience is safe to go by. To make men of the savages on our frontier and to save their souls by putting them with the ex-slave of the country is a grand work, if it has been called “sensational.”
Why not take these twenty Indian children that the Indian department are ready to give you? This would be safe; then feel your way along. Let them study mornings and work afternoons, and play Saturdays. We do so. The labor is one of some delicacy and difficulty. But the Indian is like everybody else. ”

“ A serious doubt ought by this time to take possession of the public mind whether $32,000,000 spent in Indian wars during the past dozen years is not rather expensive target practice, and whether the results shown by those who, under great disadvantages, have been attempting to civilize and Christianize the Indians, are not of such character as to demand most emphatically that our method of dealing with them shall be changed. ”

“ New opportunities for work are presenting themselves almost every week, in the new West, the South, for Indian girls, for colored women and children. There is no quarter to which we can look that we do not see those, dear to us by nature, and by what Christ has done for us, waiting to be helped and to be taught ”

“ I write this paper especially to urge upon the American Missionary Association and its friends some effort for Indians in connection with their institutions for colored people.
The mingling of races at Hampton has worked admirably. Our colored students increased in number last year by 37 in spite of the 70 Indians for whom separate and special pecuniary provision was made by Government and by friends.
Bringing Indians to negro schools is like putting raw recruits among old soldiers. ”

“ We have at once an interesting fact and practical suggestions in the action of the Ladies’ Missionary Society of Elgin, Ill. This society is a branch of the Woman’s Board for the Interior, and is equipped with two treasurers—one to receive contributions for the foreign, and the other for home work.
At the meeting referred to, papers were read on the work at Hampton, on the work at Fisk, and on the school and church work of the A. M. A., which gave great interest to the meeting, and awakened enthusiasm for this branch of home mission work. ”

“ Now we rejoice in a comfortable and convenient brick building, in a very pleasant part of the city, in the midst of a grove of pine and live-oak trees. This present year our work has been assuming new proportions, which, although a cause for great encouragement, involved us in new difficulties. Early in the year, for lack of room, we were obliged to refuse forty or fifty pupils admission to the intermediate and primary grades. In the course of a few weeks the A. M. A. sent us another teacher, and a new department was at once formed. But where should it find a home? Our walls would not expand. ”

“ We know of one case where a wealthy man from New York, spending the winter in the South, became interested in a negro public school near his hotel. He converted the rude building into a New England school-house, supplied with first-class apparatus, and took great satisfaction in what he had done for the poor negroes. Next year the negro school was transferred to another building, and the whites made this one, with its books, globes, and philosophical apparatus, the foundation of a higher school for their own race. ”

“ He is industrious, economical, has good talent, is a good student, one of our most advanced pupils, a zealous Christian, a member of this church, and anxious to gain a thorough education, that he may preach Christ to his fellow-men.
He has no resources but his own labor. He earned nearly but not quite enough during vacation to carry him through this school year. He asked my advice whether he should stay at school or go and teach a school that is offered him. I advised him to stay while his money lasted, believing that when that is gone the Lord will send more. Ten dollars will meet his wants. ”

“ Nothing here has ever filled me with more pleasure than watching our students’ recreations, in which race lines are utterly forgotten. They exist between them, and many feared, in consequence, disastrous results of their mingling. Two of our most important and successful Indian teachers are negroes, graduates of this school.
Three seventy-dollar scholarships are contributed by Virginia churches for this Indian work, from Petersburg, Portsmouth, and Hampton, respectively. Southern churches are aiding negro schools. ”

“ We, therefore, ask the Christian women in our churches whether, in addition to the interest, money and prayer they are giving to kindred societies, they do not wish to give also to this particular work which seems at once so urgent and so promising. ”

“ In addition to my visits, I have tried to reach the women by means of cabin prayer-meetings, and to help the girls and young women by the medium of sewing-schools. I have two schools in successful operation in different parts of the city. One numbers twenty pupils, the other nearly forty. We begin with prayer and short Scripture reading, and then with great eagerness the girls set about their sewing, or lesson in cutting, as the case may be. When a garment is finished, each girl purchases her own work for a dime or fifteen cents. ”

“ When the claims of the colored women of the South and of the Indian women of the West have been heard and recognized by their sisters of New England, we are confident that the work of elevating and saving them will receive a new and wonderful impulse. ”

“ There may be exceptions which, after all, confirm the rule to which they do not wholly conform, but to say that it is by exceptions the rule is to be proven, is to betray a blind adhesion to maxims whose claim to credence is their antiquity alone. ”

“ It would be well for those who complain of the slow progress made for better feelings and sentiments among the Southern whites in regard to the negroes, and their manifest unwillingness to accord to them their rights, quietly to digest a recent letter from the Superintendent of Schools in Cambridge, Mass., who explains that he has not employed properly qualified colored teachers in that city, simply because there is so much color prejudice among the people that he deems it inexpedient to do so. ”