SHOTGUN IN LOUISIANA.
[The outrage referred to in the following letter was perpetrated only a few weeks ago. We suppress names and dates for obvious reasons. We know the writer and can vouch for the truth of the statement. We have in our possession additional and corroborative evidence.—Ed.]
“My very last days at school were saddened by a most distressing outrage in which the father and elder brother of one of my own good, manly, big boys, were shot down in unjust, merciless and indiscriminating slaughter; the other two grown-up sons obliged to flee; the mother, grandmother and two younger children left desolate but not unfriended, and the large, rich and heavy crop, which would have sufficed to send all the children to school next year, of necessity abandoned. That was the trouble: the white men around were jealous of his business methods, his prosperity and his determination to educate his children—said they were ‘getting too smart for niggers’—so, when an alleged crime by another colored man or boy furnished a pretext, they improved the opportunity for wholesale massacre—six or seven in all were killed, some of them resisting and killing two white men. I was amazed at the Christian meekness shown by my boy, the elder of the two who escaped, a large, strong young man. He spoke with gratitude of the two white men who tried to save his father, and he seemed disposed to leave the murderers entirely in the hands of the great Judge of all, saying, ‘If the Lord saw fit to punish them He could meet up with them any time.’
“I said, with a view to learning how this severe tribulation had affected his trust in Christ—for he is but a young disciple—‘some people, when great trouble is permitted to come upon them, feel that the Lord has deserted them.’ He responded at once, ‘I don’t feel that way. I think the Lord must have been very near me when I was dodging through the young corn, neither high enough nor thick enough to hide me in the bright morning light, and they all shooting at me as if I had been a deer, or they would certainly have killed me.’
“In answer to some remarks of mine, he said: ‘You needn’t be afraid of my taking to any meanness on account of this. I never can find it in my heart to be mean to anybody. I feel too sorry for people.’ His only anxiety was to find work and make enough to get the rest of his people away from there.
“When I went into my school room after hearing of this heart-rending affair, a horror of great darkness came over me for an instant, and a sound was in my ears as of a knell; then the students’ plaintive song seemed to vibrate through the air—How long, Master, how long? These distressful experiences weigh heavily on the hearts and nerves of our missionaries, who are here so nearly all the year around and have such a care for everything that affects the school or its members.”
A Teacher.