A GOOD EXAMPLE.
Mrs. Sally Perry died in Boston, Mass., June 17th, aged ninety-one years. The slaves had a large place in her sympathies, when she could do little more than offer her prayers in their behalf. But when the war had set them free, and left her charity at liberty to enter on practical offices of good will, she eagerly embraced the opportunity, watching for openings. She read in the American Missionary, for 1866, a call for funds to establish orphan asylums for the thousands of homeless colored children in the South. She came to our office in Boston for information in regard to it. The result was a donation of $500, to found the Brewer Orphan Asylum in Wilmington, N. C., in memory of her deceased daughter. And, year by year, while the Asylum existed, she gave it the interest of $2,000, devised in her will for its benefit.
When the Asylum was no longer needed, the city of Wilmington undertaking to care for its poor, with the consent of Mrs. Perry, the funds which she had invested in it were transferred to the Brewer Normal School in Greenwood, S. C. This school so enlisted her thoughts and sympathies, that she determined to make over to it, two years before her death, the amount she had designed for it at her decease. Accordingly, she paid over to the Association, for the benefit of the school, two one-thousand-dollar U. S. Bonds, which realized $2,416.25. The writer remembers how her face shone after the act was done. Indeed, giving seemed to be, to her, a supreme luxury. The whole amount which she contributed to the Association, for its work of physical relief and Christian education, was not far from $4,000. And the school which she has left in her daughter’s name, the support of which is mainly from her bequest, will go on perpetuating her influence for the years and generations to come. Many, in the great day, will rise up and call her blessed. Are there not other dear saints of God, friends of the poor and the needy, who will imitate her spirit and her example?