The University students, through poverty, are compelled to spend the vacation in earning money (for which they find many opportunities to the north of us), and have been acting as waiters at the springs and the seaside resorts, where their good behavior makes many friends and often secures benefactors. Eight of the theological students gave themselves to missionary work with great success during the summer. One received twenty converts to the church, the Sabbath before he came back to resume study. The others were in the rural district of Southern Virginia, dark with ignorance, where they established day-schools as well as Sunday-schools, aided in a very interesting Sunday-school convention of that region, visited the families and preached the Gospel. It is thought that several new churches will soon result from these efforts, and one such was organized last month. They gave special attention to encouraging young men to prepare for usefulness as teachers and ministers, but hardly any proper facilities exist there, and poverty prevents them from going elsewhere to obtain education. We are continually tried by not having the means to aid those seeking the higher education, as the number increases and their literary character improves, while the colored people must have educated leaders in church and state.
HAMPTON, VA.
MISS HELEN W. LUDLOW.
Hampton begins the year with a large influx of students. They have come in much faster and more promptly than ever before. Last year, our largest number was 385, including 70 Indians; now, on the sixth day of school, we have 385, only 40 of whom are Indians. They appear to be a good set—hopeful material—on the whole, in advance of former years. Indeed, so many more have applied than it is possible to accommodate, that it has been our duty, of course, to select the best, and examinations have been more severe. Our quarters are full to overflowing, especially the girls’. There is a larger proportion of these than ever. Seven of our returning students report that they have taught schools this vacation. A few more who will return are still out teaching. Of the few students, sixty-one reported having come through the agency of our graduate teachers, and fourteen more through that of undergraduates. One girl brought nine. Several of our graduate teachers came in person to bring their students.
Forty-seven students reported as having worked as Sunday-school teachers this summer. Some have been active in temperance work, and give interesting account of their efforts, especially among the young. They find the old people hard to touch. They are, of course, most of them too young themselves to do as effective work as our graduate teachers. A revival has been in progress through the summer in some of the colored churches of Hampton, and our students who stayed at the school to work through vacation, took part in the meetings to some extent. Our own Sunday-school organization was kept up under our resident graduates. In the course of the summer our students here also interested themselves in an effort to aid the Tuskegee Normal School, Alabama, taught by our two graduates, Mr. Booker Washington and Miss Olivia Davidson; and succeeded by their own exertions in raising by a festival and otherwise, $75 towards the payment of a small farm (already half paid for), by the purchase of which Mr. Washington is trying to put his school on a manual labor basis.
The Hampton School Mission Association, organized last year, will continue its work by helping in the Sunday-schools in the town, Bible reading in the jail and poor-house, and among the aged poor, and aiding them in other ways within their power. Our young men have taken a great pleasure in giving a day’s work now and then to patch up some poor old cabin against the severity of the winter, or to supply some poor old aunty with food and fire.
As to your inquiry for the number, condition and wants of students seeking a higher education, I suppose if the question were put to the school, how many would like to pursue a higher education, they would rise en masse, without always much appreciation of the labor or the value in it; but the Hampton School is so well-known to be established on the basis of self-help, and for the purpose of immediate helpfulness, that it draws to it chiefly the class who are glad of a chance to work their way through school, and are seeking to fit themselves as promptly as possible for the work of life. The opportunities for this, in learning trades and in Normal training, are greater this year than ever.
General Armstrong left on September 27th for Dakota, with 30 Indian students, 23 boys and 7 girls, who having been with us three years, are now returning to their homes. The morning they started, the last three of them were received into the church by baptism. We feel hopeful for all, believing in the sincerity of their purpose, as shown in their lives, to “walk the good road by the help of Jesus.” Every boy and young man took with him from $15 to $25 worth of tools of his trade, which he had earned here by his own labor. The girls had corresponding working implements. Provision has been made ahead for their regular employment as soon as they get to their homes, and Gen. Armstrong goes with them there, with two ladies to take care of the girls, to get them settled, to visit their agencies, and see their parents. He is expected back by the 15th, and has Government authority to bring back 42 new students, including both sexes, 25 boys and 17 girls.
Forty Indian students are still in the school, and looking forward with interest to having some new comrades to initiate into the mysteries of civilization they have themselves so lately acquired. They are about half of them Arizonas, some of them Apaches, bright, docile and earnest. We only wish that those of their tribe now on the war-path could join them here. After what experience we have had, we should not be afraid to try them. It has led us to the conclusion that the Indian is a human being, and susceptible of development in the right direction, as well as “our brother in black” or in white.