Again from the Ladies’ Department of a Classical School “way down in Maine.” “We number fifteen girls in our home, and are—some of us, at least—trying to work for the same Master as you in your Southern home. We bring our money regularly to our meetings, and soon expect to send you the money to fit up a room for some girl who shall in the future do good work.”
Still later, “Another of my dear Sunday-school scholars, a young lady of twenty, for whom I’ve labored, prayed and trembled for many long months, has been ‘born again.’ She is radiant with the new love in her soul, and when I think how long she was indifferent to all His entreaties, and know what an unsatisfactory life she was leading. I cannot thank and praise Him enough who has so transformed her. And so with the ‘song of thanksgiving’ on my lips I offer to Him through you this memorial of love and gratitude. Appropriate it, if you please, to the furnishing of a room in the new wing. Name it for me, if you choose, but know assuredly it will henceforth be to me a ‘Peniel.’”
But I must not weary you with extracts. The unwritten history of other gifts will doubtless touch our hearts even more deeply when revealed in the light of the Bright Hereafter.
Over 80 girls have already filled the new rooms. Next year it is hoped still another addition will be made. If so, writing another begging letter will be no burden while the memory of such prompt and delightful responses remains.
ALABAMA.
Emerson Institute.
MISS EMMA R. CAUGHEY, MOBILE.
Emerson Institute, formerly occupying Blue College, which was burned in 1876, is now in the third year of its progress and growth, the present school building being dedicated in May, 1878.
During the years 1876-1878 the work never ceased; the workers having put their hands to the plow did not look back nor abandon the labor to which they had consecrated themselves. Under many difficulties and discouragements the school did not wholly lose its organization. For a time after the fire a small church opened its doors for its accommodation. It was afterward removed to a little corner grocery, which was secured and made as inviting as possible. The third removal was to rooms in the present “Mission Home.” Now we rejoice in a comfortable and convenient brick building, in a very pleasant part of the city, in the midst of a grove of pine and live-oak trees. This present year our work has been assuming new proportions, which, although a cause for great encouragement, involved us in new difficulties. Early in the year, for lack of room, we were obliged to refuse forty or fifty pupils admission to the intermediate and primary grades. In the course of a few weeks the A. M. A. sent us another teacher, and a new department was at once formed. But where should it find a home? Our walls would not expand. Again the basement room of a church near by furnished a haven, and the primary department, numbering between seventy and eighty, has been receiving instruction there. In the meantime, arrangements have been made for the removal of our own Congregational church from its old site to a place by the side of our school building, where it will be fitted up to answer the double purpose of chapel and schoolroom; and the primary department will find more commodious and convenient quarters, and hope, in the course of a few weeks. Up to this time we have had enrolled 300 pupils, under the instruction of six teachers, two of whom are teachers in the Normal room, so that the pupils must all be seated in four different rooms.