In parting with General Armstrong and his printers at Hampton, it gives us pleasure to bear our warmest testimony to their uniform courtesy and to their untiring efforts to relieve, as far as possible, the unavoidable difficulty of printing at so great a distance from these rooms. Of the excellence of the work done at the Hampton office, we need use no words of commendation, for each successive number has carried to our readers its best evidence.
During the past year, as we learn from General Armstrong, it has given help to eight young colored girls who, as folders, have been able to earn enough to materially assist them in meeting their school bills; it has given steady employment to two young men who, twelve years ago, were enrolled in the first schools opened at Hampton by the Association. From little bright-eyed pickaninnies they have grown to be competent printers; they are now a help to their parents and are growing up to be among the solid men of Hampton.
Extra help being needed, a very worthy colored mechanic in Litchfield, Conn. was engaged. He not only worked on the Missionary, but having rented a house in a region destitute of workers, he at once gathered the young and the old, and every Sunday morning during the summer a motley crowd of about fifty in number was collected in his verandah. Seated on boxes, tubs, pails, etc., they received excellent instruction from Mr. Rowe, through whose good work we hope that some who were blind can now see.
The officers of the Hampton Institute bear testimony to the decided benefits received from the printing of the Missionary at Hampton. It has been of no small advantage as an aid to the Industrial Department there, which is the peculiar and difficult feature of the Institute.
With this number, then, the Missionary returns wholly to this office and its vicinity for preparation. As our readers have already noticed, the advice of the Annual Meeting has been followed in restoring it to its old form, which many of its familiar friends think more becoming than the perhaps sprightlier, but less dignified manner of the last year. We trust they will not like it less because it has a little more of body than formerly, and is attired in a new, and, we trust, not inappropriate dress. A few of its additional pages are given to advertisements by the same advice. We shall be glad to serve and be served by our friends, who know our circulation and constituency, in opening to them this channel of communication with one another.
It is our hope to make the Missionary of certainly as much, and, if possible, of more value than in former years. We should be glad to do what we can to dissipate the impression that an exposition of Christian opportunity and a record of Christian work is of necessity dry reading—of use mainly by way of fitting preparation for a Sunday afternoon nap. We know that the opportunities, if realized, are full of encouragement and stimulus, and that the work itself is intense in its earnestness and interest. We know that the considerations which enforce its claims are among those which appeal most irresistibly to thoughtful men, and stir their deepest feelings. If the presentation, then, be dry, it must be the dulness of those who write, or the indifference of those who read. We will try to prevent this at one end if our friends will at the other.
We shall try to procure the freshest and most recent news from the field, in regard to the general progress and the particular incidents of the work, by diligent application to our missionaries and teachers—remembering ourselves, and reminding others, that they are busy men and women, far more intent on doing the work than in telling about it. We shall endeavor to give, in condensed form, a record of the current events, religious, social and sometimes political, which affect the various departments of our work. We hope to arrange for special presentation of the nature and needs of our larger institutions in successive numbers. So we shall try to bring within the range of our readers’ vision the stars of larger and of lesser magnitude which gem our Southern and Western sky, only regretting that our, like other telescopes, can only bring far-off things a little nearer—can by no means reveal them as they are.
With the old form we return, of necessity, to the old subscription price—50 cents a year. Will our good friends remember that if each of our 25,000 magazines should bring us in a half a dollar, they would be a source of income to the Association, beside the valuable service which it does us indirectly? If this suggestion impresses any one favorably, please let the money be inclosed, and the letter sealed and directed at once before it can be forgotten.
In accordance with the further recommendation of the Annual Meeting, Rev. George M. Boynton, of Newark, N. J., who, as a member of the Executive Committee, is familiar with the work, and whose pen has contributed freely to our columns during the last year, has been associated with us in the editorial charge of the Missionary.