A youth fresh from the wilds of Arkansas defines squall as “an Indian woman,” and is puzzled to understand why the class laugh at his words. He is a good Bible student and laughs in turn when he hears a debater at Literary Society clinch his argument in these words: “When Adam was turned out of the garden of Eden wasn’t he told to earn his bread by the sweat of his eyebrows?” A visitor in my Bible class recently objected to our Lord’s answer to the Sadducee’s question of whose wife shall she be. “Christ ought not to have answered as he did. He ought to have said she shall belong to the first man or the last man. His answer has caused a great deal of confusion in men’s minds.” It is a pity the objector cannot join the theological class.
A regular member of my class lately asked me to find the verse in the Bible where it said that “A man is more dear to God than a woman is.” I had never heard of such a passage of Scripture, but it seems that people in this country often have. The question reminded me of a remark made in Literary Society: “This school ought to draw in bad characters and trust in God to straighten them.” We trust some are being straightened. The first of the year came Miss Anna Gordon with a charming temperance talk and object lesson of burning alcohol. Her remarks made a decided impression. Several young people at once abandoned the use of toddy, egg-nog and similar drinks. The temperance text-book and temperance charts have deepened the convictions and the gracious wave of religious interest carried some wayward hearts up to the Rock that is higher than we.
One of our last year’s graduates has charge of a school in Fort Smith. We have just heard that a revival in her school numbers thirty converts. When she first went there in July she induced a band of young people to visit the jail and read and sing to the prisoners. Five men under sentence of death wrote a note of thanks for the kindness shown them. The letter is so remarkable for its neatness and beauty of penmanship, as well as for its pathos, that I copy it verbatim:
| U.S. Jail, | } |
| Fort Smith, Ark., Sept. 2, 1881. | } |
To Miss Willie Phillips and Miss Emma Walker, Committee Young Ladies’ Bazar:
Ladies: Allow us to thank you for your kindness, and to assure you that our hearts appreciate your sympathy, as hearts bowed down with a weight of woe only can.
It shows us that the world to which we are about to bid a long and last farewell is not all evil, that amid the Sahara of careless thought there bloom some oases of kindness for fallen, erring man, some flowers of sympathy to perfume the pathway to the grave.
Accept then a tribute of respect wafted back to you from the portals of the grave.
[Five signatures appended.]