BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.
The schools for black boys and girls in the Congo country have a very unusual feature that perhaps is not found in any other part of the world. Some of these schools are exclusively for boys, and the others for girls, and the intention is, when they grow up, to have them marry one another, thus creating civilized families, who will help to improve the people around them. Probably the young men and women will not think this is a hardship, for it is believed they will prefer to choose their wives or husbands from among those who have had some education, like themselves; and if they do not, they will undoubtedly have the privilege of choosing where they please. Whether this plan is wise or not, it shows at least that the white race is beginning to think a good deal about the black children in Africa; in fact, these coming men and women are expected to help far more than their barbarous fathers and mothers of to-day to civilize Africa.
SISTER OF CHARITY AND SOME OF HER PUPILS.
If we were to visit Belgium this summer we should find many little black girls from the Congo in the convents there learning to read and write, sew and cook, and to do many other useful things. When they go back to their homes it is expected that they will wear the garb of the Sisters of Charity, and teach their people as the devoted white Sisters have been doing since 1892; and if they do well, they will ultimately take the place of those pale-faced women from Europe, who suffer from the trying climate. Thus far one-fourth of all the girls in the chief Congo Catholic school, the brightest among them, have been sent to Belgium for years of training.
All through the French Congo we see the government officials keeping a sharp lookout for the more promising sons of native chiefs; for some day these boys will become the most influential natives in the country, and so the French are gathering many of them into schools near their homes, and are sending others to France to be educated. Of course they will not all turn out exactly as the French hope they will.
Some years ago an African chief was killed in battle with the French forces. One of his sons was sent to France. No black boy there makes better progress in his studies, but visitors shake their heads when they hear his answer to the question what he hopes to do in the world.
"I hope to live long enough," he sometimes says, "to avenge the death of my father."
He will probably change his mind, and, at any rate, France will give him no opportunity to make her any trouble.
Professor Drummond, after his visit to Africa, said he would like to get inside an African for an afternoon, and see how he looked at different things. Wouldn't we like to know just how these boys and girls feel, and what they think, when they are suddenly landed, fresh from the depths of a savage land, in the streets of Paris, Brussels, or Berlin, and see more things in a day they never heard of than we do in a year? They learn many things, as a baby does, by stern experience. When Von François brought an eight-year-old boy from inner Africa to the sea, the youngster chased along the beach in high glee, and before any one could stop him, tried to refresh himself with a big swallow of ocean water. This same boy, Pitti, thought the snow he saw falling in Berlin was a swarm of butterflies. The first horse he saw terrified him, and the Berlin newspapers told of his unbounded astonishment at the strange dishes and viands on his master's table. What a marvellous change in the condition of these children! Many of them were slaves, and some of them had been brutally treated and even wounded by cruel slave-dealers. To-day they have good homes, and the world is doing all it can to make them intelligent and honorable men and women.