Various

“ Were it my mission to carry help and counsel to the lowly homes of our city, I might tell you such tales of the wretchedness and discomfort of many of these homes as would fill your hearts with pity—a wretchedness growing out of an utter lack of comprehension of the meaning of home, and showing the need of instruction in the simplest facts of household economy.
To carry so much of light and knowledge into these homes as would make them [9] abodes of health and thrift is a work worthy the noblest effort of any Christian woman. ”

“ He must be touched; the high and low must come together. Virtue will go out of the one into the other as it entered into her who touched the hem of a sacred garment. There is no salvation in acts of Congress; it is from the springs of action within. To awake these in the bosom of the Indian and consummate it in Christian character is the work of individual men by their contact and by their personal influence. ”

“ Good beef and flour and shoes, but second-rate men, whose average official life is less than two years, is the present provision for them.
The tender mercies of the Government to the Indian are cruel; the much-talked-of treatment of the slave owner was tender by comparison. The self-interest of the Southern barons was humanity itself, in contrast with the course of men sent in the name of a high duty, many of whom have been tempted, if not forced, into corruption. I would throw no slur on the better class among them, of whom the country is not worthy. ”

“ Realizing that the foundation of a strong moral nature must be laid first of all, [11] as the basis of true womanhood, shall we concentrate our work upon giving her religious instruction, and seek to bind her by bonds of Christian duty? Let me not seem for a moment to question the power of God’s grace to illuminate the heart and change the will; but until she better understands the force of Bible truth and has a nature more sensitive to receive it than is the case with many who come to us, religion, as she comprehends it, will do her no good. ”

“ Sometimes it seems that the colored woman is willingly—or under the irresistible pressure of circumstances—making her choice so rapidly and so fatally that the slow processes which are her only safety cannot reach the surface in time to save her. But the final decision in this matter does not rest with the present generation; the young girls who are now in our schools, and the children whose ideas they will mold, shall make the choice of her moral standing in the South in relation to both races, and of her intellectual and social standing among her own people. ”

“ Patiently and perseveringly hold her to this life until there begins to dawn upon her a vision of the noble and beautiful womanhood to which she may attain, and then help her to strive after it, through years of discouragement on the part of teacher and pupil, until a strong and true Christian character is built up to withstand the temptations and resist the tendencies that beset her. ”

“ If you are tempted to say this is asking too much for our girls, that we ought to be content with less, at less expenditure of time and money, remember that the girls for whom I speak are the best among their people—the few who will ever have a chance to attain to higher things. Look just behind them and see the throngs, who, in ignorance and woe and sin, are turning their eyes toward you. ”

“ When, by a sudden revolution the cords of the colored woman’s bondage were broken, and a new society of her own people sprang up around her, especially in the cities, the impress of old ideas was plainly seen. ”

“ The Indian is a child and needs a Father; physically mature, he is mentally an infant. He stands proud but helpless on the track of a locomotive. He will not heed the advice of whites inferior in natural force to himself, and such, as a rule, he has to deal with. No wonder the young prefer their own leaders. In the school of civilization only object lessons are good for anything. What lessons we have given the Indians!
Recent agitation has chiefly concerned the education, lands and rights of the race, and progress has been made in the way of opportunities offered, but the Indian has not moved. ”

“ It may be the dictate of expediency, but certainly it is not that of frankness and honesty, to speak to our benefactors only smooth things. There are shades as well as lights in missionary work. The tide is not always rising. ”

“ A sense of her own worth—a genuine self-respect which recognizes degradation and flees from it; that will not even listen to evil, must arise as she comes gradually to know the duty and dignity to which God created her. But if we bring our girls to the point where they are inclined to choose honor and uprightness, we must make this choice possible by putting into their hands the means of supporting themselves; we must train them to habits of industry and to right ideas of labor. ”

“ But all this has reference to white society; you are ready to ask what is its bearing on the colored girls? The humbler life in the old days reflected the ideas of the superior, as the second rainbow reflects the coloring of the first. ”

“ Take her early away from the home that oftentimes is no protection to her, and as there are no proper homes open to her, transplant her to as good a Christian home as our schools will afford; furnish her work to do when she has not money to meet the expense, and supplement this work by aid in money when necessary. Make her life in these homes as simple and true and elevating as genuine Christian culture will make it; throw around her the refinements of taste, that her own tastes may be improved; give her reading-rooms with wisely-chosen reading matter, music to refine and inspire ”

“ More than this, their tribal relations should be broken up, homesteads inalienable for at least twenty-five years should be assigned, and they should be left as citizens of the several states in which they are, to vote and be voted on.
Reservations are merely places for herding Indians; temporary, necessary experiments, that, after a given time, may become growing evils. Herding negroes in like manner would have been a curse to both white and black races. There has been more sentiment than sense in treating the Indian as a separate people. ”

“ To make such bread is an accomplishment of which any one might be proud. Besides the cooking and sewing, we teach our girls how to care for the sick. They have books, and prepare their lessons in this subject as in any other. They learn how to care for the room, and person of their patient, how to prepare such light foods as may be used without harm, the simple home remedies to be administered for ordinary diseases, and the preventatives for such diseases. About all this industrial work the girls themselves are very enthusiastic, seeming to enjoy it quite as well as any other school work. ”

“ As we enter, we find ourselves in the midst of a dozen girls between the ages of 12 and 16, whose eyes and fingers are busy with their work, while their tongues are making sweet music as they sing some simple Sabbath-school hymn. ”

“ We are made to blush at the congratulations the heathen Chinese have been proffering over the good-luck of the gambling Christian. We get the heart-ache as we see how sin breeds sin, how falsehood and profanity follow in the train of these dishonest gains. The heart-ache deepens as we see some others of our brethren swept away by sympathy or friendship, or possibly by some less amiable consideration into partial complicity with his wrong. ”

“ A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.
No Christian family can afford to be without missionary intelligence, and no missionary society can afford to be without readers of its publications; it had better give them to the readers without pay than to have no readers. Missionary zeal will die in the churches without missionary intelligence.
But it would be far better for both the societies and the readers if missionary news were paid for. This would give the magazine attentive perusal and the society relief from the reproach of a large expense for publication. ”

“ Well, in these two little rooms the two highest classes of girls are honored with practice in household arts, with the matron for their teacher. At first gatherings in the little dining-room were quite rare. The birthdays of the senior class were celebrated there, and guests sometimes entertained, but the girls are so proud of their housekeeping that now they are allowed all the practice they have time for. Absent graduates must remember the room with pleasure, as they send beautiful bouquets for the table. ”

“ The facts of human nature, and of experience, have been ignored in our treaties with the Indians, probably because we never really conquered them, but purchased peace on the best terms we could make.
Carrying the Indian from helplessness to self support is the most difficult administrative problem of our country. The Negro has taken care of himself. ”

“ The nation’s gratuities may do the Indian as much good as they are doing him harm, if wisely administered, especially the luxuries, which afford the best leverage. He is managed now by a class of men whose title, in spite of shining exceptions among them, is a byword and a reproach. Decayed clergymen, hungry politicians, and the broken of every profession, are not the ones to make citizens of the red man. ”

“ So far as army officers are gentlemen of character, force and experience, and of humane ideas (for there are opposing views) , I believe they are better fitted than any others to settle the Indian question. Their destructive work is nearly over: it has fitted them for the constructive work to be done. As officers they have peculiar advantages over civilians of the same capacity and worth, far less temptation and far stronger standing ground for the control of Indians. One-half of the sixty agencies might well be put at once under selected officers ”

“ The Indian question is upon us as never before. Those in the Indian Territory and the few thousands in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, North Carolina and other States, say 75,000 in all, are remnants of tribes who formerly lived east of the Mississippi River, are inclined to agriculture and domestic life, and have been considered superior to the nomadic tribes of the West. They long since ceased to trouble us, and are, at some places making commendable progress in education, stock raising and crops, besides generally holding their own in numbers. ”

“ Railroads are doing the work of pioneers and of soldiers, peace is not far off. There will soon be need of the army only as a national police, and half of the 15,000 troops at the West may be dispensed with. What better service can a few of its accomplished officers undertake than building up a civilization at its weakest point?
The Indian can be rescued from a sad fate only by personal devotion ”

“ Body and soul the slave of her owners; while her delicate mistress was shielded by all possible safeguards from evil, she was left exposed to all the storms of passion and sin, daring not to have any sense of her own value, her will for resistance growing weaker with each generation. ”

“ Only the light of Christian truth and example steadily shining can lift men up. Mission work among the Cherokees and others, and for the Sioux at Sisseton and Fort Sully and Santee agencies in Dakota, where wild Indians are settled on so peaceful prosperous homes that “a stranger traveling through the country would not believe that he was on an Indian Reservation,” attest the complete success of the Congregational, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian societies. ”

“ Thus, from the impulse to imitate, the colored girl has a source of hope in the advanced position held by her white sister. But her new power of independent self-direction, unshielded by the safeguards that the white girl has, unguided by the intellectual culture that the other can obtain, may work incalculable harm. ”

“ The senior girls take turns in being responsible for the breakfasts and teas, and in presiding at table. In addition to the two girls who preside, there is room for about a third of the teachers. So, as we cannot all go, there can be no general invitations, but each visit there has all the charm of a special invitation out to breakfast or tea. But the best of it all is the encouragement it gives the girls to practice the too often neglected art of good cooking. ”

“ American slavery, so recently abolished, has been opposed with righteous and relentless warfare, and the elevation of the Freedman has been urged by every patriotic and Christian consideration. The rights of the Indians, now so generally recognized, have always been advocated ”

“ Woman’s place in Southern society (I use the term society in its wider sense) has always been quite different from that which she holds in the North. Accustomed to be protected, and taught to consider a limited social life as her only sphere of activity, she was often beautifully womanly, but lacking in self-reliance ”

“ Fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars a year will not secure first-class men, who must travel far with their families, at their own expense, and be liable at any day to discharge and disgrace. By refusing adequate salaries, Congress (and Congress means the people) decides that the Indian’s greatest need shall be unsupplied, for lack of a trifling comparative cost. Millions for fuel and dry goods, but not one or two hundred thousand dollars more that men of repute and of capacity may go to the Agencies. ”

“ The new generation, forgetful of the past, is concerned for its future. The flood of misjudgment and distrust that ingulfed the Southland is rapidly subsiding, and the peaks and hill tops are tipped with the effulgence of the Sun of Righteousness. ”

“ The one remained on its old foundation of land and of labor—any shifting was voluntary. Game, the support of the other, has gradually failed and they have been roughly pushed from place to place till pauperism seems the only fixed fact of their life. The human machine after running for centuries does not readily reverse itself; the strain on the Indian is tremendous. Was greater ever put upon men?—force to control them, charity to weaken them. Justice demanded help, but wisdom demanded self-help as its condition. Exigency is man’s best teacher. “Necessity is the mother of invention;” ”