THE CHINESE.
—The chief official at the custom house near Bangkok, Siam, is a negro. The position is a very responsible one, and was given to him on account of his education, honesty and capacity. He is said to discharge his duties with much efficiency and satisfaction to the government.
—Mr. S. A. Butler, a pure negro, at one time a protégé of Anson Burlingame, is in charge of one of the most important departments of the Chinese Steamship Company. He is a natural organizer, and when employed by the company, systematized the business, brought order out of chaos, introduced economy, enforced discipline, and rivaled the Europeans in their steamship service. The result is that after two years’ work this Chinese Steamship Company, instead of running at a loss, has earned over $1,000,000 net profit.
—Some gentlemanly Chinese laborers in Chicago gave a banquet to about two hundred of their American Christian friends, not long since, in the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association. The sons of the Flowery Kingdom were in full bloom, quiet, radiant and attentive. The tables were beautifully adorned and sumptuously loaded. Speeches were made by Rev. James Powell, Franklin Fisk and Ah Sing Get. The entertainment was enlivened by the singing of a number of “Moody and Sankey” songs, which lost nothing by the slight Chinese brogue with which they were so earnestly rendered.
ITEMS FROM THE FIELD.
Woodbridge, N. C.—Rev. W. H. Ellis reports a very interesting and precious revival among the children growing out of the Band of Hope temperance work.
Beaufort, N. C.—One of the colored bishops testified to a brother that the church at Beaufort, though small, was a power for good that could not be estimated.
McIntosh, Liberty Co., Ga.—We feel especially thankful for the beautiful organ presented to us by the Smith American Organ Company; also for articles of clothing sent by the Ladies’ Benevolent Society, 2d Church, Keene, N. H., and the ladies of Framingham, Mass., to distribute among the needy ones around us. A blind father, who has a one-armed wife and seven children to care for, is just leaving us with his quota.
Woodville, Ga.—Pilgrim church was crowded last night to witness the reception of nine persons to the church. During the revival, still going on, seven persons professed conversion, and two backsliders returned home. Next Sunday night a thanksgiving service will be held and a collection will be taken up to help rebuild three churches that were blown down by the recent storm.
Savannah, Ga.—Special meetings were held in this church in the summer. Rev. S. N. Brown, temporary supply, was aided by Rev. John McLean, of Miller’s Station. More than a score of souls were hopefully joined to Christ.
Helena, Texas.—Rev. M. Thompson, pastor, rejoices over a revival in his church. Nearly every unconverted person in the community was moved, and not a few to a final reconciliation.
Memphis, Tenn.—Pastor Imes had his people come in upon him by way of a surprise party, August 30th, to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Many useful presents, of no small value, were the tokens of love.
THE FREEDMEN.
REV. JOSEPH E. ROY, D. D., Field Superintendent, Atlanta, Ga.
KENTUCKY.
THE WORK AT BEREA.
Nestling in a charming “glade,” overshadowed by the North-western foot-hills of the mighty Appalachian mountain world, is Berea College. It is not exclusively a school for teachers, but includes the entire organization of popular education from an effective primary school up to a solid university class of twenty-five, with a normal course for instruction in methods of teaching. Its pupils are of both sexes and colors, and another year may possibly witness the white, negro and Indian quietly at work in the same class-rooms, with no rivalry except the honest pride to excel in good scholarship and manly or womanly character. But in this, for the South, exceptional feature, there comes in the most interesting peculiarity of this most “peculiar institution.” With a few exceptions from the North and the blue-grass region of Kentucky, the white students come from the great mountain country that overlooks the college campus. This region, in Kentucky, includes a country as extensive as the whole State of New Hampshire, and not unlike it in shape. Here, in a mountain world, divided into thirty counties, out of hearing of the railroad whistle, in many parts traversed only on horseback, with no village containing five thousand and very few one thousand people, dwells a population of nearly two hundred thousand, more thoroughly isolated from the New America than the settlers in Oregon or the latest hamlet in Dakota. Living almost entirely from the land, in the narrowest way, on narrow means, with few tolerable schools and a good deal of intolerable preaching, with an almost total destitution of books, newspapers and ordinary means of cultivation, completely shut off from social contact with the ruling class of the State, this people is peculiar in many ways.
Out from this interesting region come the majority of the white students of Berea. Few of them are able even to meet the yearly sum of seventy-five dollars, for which their education is given them. Many of them, even the girls, walk from their homes, and come in with nothing but a stout suit of clothes, a good head and a brave heart, paying their way as they go by such work as turns up, and the small wages of mountain school-keeping in the long summer vacations. They have no leisure to discuss the vexed topic of co-education that worries grave professors and doubting students at Yale and Harvard; indeed, the young fellow not unfrequently brings in his sister, cousin and prospective “annex” to sit down at the same table of knowledge. He is more anxious to lift his own end of a problem than to quarrel with the colored boy who is tugging at the other end. Indeed, at Berea one seems to be in that ideal university where an overpowering desire for study lifts the entire body of students above a whole class of questions that even yet convulse politicians and people, schoolmen and churches, South and North. They live together; the girls, of course, under careful supervision; study, work, recite, play and worship together; students and teachers, children and grown men and women, in one family. Probably no American school of three hundred and seventy students goes through the year with so little disturbance, is so easily governed, or so generally absorbed in the work in hand. This year the faculty consists of thirteen professors and teachers under President E. H. Fairchild, and three hundred and sixty-nine students, of whom nine are in the college classical and twenty-five in the literary course, forty-five in the normal, and the remainder in the preparatory department. The average age is sixteen. Two hundred and forty-nine are colored and one hundred and twenty are white; two hundred and six males and one hundred and sixty-three females.
The instruction is excellent, probably equal in quality to any school in the State; and the proficiency of the pupils remarkable, considering their previous estate. The primary school-room contains twenty stout fellows ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years of age; but it is not uncommon for one of these boys to go forth as a tolerable school-master among the colored people after two years’ hard work at Berea. Indeed, if one were to look for signs of mental power, he need not go outside the beautiful campus of this school. We positively never witnessed such progress in learning as is the common talk among these teachers. These stalwart young men and resolute maidens from the mountains buckle to their books with a will that knows no discouragement. They go back to their homes to become the pride of their friends and the hope of their neighborhood. Nearly every student is a member of the church and the temperance society, and the carrying of arms is cause of expulsion. All classes of the Southern people are good listeners. We never addressed an audience of three hundred people that put us more decisively on our mettle than the crowd of students and villagers that did us the favor to crowd the chapel on four unpleasant nights to listen to our talks on education.
We do not propose to defend Berea against any objector. A school with such tough Kentucky roots as Fee, Hanson, and their compeers; with a history so romantic in its heroic past and so startling in its recent growth; with a foundation on three hundred acres of “sacred soil,” two hundred thousand dollars worth of excellent buildings, in a situation unrivaled in beauty; a faculty representing the best culture and character of the North-west, with the rising ability of the South; and a population of five hundred friendly people within sound of chapel bells; can be trusted to plead its own cause against all comers. It is already commending itself to many of the best people of Kentucky, receiving students from families of highest respectability in the neighborhood, and on commencement days the great tabernacle is crammed with three thousand people, from the humblest to the highest in the proud old State. Berea is a great American fact, comprehensible only to a man who has read, pondered and inwardly digested the Sermon on the Mount and its corollary, the Constitution of the United States. If no similar college should ever exist, this will live in its own place in American history, a splendid evidence of the power of a consecrated education to bind together all sorts and conditions of good women and earnest men.—Dr. Mayo in Journal of Education.
SOWING IN TEARS AND REAPING IN JOY—BEREA COLLEGE.
REV. J. A. R. ROGERS.
The rule is that a long time must elapse between the sowing and the reaping. Abraham’s patience in Canaan for long years seemed destined to be fruitless in those things which God had promised him; not a foot of Canaan did he own, and he was still childless; his faith was tried to the uttermost, and only by a great struggle was he kept from despair. After centuries, that sowing began to produce a harvest, not yet but partially reaped. The recent addition of $50,000 to the endowment of Berea College calls to mind the long, weary days of struggle and almost despair in its early history. The apparent success for a time, to be followed by every sort of discouragement, was not the least of the trials of those whose labors were the occasion for Berea College. Churches were formed, and many seemed heartily in favor of the Gospel of Christ, which commands and secures love; and then persecutions would arise, and such a perfect torrent of public opinion against the “abolitionists,” that large numbers would succumb to the adverse influences, and the love of many would wax cold. Again, such persecutions would arise, that for a time only women were regarded as safe in attending the preaching services of Mr. Fee and others. After the school was started in 1858, which culminated in Berea College, there were still those great alternations of prosperity and apparent defeat which are so hard to bear. One term, large numbers of students would come, including the children of slaveholders, and the next, only those would apply for admission who could endure the reproach of being called “nigger lovers.” Even after the war, when two or three colored children entered the primary department, there was such a stampede from every department, that the principal, in sorrow, said to the few that timidly remained, “Will ye also go away?”
Those years from ’55 to ’66 were years of sowing in great sorrow. The missionaries of the A. M. A. were very poor; their salaries were $400 per year, and some of that sum must be expended for those still poorer. They lived in almost constant terror of their lives. If for any cause they were north of the Ohio River for a few weeks, they breathed such a free atmosphere that it seemed almost like getting into Heaven. By many they were regarded with suspicion and contempt. The writer remembers what cringing of the nerves he often had to endure, in walking the streets of one of the central towns of Kentucky. People would stare at him as if he were a hyena let loose. It is not easy to describe what were the sorrows of those years, the greatest of which was that so many professed friends fell away in time of danger, and that so many bearing the name of Christ at those times were ready to deny their faith.
But this sowing has in some respects given way to reaping, even in the lifetime of those who watered the ground with their tears. Now at Berea is a college in some respects unlike any other in the land. Here, three hundred in all, are seen white and colored students in about equal numbers. Here is a sort of Mecca for the colored people of the State, and a door of hope for many in the mountain region, who, though white, have had but few religious and educational privileges. Here is a college ably manned, with the confidence of the North, and growing in the regard of the South, sending forth its streams of blessing in every direction. If the tears of sorrow were many, the tears of joy and thanksgiving to God have been much more abundant.
TENNESSEE.
MISS ALICE E. CARTER, NASHVILLE.
Among the men of Tennessee, the great and crying need seems to be the very practical knowledge of some trade; the range of their individual usefulness is so often limited to gardening, grooming, rock-beating and shoveling.
The talent for gardening is a dormant one in winter; rock-beating cannot be followed in the coldest weather, and it is easy to see that the other ranks may at times be filled to overflowing, and those not fortunate enough to get in, are out of employment.
What a noble enterprise for someone to found an industrial school for colored boys, which shall draw in the bright-eyed ragged boys, now lounging on the street corners or quarreling in the alleys, learning nothing except evil, daily!
To help a few such boys, though temporarily, I hold in my room, one evening in the week, a little reception. Good stories, earnest conversation, plenty of books and papers to look over while here, are the means put forth to help those who come. When they go away they carry with them text-cards and old numbers of St. Nicholas from my very primitive “circulating library.”
My cottage Sunday-school is a very interesting undertaking. Compassion for the pitiful little street waifs, too small to find their way to the remote city Sunday-schools, led me to try to make a bright spot in their day. It was a simple thing to gain permission of a woman, with four tiny girls, to hold Sunday-school in her cottage, and the simplest matter to fill the small room with children. To walk through the alley and say “Come” to any ragged, deformed or dirty little child was all that was necessary. How well our Lord understood the willingness of the people of the “highways and hedges!”
Each Sunday the little ones come with ludicrously solemn faces and decorous manners; and sitting on the beds, or a board between two chairs, and on the hearth before the fire-place, are as happy as can be.
Not one can read; not one knew the name of Jesus, except one boy whose father’s oaths made him know it; yet all know and love the story now. The teaching is necessarily by dictation, and my great wonder is that the little minds remember so much.
Their singing they do with faces all smiles, and when the moment comes for distributing the text-cards and child papers full of beautiful pictures, their joy knows no bounds. These may be loaves and fishes for which the children come, and yet, like the multitude of old, they perhaps carry away with them something better.
ALABAMA.
MRS. M. V. CURTIS, SELMA.
Have I ever written for the Missionary? Well, no; but then why not? since I have something very particular to say to my friends in the North; and I have neither head nor hand for all the letters I want to write; for there is the concert for August 30, (proceeds to be put into the winter’s supply of coal, this being the month when prices are down); and the “Harvest Home” (a literary entertainment to be given by our “Young People’s Guild” some time in October), to be arranged for; also some appropriate music to be prepared for the evening when our two “political refugees” are to lecture on Arkansas, where they have been teaching and traveling during the past two years.
Why won’t it be a stroke of policy to let that press away off in New York do the work for me, for manifolding letters is not easy, and the inspiration is lost after the first recital? I wonder if my correspondents will not count this as an individual letter and send me letters in return.
How I do wish that you all could have been of the number that gathered in our pretty church a week ago Sabbath night—our pretty church, with its white walls, its wood-work of rich yellow pine, exquisite with God’s own graining, and the crimson carpet for the two platforms, the walnut table, vase and bracket, all the gift of the ladies of the church.
The night was matchless, and at an early hour a good audience had gathered (A. M. A. pastors have not always the encouragement of numbers). We had reached out into the homes through the Sunday-school children, and the result showed the wisdom of our course.
After the opening exercises, Mr. C. read to an attentive audience, Mr. De Forest’s racy letter of his experiences in the theatres of Tottori, Japan. A quartet then besought us in song to “Tell it out,” this story of Christ, to the heathen, a sermon indeed in song. One of our young teachers read of the two mice the little Sunday-school scholar brought as her two mites, for so she understood it. Another gave a crumb for the boys, found in the Missionary; and when a sweet soprano and alto pled for Burmah, and Burmah herself seemed to speak in the plaintive strains, that were borne to our ears through an open window, the effect was impressive, and the surprise and pleasure of the audience was manifest. The “Little Zulu Band” sang a sweet song of the needs of Zululand.
And now I have come to the crowning exercise of the evening; for surely that patient little group on the front seat, conscious of a secret hidden behind the white cards they wore, was not there for nothing. They knew that the reason they were bidden to wait till the last was just because theirs was to be the best of all, and so it proved.
Quietly they filed up the opposite aisles, making a semicircle in the alcove back of the pulpit (which, by the way, had been removed). Above their heads, on the white walls of the alcove, was the reminder of our Conference, two years ago, the motto, “Praise ye the Lord.” Then those pretty evergreen letters, that did duty at Burlington, Wis., were employed again to spell out the sweet motto, “All for Jesus.” The recitations, concert exercises, questions and answers that followed, were well given, and were a little sermon in themselves. How we prayed that God would bless them to each one present! But the climax was reached when one of our young men came forward, and taking up a large globe that had been standing upon the table, said: “To-night we will unite and extend the motto to ‘All the world for Jesus.’” His manner was dignified and his words impressive, as he went on to tell of the needs of the whole world. Then came from each of the eleven, in answer to his question, “From what countries they should come who before Jesus in white should stand?” the names of country after country, the wide world over.
Turning to the audience the speaker told us not to say that time was too far off, and surprised most of us by saying that if each one now living, who had taken “All for Jesus” for his life motto, should bring one soul to Jesus each year, the whole world would soon be converted.
The same young girls who had sung “Zulu Band,” came forward and sang sweetly, “All for Jesus,” the others joining in the chorus. The groups remained in their places while the audience arose and joined in the doxology, and with reverent heads received the benediction.
Our W. M. A. gathered for its second “Missionary Tea Party” on Friday of the same week. The reading of letters from our absent sisters and from “The Morning Star,” together with the singing of missionary songs, occupied an hour, and while we discussed our tea, we chatted of what we could do for our Selma boys at Tougaloo, and decided to call our September meeting a “Missionary Quilting,” and put on and off two quilts. The ladies say it can be done.
GEORGIA.
Extract from a fraternal letter of Rev. T. L. Day, in behalf of the National Council to the General Conference of the Congregational Methodists, in session at Fredonia, Ga.:
“We feel that you agree with us when we express the hope that the time will come when there will be no distinction of North and South, but when our whole people will understand and trust and love each other. Political parties pass away and new ones take their places; but, God helping us, the Congregational method of church government shall never pass away, but it shall be (as long as grass grows and streamlets flow) a firm bond of union and brotherly love between us and you and all other Christians who accept it in its purity. The spirit of the Congregationalism we honor laments both the bigotry of sect and the bitterness of sectional politics. It teaches us, both as citizens and Christians, to love each other. In this spirit of love some of the ablest and most devoted ministers and educators of our denomination have been giving their best strength to our missionary institutions of education in the South. This work is supported by the self-sacrificing contributions of our churches. They believe (what your leading men have told us) that the race for which they do this missionary work must have a training and education in morality and in religious principle, or they will be the greatest source of danger and evil to the South. We know that these brethren are striving to work wholly in the spirit of Christ; and that every noble-minded Southerner, if he could only see their hearts and their devotion to the future of your fair land, would wish them God-speed. And if any of you, who are our brethren in the faith, should ever come to see good results from their efforts, and should be moved to speak the word of sympathy to those engaged in this lonely and difficult work, it will surely be reckoned to you by our Lord and Master as the ‘cup of cold water,’ given in the name of a disciple.”
TEXAS.
DEATH OF S. B. WHITE.
REV. J. W. ROBERTS, PARIS.
Our faithful missionary, S. B. White, died about three o’clock yesterday, of congestive chills and fever.
He closed a very successful school session here the first of July. He went out north of Paris, on Red River, to teach. The water and climate did not agree with him. He made out to teach one month and a few days by hard struggle, and came up Friday before last, looking like the very shadow of death, conducted Sunday-school on Sunday, and was here to preaching that night. Two o’clock Sunday night he started back to his school, notwithstanding he was warned not to return. He reached there through hard struggle, and was there from Tuesday to Friday, trying to get some conveyance to bring him home. On Friday, August 19, he heard of a wagon that was coming in, so he walked two miles from the place where he was boarding, to take passage, which walk was too exhausting for his already diseased frame. Thus he had to come in a rough wagon in all of Friday’s scorching sun, a distance of some twenty-one or twenty-two miles, with frequent fainting spells. He reached here Friday afternoon at 6 o’clock, where he had the best attention shown him both by his friends and physician. He was not confined to the bed until Monday night.
He had not the least fear of dying. He said: “Don’t fret for me; but I want you all to meet me in Heaven. I am going to that beautiful land of rest to live with Jesus. ‘There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins,’” etc. He described the kind of coffin he wished to be buried in. He was the most faithful Christian I ever saw. We have lost a noble Christian worker.
AFRICA.
We have the following information relating to the death of Mr. Kemp at the Mendi Mission, from Rev. J. M. Williams, missionary at Kaw Mendi. Mr. Williams’ long experience in Africa has qualified his heart and mind to sympathize most fully with the afflicted. He is a colored man, born in British Guiana, South America, and has rendered much good service to the cause of missions during the past sixteen years.
Mr. Williams writes:—Of the dangerous illness of Mrs. Kemp and of the death of Mr. Kemp, I had not heard a word till I arrived at Good Hope on Saturday. I knocked at the door of the mission house with the fullest expectation of enjoying the company of Mr. and Mrs. Kemp. The closed doors and windows might have awakened apprehension that all was not well, but they did not. The death-like silence that was within, after my repeated knocking at the door, created not the slightest suspicion or foreboding that sickness and death had preceded me, and forever removed my beloved and esteemed friend. After the third rapping at the door, the watchman came to the foot of the stairs and said: “No pusson there, sir;” and in reply to my questions, he further said: “Missis done gone to town. The new massa that came t’other day, he done died.” I could not, and did not, believe the man till after he replied three times to my half-frantic interrogations, “Massa Kemp done died.” Words are inadequate to express my feelings then and now. During my sixteen years’ residence in Africa no event has so sadly affected me as the death of Mr. Kemp, except the death of my two children. I feel it keenly. I deeply sympathize with Mrs. Kemp and with the Association. It is a severe blow to us all, and especially to this station and mission. Although the residence of the Kemps here was short, yet they were much respected and beloved by the inhabitants of Bonthe. By the Europeans, from the Commandant downward, and by the colored people, I have heard them spoken of in the most flattering terms.
While still suffering from the intensity of grief produced by such sudden and unexpected intelligence, Mr. Jowett came and confirmed what I had heard from the watchman. I was informed by Mr. Jowett that Brother Kemp left Good Hope Station for Avery to see Mr. Jackson on the 11th of May, and returned on the 13th. On the way home he was exposed to several heavy showers of rain. About two days after his return he was attacked with intermittent fever. Mrs. Kemp was also dangerously ill and not expected to recover. This kept him up when he ought to have been in bed. Under the combined weight of a disordered mind and body, he sank rapidly until life departed. He had a strong presentiment, two days before his death, that his end was near and his work on earth done, and informed Mrs. Kemp of his convictions. He said: “The doctor has done all he can do. I am ready to die. I commend you to God.” During his illness he was attended by Brother Jowett, Mrs. During, and other kind friends.
He died on Sunday morning, May 29th, at 10 o’clock, without a struggle or groan. He fell asleep in Jesus, and his disembodied spirit took its happy flight to join the great congregation in Heaven. His remains were moved to the chapel at 4 p. m., and from thence to the mission cemetery, followed by a large concourse of every color, rank and station in the community. According to his request, his body now lies at the entrance of the grave-yard under the shade of a large mango tree. I shall do my best to get a few iron-tree posts, and to have the grave enclosed as soon as possible after I return to Kaw Mendi, and I cherish the hope that the friends of the mission will procure a desirable tombstone to be erected over the grave, and send from the States a marble inscription to be put into the chapel.
Mr. Jowett is now taking charge of the Station, and Mr. Goodman is teaching the school at Debia. I sincerely wish you could find a dozen such men as Mr. Kemp to send to Africa; only be sure that they come with sound livers, and be entirely free from heart disease. The climate, I think, is more favorable to lung disease than America. I believe men of any color will live as long in health in Africa as elsewhere, provided they visit America or Europe, for a change, once in every two or three years.