We attended Sunday-school this morning. Mr. M. has a little blackboard, a review chart, question-books, Gospel-hymns, and all such things. It did seem, this morning, when I was there, that the colored people were advancing some. I am really interested in them, Aunt Sarah. Have you heard of my little Sabbath-school? May H., a girl a little older than myself, and three of the students (girls), and a driver, start at half-past two o’clock every Sunday afternoon, in a mule-wagon. The school is held in a Mr. Allen’s house—colored—(not the house, but the man, you know). We have to go jolting over the roughest kind of a road to get there, crossing the railroad track twice. When we reach the place, we crawl through the fence and enter the little house. We find the children seated on benches made of rough boards. May and I take our places in chairs at the head of the school. Sometimes we have over forty children. We open the school by singing some of the Gospel-hymns, then follows the prayer; after talking a minute or two to the scholars, the teachers take their classes and benches out of doors, and teach right among the bee-hives and hollyhocks!
The room is too small for so many scholars, especially as there are two beds in it. After a while, the classes are called in, and one of the scholars chooses a hymn to sing. Then I ask questions about the lesson. Then we count the scholars and call their names, and give out papers. Then I ask for verses from the children, which they have learned in the classes. We then repeat the Twenty-third Psalm together, and close by saying, in concert, the Lord’s Prayer.
Now, you know a little of my Sabbath-school. I take ever so much pleasure in planning for it. Friday evenings we have a Teachers’ Meeting, just for us six teachers to talk over the school, and study the lesson for the next Sabbath. Those are dear little meetings. I enjoy them so much. I hope I am helping a little to raise up these poor neglected people.
I will leave the rest of my paper for my next stopping-place.
By the Road-side, Monday.
Here we are again, at the same lovely spring where we took our dinner Saturday. We have just lunched, and Miss L. is reading. Leila, our horse, is taking her dinner, and when she finishes it, we shall start again for home.
This morning we passed a whole field full of cardinal flowers. We picked some beautiful ones, which are now bathing in the spring. When riding here, we see such different sights from what we do in the North. There are such beautiful tall pines here. They grow up fifty or sixty feet before putting out any branches. The sweet gum-tree, too, is very pretty. In the distance it looks like a maple. We often see wild grape-vines covering trees, the stems as large at the bottom as my two fists. The English ivy seems to like this climate, too, for when it is planted by the side of a tree, it grows way up into the branches, and almost covers the whole tree sometimes. The passion flower grows in the fields here.
Leila is just eating her last oat, so we must be starting. I suppose my next stopping place will be Talladega. Good-bye. From your loving niece,
Laura P. H.