What should be done with an institute like that? Turn the people away? By no means. The teachers present were taught how to teach by seeing these people taught the alphabet, and how to count and the like. One thing never failed—rote singing. Oh, what a wealth of music in voice and ear lies in this people! And it was a study for an artist to see those earnest dark faces, with their great, dreamy eyes, as they peered in at the portals of the temple of knowledge so long closed against them, and just got a glimpse of the glory beyond, and knew, if they themselves could not enter, their children might. Many a parent vowed then that his child should go to Fisk University or Central Tennessee College, or the Baptist Institute, as the crowded halls of these institutions, filled almost to bursting, now testify. I think that some of these strange, nondescript institutes were, perhaps, our best.
One case of zeal I may not omit. A man came seventeen miles across the country, staid the first day, and at the close of the night session, about eleven o’clock, started for home, woke up his friends and neighbors, and was back with them by nine the next morning. And, oh, the hand-shakings, and the God-bless-yous! Who would not be willing to re-enlist in so good a work?
But it was hard work. Night sessions could not begin till nine, or later, as the people could not be got together sooner, and so we were up till eleven or twelve. Add to this the thermometer in the nineties and up to a hundred, small rooms, impure air and many other things, and no wonder if nearly every one of the workers suffered.
As to actual expenses for travel, &c., we expect to get them from the Peabody Fund. They were only between two and three hundred dollars. We were, for the most part, kept free of expense, sometimes at hotels and sometimes in families, white or colored. This we left for the colored people of the place to decide. They generally thought it best for the cause that we stop with white people. We made some friends in that way whom it is pleasant to have.
We let politics alone, but kept ourselves to education; still, being Christian educators, we often preached Jesus. In one case a revival meeting was resumed each day at the close of the institute.
I have written thus minutely, thinking that our experience may lead A. M. A. workers to go and do likewise in other States. Great masses of our school teachers can never come to us. We must go to them.
But, dear Secretary, do not work us so hard in our schools that there will be nothing of us left for this or any other of the many things we see to do about us, that need so much to be done.
TWO SIMPLE RULES.
We welcome with peculiar pleasure the volume just issued by our old friend and co-laborer, Rev. J. P. Thompson, D.D., the former pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle. It consists of six lectures delivered in the leading cities of the continent during the Centennial year. It is entitled “The United States as a Nation.” Among many valuable things which it contains, we select the following extract, giving from this life-long friend of the colored race his counsel as to their treatment by the government and their treatment of themselves: