We heartily congratulate Berea College on its successful efforts during the past winter in securing a partial endowment. A few individuals in six different States recently joined in an effort to secure for it a fund of $50,000.
The movement was started by a Western Massachusetts man who subscribed $5,000, to which he afterwards added $1,666. Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, of Malden, Mass., gave $10,000. One friend in New York gave $7,500, and another $2,500. Three friends in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, gave $5,000 each. The balance was made up in smaller sums.
This college—the first founded by the A. M. A.—is doing a noble work, educating about an equal number of blacks and whites. It richly deserves all that has been done for it.
We are thankful to our friends and patrons for their hearty support of our work as shown in the increase of our current receipts by $20,087 over those of the corresponding seven months of last year. Encouraging as this is, the increase is not sufficient to enable us to accomplish what we had planned to do, and close our year free from debt, September 30th.
At the beginning of our fiscal year we called for an increase of 25 per cent. over the receipts of last year for current work. Our receipts have increased 19 per cent. to April 30th. At this rate we shall fall $10,700 short of the amount required to meet all payments. We make an earnest appeal now, for we wish our friends to know our situation, and to prevent a threatened debt. We already feel the pressure, for our workers are calling for the salaries due them, and they will need their money to bring them North for rest and change after the severe labors of the year.
ARTHINGTON MISSION—A TIMELY PROPOSAL.
In the spring of 1879 the Executive Committee of this Association, after a careful consideration of Mr. Robert Arthington’s offer of £3,000 for a new mission in the Upper Nile basin, voted to undertake the establishment of the proposed mission on the receipt of a fund of $50,000 for that purpose. During the autumn of the same year the Committee pledged itself that on receipt of £3,000 from Mr. Arthington and a like amount from the British public, “to devote thereto the sum of $20,000, and with the blessing of God and the assistance of the friends of Africa in Great Britain and America, to undertake permanently to sustain that mission.”