GLEANINGS.
L. A. P.
Letters from student-teachers often furnish truer insight to the homes and sentiments of the people than can be learned in the higher schools. Ten miles from a leading city a young lady writes: “This is such a wicked place that out of ninety day scholars I can get only forty to come to Sabbath-school. I begin school at eight, and close at half-past five in the evening. Parents think the children are not learning anything unless they stay in school as long as the field hands work.”
A young man, whose recitations in class are always excellent, says: “I have professed a hope in Christ, and joined the church. The letter you wrote me two or three years ago concerning religion was in my mind all the time before I professed hope. Please tell me where in the Bible I can find the place where a woman once cooked a Bible in a loaf of bread to keep it from being destroyed.”
This question aptly illustrates the lack of general intelligence in the community. It is quite possible for young people to leave school with fair knowledge of the text-books, yet profoundly ignorant of everything else, unless access to libraries and thorough Bible training accompany the regular school work, and are made a part of it.
Another young man reads books and papers, and induces his patrons to provide themselves with good reading matter. Under the same date as the foregoing letter, he writes: “I have an enrolment of 120 in day school. Sabbath-school numbers 143. I wish you could step into my school-room, and see how busy and earnest all seem to be. You cannot imagine how the colored people of this vicinity are grasping after education. I lectured to a large audience last Monday night. My subject was ‘Education in the South.’”
Another student records his experience thus: “The school had no black-board, no writing desks—well, in fact, it was not provided with anything. I now have a black-board, 8 ft. by 4; also very good writing desks. The children were very much surprised at the black-board, as they had never seen one before.”
GEORGIA.
Extracts from the Report of the Board of Visitors to the Atlanta University.