BEGGING LETTER.
[We give a prominent place in our pages to Mrs. Chase’s letter, hoping it may meet with speedy and abundant answers. These calls, dear friends, are frequent, and they are urgent; but they are the calls of our Divine Lord in the person of His poor children, that we give them a fair chance to rise up from the degradation into which they have been thrust, and in which wicked prejudice and selfishness would keep them. We earnestly hope Mrs. C.’s experience of ten years ago will be by as much more blessed in your responses, as our encouragement in this work, and apprehensions of its value, are enlarged.—Ed. Miss.]
Atlanta, Ga.
Begging letters! How you hate them! so do we! How often have we been deluded with the hope that there was to be no more need of this unpleasant duty. Friends unexpectedly come to the rescue of needy students. Often since 1869 large donations have set our feet upon mountain tops when we had expected to remain years in the valleys. But every little while we have to meet our old bug-bear. After one year’s absence we had been back but a few days when President Ware said, “These twenty-six new rooms are to be furnished; you’ll write some letters for us, won’t you, Mrs. Chase?” Now that means begging; but those of you who know anything of the type of President Ware’s devotion to Atlanta University, know that the only reply possible for his friends to make would be, “Certainly, sir.” So here I am doing the thing you and I hate.
This begging money to furnish rooms brings up so many memories, I must ask you to indulge me in a few reminiscences.
Eleven years ago we had but one building—teachers, scholars, sleeping-rooms, dining room, etc., all crowded into that one. Enough furniture was sent from an abandoned school in Augusta to make the teachers’ rooms comfortable. In the students’ rooms, a barrel with a board on it did the double duty of washstand and table. In the summer of 1870, a new building for young men was well on its way. It was our first summer in Atlanta. Some one suggested that it would be pleasant to have individual friends, Sunday-schools and churches furnish the dormitories, and keep with us a memento of their generosity by placing the donor’s name over each door.
How well I remember with what enthusiasm I sat down, ten years ago, to write my first begging letter. I gazed then upon this same charming view that I am feasting my eyes upon at this moment, and drank in hope and courage from this wide north view, with the strong old Kenesaw towering in the distance.
Soon responses came. You little realize how much joy has been brought to weary teachers on opening letters with a twenty-five-dollar check for a room. One such occasional letter compensated for many chilling ones, and lightened the weary hours spent in timidly addressing this friend and that. Nearly all of us turned beggars, and soon had the name of our home church or Sunday-school, our native town or some dear friend, beaming down upon us as we walked through the buildings. At length, every student’s room became sacred to the memory of some faithful friend of the Freedmen. Some donations came as thank-offerings for dear ones restored to health. At the end of one corridor is a group of four rooms where three are named for three sisters whose husbands have all been engaged in Southern work, and the fourth bears the name of their sainted grandfather, whose prayers and tears, mingling with multitudes all over our land, doubtless hastened on the glad day his eyes were never here permitted to see.
In the wing of the young men’s building is a room furnished by a gentleman who named it for a dear brother stricken down by consumption when nearly through his studies, and who gave great promise of usefulness. This gentleman has had a book-case placed in that brother’s room, and sends frequent donations of books for the use of the occupants of “Ferrier” room.
An Andover schoolmate, an Abbott Academy girl, named a room for her father, a devoted friend of the slave, and sends for its walls pictures, brackets, etc. Abbott Academy, as a school, has furnished a room in each building. One room is named for Dr. Gurley, of Washington, Abraham Lincoln’s beloved pastor. Just beside it is “Alice Carey,” in memory of an only daughter, a precious bud opening under brighter skies. Opposite is the name of the devoted father.
“Celeste,” my dearest companion in girlhood, though so angelic then, speaks to me now only of her celestial home.
“Little,” the young physician, brave soldier, and devoted husband of another dear friend, reminds me of the sweet promise that the darkness shall some time be made light.
So each of the hundred rooms has some history, many doubtless very precious to the donors, while unknown to us.
I must write of one more name, “Clarke,” which always deeply moves me. In 1862, our lamented E. P. Smith, whose earthly life went out in the Dark Continent, was laboring with his efficient and devoted wife in the hospitals of Nashville, Tenn., under the Christian Commission. Their first-born and only son, Clarke, sickened and died. Instead of leaving their post, heartbroken, they remained at the side of those wounded and dying soldiers, enclosed the precious dust in its little casket, and sent it to their dear Northern home.
In 1870, without any personal appeal, but in response to a letter in the Missionary, soliciting aid in furnishing rooms, came a precious note, calling down upon us and our work benedictions, of which so many have felt the inspiration, and closing with, “Please find enclosed $40 for a room in Atlanta University; please name it Clarke.
Yours, for the Master,
E. P. Smith.”
This summer, through the generosity of R. R. Graves, a large wing, which has been so much needed, is being added to the girls’ building. $25 will buy a neat, plain set of furniture for each of the rooms. I am sure there are some friends who will be glad to know of this further opportunity of sending $25 and some dear name.
Yours very truly,
Mrs. T. N. Chase.