Mr. Jackson is pastor of the church; Mr. Anthony, from Berea, has charge of the mill and farm; and Rev. Mr. Jowett, a native, educated at Sierra Leone, teaches the school, and acts as interpreter. In the family are ten little children who are just beginning to talk in English, and work about the house and grounds. The plateful or platefuls of rice the little things can put away is astonishing. The smallest one will eat as much as can be piled on a dining-plate.
[Editorial Note.—A son of the Mr. Jowett, referred to in the above letter, has just landed in this country, on his way to Fisk University. Believing that he is to figure in the future history of missions in Africa, we give a brief sketch of him, and a glimpse at life in an African village, prepared by himself. This will be found in the juvenile department. Just here we wish to say that Albert Miller shows his appreciation of a liberal education and also his devotion to his divine Master, two things very hopeful in a missionary. He found this young man helpful as a Christian, and useful as an interpreter, and believing he would make a good missionary, he has sent him to his Alma Mater, and authorized the Association to pay his expenses out of his own small salary. When such a spirit of self-denial and thorough consecration characterizes the church, we shall have no trouble either in getting or maintaining teachers and missionaries.
We wish also to say that this is a most hopeful movement; that of the emancipated Christian and cultured African, with a constitution which enables him to live there, going back with the blessings of the Gospel to his fatherland; and that of the native, fully acquainted with the language of that people, rescued from paganism, to this country for Christian education. The meaning of slavery, under the Divine administration, is beginning to unfold itself.]
THE INDIANS.
INDIAN BOYS AT HAMPTON.
MISS ISABEL B. EUSTIS.
Mr. Hall’s account in the February Missionary of the departure of his Fort Berthold boys for Hampton, was a vivid picture to us who welcomed them here. We could almost see them bidding a sad good-bye to their friends, waving their blankets from the deck of the boat, and sympathized with their consciousness that they had “a long way to go, and a long time to stay, and it would be hard.”
We wish the friends, who bade them good-bye that cold October morning, could see them to-day. If they could hear their quick and intelligent replies in the school-room, and watch them at their trades, we think they would recognize the record which the new thoughts and self-control of the year have left on their faces, and would feel that they have already gone a long way and a good one.