LOUISIANA.
Concert—Last Year’s Graduates—Gifts Acknowledged.
PROF. J. K. COLE, STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY.
We have reached another mile-stone in our school work. Many of our older pupils, especially the senior class, would have been glad to keep in harness, but circumstances were favorable for a two days’ break in school routine, and we have it.
Last evening the singing class, under the direction of Prof. McPherron, gave a concert at Central Church. The house was filled with as fine an audience as could be gathered in any city. There was a generous sprinkling of “white folks,” including several of the local board of trustees and other appreciative friends. The proceeds will help some of our needy students to books; while a greater and more lasting good will result from the influence of the music sung—not upon those only who took part in the singing, but upon the large audience who listened so attentively, and who were cheered and encouraged by what the young people of their race are doing.
New scholars come in almost every week, and though some drop out our number is kept well up to 200.
We hear interesting and encouraging reports from our last year’s graduates, who are all teaching. Dr. J. E. Roy has lately seen two of them, and reports that they are doing well. One has an evening school for the parents and older ones, and both are doing good work in Sabbath-school.
In a letter just received from one of them she says that she has to humor the parents in their whims, or they keep their children out of school. She writes: “Before school began my ability to teach was doubted by a father. He wanted to get a book for his son, who had never been to school; he intended to buy a Webster’s speller. I told him what book he needed, but he would not get it until many of the patrons of the school reasoned him into it. I have a Sabbath-school, which is almost beyond my ability to teach. I am superintendent, treasurer, secretary, and everything. I find it difficult to interest the children. Last Sabbath there was an attendance of twenty-seven.” Of her day-school she writes: “It is very difficult to make the children think that they do not know everything. Many of them have been studying books that they cannot even read understandingly. I am trying to govern by kindness as much as possible, and punish only when I see that I cannot possibly help it. I think the children are progressing as rapidly as they could anywhere under like circumstances.”
Thus the influence of our school and our teaching is extended, and in this way are the masses to be reached. Christian people of the North, let the means be liberally provided to educate these teachers who are to carry light and knowledge to their people.
Our work is not all overspread with cloudless skies. We are under many disadvantages, and experience some sore disappointments. Not all whom we look upon with great hopes and earnest desires that their future may be marked by Christian usefulness, meet our expectations. We find careless and idle and heedless pupils; some, though they are very eager to learn, and work hard, make very slow progress; but, to the credit of this people be it said, a stubborn or wilfully disobedient pupil is rare. On the whole, the encouraging cases are largely in the majority, and the opposite kind lead us to exercise more care, perseverance, patience and prayerfulness.
Our thanks are due to the ladies of the Congregational Church at Colchester, Conn., and to the ladies of the Free Church, Andover, Mass., for a barrel of bedding each, for the Mission Home. The contents were especially acceptable at the time received, for the Sunny South had on, just then, a decidedly winterish aspect, with the mercury at 18 degrees. Now we are in the midst of spring, with a profusion of orange blossoms, roses and green leaves.