One day by the mail-schooner from “Corpus” to Indianola, another day by steamer to Galveston, and a third day by Morgan’s line, carried the tour back to New Orleans. A day there for supplementary reconnoissance, a Sabbath with the thriving church of Rev. D. L. Hickok, and the Emerson Institute at Mobile, and then a long run up to Atlanta finished this tour of many hundred miles among our schools and churches of the Southwest.
GEORGIA.
A Lady Missionary Needed.
REV. S. S. ASHLEY, ATLANTA, GA.
I desire to call your attention to the need of a missionary for this city. This has been a pressing necessity in all the past of the work here, but at present is more urgent than ever. This city is rapidly increasing in population. The increase of the colored population keeps pace with the white in numbers, and far outstrips the white in ignorance and poverty. The number of vagabond black children here would astonish you. On the Sabbath, the vacant lots and outskirts of the city are thronged with them. They are without parental restraint, and never attend meeting or Sabbath-school. They are ripening in vice and crime. There is a chain-gang in the city, composed, as I learn, of boys ranging from ten to fifteen years of age. There are many children among the county convicts. Thus they are drifting to the penitentiary and to ruin. Once in the penitentiary, they are lost, for the convict prison system of this State is bad.
This city is full of devil-traps. These strangers who are moving in will largely become victims. Now, we should have some agency by which as many as possible of these families can be reached. Their domestic condition is deplorable. In fact, this may be said of the colored families generally of the South. They need influences and instruction that can best, and, as I believe, only be carried to them by a woman missionary. The women, the mothers, the homemakers of this people, must be instructed and led to better things in their homes. They must be seen in their houses. With such homes as are common among them, it is well nigh impossible for them to be Christians. Large families living in one room—you know how it is—comfort, cleanliness, modesty and religious devotion are almost impossible. Illiterate, the Bible must be read to them; ignorant of their moral duties as parents, they must be taught. Strangers to domestic comforts and necessities, they must be made acquainted with them. Superstitious and fanatical, they must be introduced to places and modes of a scriptural, instructive and reasonable worship—a thousand matters of great importance must be brought to their attention and kept before their minds, until the proper impression is produced. This can only be done by a missionary moving about among them at their homes. This person should be a woman, because women are principally to be reached. Now, can you not commission Miss Stevenson for this work? In connection with her school, she now does a great deal in this direction, but not a tithe of what needs to be done. She is thoroughly acquainted with all these people, has had ten years’ experience among them, and is admirably adapted to the work. She has a heart for it. Please consider this.
Another matter: The young men connected with this church and congregation have organized a Library Association. A Library has been started—number of volumes at present very small. I have thought that perhaps you had in or about your office some spare books that you could send to us. We want to build up a Parish Library. I should like, especially, some works on Africa.