Parties desiring entertainment during the meeting will write, by or before October 8th, to H. G. Billings, Esq., 242 South Water Street, Chicago.
It will be seen that our communications from the Southern field are very limited this month. It is, of course, the time of vacation in all our Southern institutions, except a few of the public schools, to the support of which we are contributing, and from which we hear mainly through the larger schools of which their teachers are pupils or graduates. Soon the wheels will begin to revolve again, we trust, with greater effectiveness than ever before.
A confidential word from the Editor to the members of the missionary and teaching force who occasionally write to the Missionary.—Your communications are always read in the most kindly and interested spirit. Their contents are always noted, and if they contain any incident or item which even perhaps may be of general interest to our readers, we use it. Do not be too greatly disappointed or grieved at us if we do not always use them in the form in which they are sent. There are many things which must be weighed in the make-up of a magazine which no one but those who see it all can even know. The Editor’s basket is not a waste basket, even when it receives MSS., for they do not go into it unread, nor do we mean to let any wheat get lost among the chaff, although doubtless we occasionally do. Sometimes an article must be squeezed into an item or be squeezed out. Please keep writing, then, not for your local audience, but for all; or, if you please, as though it were meant for the Editor’s ear alone. Don’t be disappointed—much more, don’t be angry, if all you write does not get into print. And don’t promise anybody, that a certain thing you send will appear in the Missionary; for, after all, the Editor who must decide is in the New York office.
Prof. A. K. Spence and wife arrived in August by steamer “Bolivia,” from an absence of a year in their native Scotland. They have been for ten years connected with Fisk University, and have resumed their work in that institution. By their visit they have been greatly refreshed in health. They have been constantly engaged in private and public effort to interest their Scottish people yet more in our work as related to the Christianization of Africa. With their territorial and commercial interest in that dark continent, British Christians are all the more disposed to care for the religious welfare of the inhabitants of that country. The many friends at the West who have heard the familiar talks of Mrs. Spence, will be prepared to believe that her recital of the Freedman’s story to the sisters of her motherland was greatly acceptable.
Prof. Spence’s mother, who, at the age of eighty-five, recently contributed to the Independent a poem on George McDonald, whom she had known from his childhood, sent on the fee for her article to the treasury of the A. M. A.
Revivals in Summer Time.—The people of the North, who are apt to be under the respite of vacation at this season of the year, and who are addicted to special efforts for the promotion of revivals in the Winter time, are sometimes surprised to hear of such movements at the South during the heat of Summer. At first it seems quite creditable to the piety of our colored brethren that they should warm up to such service in dog days. But the reason for selecting this season for such service is the same as that which at the North locates it in the Winter. That is the slack time of the year. The corn and the cotton have been laid by, and now there is leisure before the time comes for picking and harvesting. The Association of South-west Texas meets at the middle of July, and refuses to fix any other date for assembling, desiring to use that “set time” for some revival effort, and expecting to bless the entertaining church in that way. We are hearing that nearly all of our churches in the South have been making more or less of special effort.