The A. M. E. and Baptist denominations have large and prosperous churches. The Sunday-schools of all the churches are well attended and in a flourishing condition.
The educational work of the county is in full blast; the whites have good seminaries and normal schools and our people have good common schools. The school at Florence, under the management of Mr. Y. A. Wallace, is a centre of quite a number of schools taught by students of the Baptist Institute, Central Tennessee College and Fisk University. The great need of the place and demand of the colored people, is a good Normal school. These common schools would become feeders of this Normal school, and thus meet a great need of the county and do much good for the State.
Another mark of progress may be seen in the effort some have made, and are making, to get farms. I am told that some of our people in this county have farms containing from ten to three hundred acres. The crops are unusually good this year. If we have rain soon we shall have fine crops of corn and cotton.
With the church to Christianize, and the school to educate the people, and the plow to cultivate the soil, the county of Lauderdale may well be considered a power for good.
LOUISIANA.
Lady-Missionary’s Letter.
[Without designating either the lady or her field, we give a letter from a missionary among the Freedmen in a Southern city. These devoted women, for whom there is a vast work, under many discouragements and difficulties are carrying the Gospel of sympathy and comfort into the lonely cabins in the South, and helping in many ways our larger and more fundamental work. It would be a great mistake to withdraw needed funds from our teaching, and give them to the visiting missionary, but it would be a great loss in many ways, not to multiply the number of those whose mission is to visit the mothers in their homes, carrying the Gospel of cleanliness and thrift, and a knowledge of wifely and motherly ways, to those who are to shape so largely the next generation.—Ed. Missionary.]
I must tell you of my experience last Sabbath in the “House of Refuge.” At 3 P. M. I took a car up the long, beautiful, white shell-road—through “St. Patrick’s Cemetery”—to the Institute buildings, expecting there to meet our superintendent and teachers. For some reason they were detained, so I had to proceed, though trembling and alone. The position can be appreciated only by those acquainted with the history and training of these poor children. During the school hours, for our benefit, boys were screaming, dogs snarling just outside the doors, pupils called out, and once the whole school utterly refused to sing the hymns so pleasing to them.
This made me afraid of what might occur to-day; but the service must not be given up, though the door was locked and the “key lost”—the bell overturned, and no official to be seen about the grounds. Trusting, however, for guidance, I followed one of the boys through the yard and work-house to the little chapel, where all had been to mass in the morning. Thirty or forty were awaiting our arrival, and I am sure the Lord helped me, for that wild, uproarious group, through the hour, remained quiet and gentle, while I had no difficulty in interesting them.
My Sunday-school class in Central Church is a great joy and help in my work. Commencing with thirty little ones, the names have increased to one hundred and twenty. Through these, I find entrance to many homes otherwise closed to all religious influences.