After dinner I find a little time for writing. Promptly at 7 o’clock the church prayer meeting begins. The passage selected for the evening lesson is Jer. 8:20. The large audience listen attentively to the pastor’s words. In the hush of this tender interest nine come forward for prayers. The voice of petition rises in their behalf. Two tell us that they have found Jesus. We sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Benediction is pronounced and the meeting closes. Another day, with its joys and sorrows, its failure and success, is ended. Its record is with Him who sees and understands. In the quiet of my room I kneel to humbly ask that it may be accepted as “one more day’s work for Jesus,” knowing that it is “one less of life” for us all.
LINCOLN MISSION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
By Mrs. C. B. Babcock.
Saturday, Jan. 20.—Be sure and find us when you take your pleasure trip to Washington, and we will show you better than we can write, the need of missionary work among its 60,000 colored people. This is one of our winter’s worst days. It rains fast, and the streets are full of snow and water. Breakfast over, I hastened to market for meat to make broth for the sick, and to the grocery for bread. While picking my way over the slippery pavements, a grandmother calls after me with a request that must be heeded. On entering my room in the Mission, a barrel from Brooklyn awaits unpacking. God bless the dear friends of the North who so nobly respond to my appeal for help. They never will know how much good the old clothes do. Before I’m half through, knock number one brings old Auntie Bennett, afflicted with a disease so offensive that she cannot attend our gatherings. When leaving with her bundle of warm garments, in steps Auntie Harris, always so trustful in the Lord, and yet she says, “I sat all yesterday without any fire”; her husband and crippled son unable to provide. Thankful for a little relief, she goes out to carry a big bundle to another poor creature, who, with her old man, have scarcely a crust, and nothing but a leaky shanty for shelter. Caller No. 3 is a young woman, bringing a note from the police station and a certificate from her doctor, that tells of serious sickness, one two-year-old child, and nothing wherewith to help herself. I send her to see our Day Nursery, and tell her to bring her baby on Monday, and I will see what more can be done. Her dull, wan face brightens as she leaves. Tom C. comes next—my boy, who draws our Temperance blackboard illustrations, paints our signs, puts up Christmas decorations, &c. I’ve just received his fit in a suit; so, with a patch to mend the sleeves, and more work under his arm, he goes. Pinkie T. has framed some mottoes, and I ask her to hang them in the school room, paying her with a pair of nice boots. Annie C., our missionary girl from Howard U., comes to assist, and, as a member of the Doing-Good Society of the school, this P.M. brings a report from sick Mr. Green. After preparations for the afternoon, and a peep into the nursery, where the floors are being scrubbed and the children are taking their bath (for, though the Associated Charities have adopted this, my pet project of last year, and have appointed a committee of ladies, I have the daily supervision). I leave for lunch at 12½. The girl’s industrial school opens at 1½; 61 out of 130 scholars are present. We are divided into 15 classes, each with a teacher, if enough ladies are present. I appoint a girl to attend to callers. We open with singing, and sew until 3 o’clock. Some are making bags for their work, some patch-work, some, fancy-work, while others are mending or making garments and learning to cut them. We intersperse sewing-songs. They help the pupils to remember instructions. From three to four we have various exercises, such as talks on health or manners; Bible lessons, repeating the Child’s Creed or the Commandments, with responsive chant or a Psalm and the Lord’s prayer. To-day, we have an object lesson in house-keeping. A table is placed on the platform and Annie C. is asked to prepare it for tea. She arranges the cloth, dishes and food, with criticisms from the scholars. Then, she invites four girls to sit and eat while she acts as waitress. After eating she removes the dishes for washing and folds the cloth. A few more callers and the busy week closes. Thank God for the sunlight it has brought to us during our revival meetings in the conversion of two of our dear girls.
VANTAGE GROUND NEEDED BY STUDENTS.
BY MISS JOSEPHINE KELLOGG, TOUGALOO, MISS.
We long for the time when these people shall obtain a little vantage-ground by industry and—still more essential—by economy and a prudent use of earnings, so that the children may begin the work of getting an education betimes and continue it until a respectable course of study is thoroughly mastered. We have some such, and we hope much from the earlier training and the favorable circumstance of their having parents interested in educating them and able to do it.
In the cases of a majority, they come to us already grown-up, something having given them an ambition for better things than they had known. They have their own way to make and can be in school only a part of each year, many of them working nights and mornings and one day of each week besides, to pay their board in whole or in part. As the time approaches when exhausted funds and worn-out clothing must compel them to go out and seek employment, thoughts will wander and there will be a relaxation in the matter of preparation and recitation of lessons in spite of themselves and the exertions of their teachers. No doubt there is a blessing connected with their struggles against adverse circumstances, and a manly and womanly self-dependence is fostered in this way, but it is not to be expected that a great number will complete the course in the face of such discouragements.
As year after year passes, and they get education enough to help them on somewhat in life and a knowledge that fits them to be useful in church, society and home, and they yet seem almost as far as ever from the goal of graduation which they once placed before themselves, they begin to be anxious to settle down to the real business of life, and they relinquish the hope of a completed normal course with, perhaps, a subsequent complete collegiate course.