This statement speaks loudly, not only as regards the particular case mentioned, but as regards the system which we are pursuing to elevate the colored people. Mr. Henry, during his studies in Howard University, was aided by funds contributed in Great Britain for the assistance of needy colored students, and it will be cheering to those benefactors to hear of the good which is being accomplished by this beneficiary. Will not other benefactors come to our help by furnishing other endowments and scholarships?
REVIVAL WORK AT FISK UNIVERSITY.
REV. H. S. BENNETT.
The religious history of Fisk University divides itself into two portions, that before New Year and after. Before the New Year, the week given to the Young Men’s Christian Association passed, and the work of holding nightly prayer meetings was taken in hand by the students. Several conversions resulted. After the new year had set in and I had returned from my Northern trip, I felt that the time had come for direct effort for the conversion of the students. I, therefore, directed my preaching to that end and held nightly meetings for inquirers. As a result two or three of the students were converted. At length, being convinced that I could do little more, I made no appointment for other meetings. At this point the young men in Livingstone Hall came forward and offered to carry on the meetings in their own way. I was glad to give them the opportunity to go forward. This they did, visiting from room to room and inviting the unconverted out. The result was that there was a large increase in the interest. The inquiry meetings were full, and from ten to fifteen were seeking Christ every night. This work went on for several weeks and resulted in the conversion of fifteen or more—twenty-two for the whole year. There is still some interest, although other things have interfered to divert the minds of the students from the direct effort for the salvation of souls.
EMERSON INSTITUTE.
BY MISS EMMA CAUGHEY, MOBILE, ALA.
The accompanying cut of Emerson Institute presents it in its new and enlarged proportions. Oct 3d, 1882, with much joy and thanksgiving, we dedicated its new walls, “Pro Christo et Humanitate.” It is a fine substantial building, well adapted to our school work. A basement play-room under the entire building furnishes protection to the children on rainy days. The first floor contains three pleasant school-rooms, four halls and a library. Four stair-ways lead to the play-room, and the same number lead up to the second floor, where are three more cheery, well ventilated school-rooms, separated from each other by uplifting sash doors, by which the entire upper story may be thrown into one large hall. Here we assemble for morning devotions, hold our public rhetoricals and evening socials. Contributions from friends at the North have enabled us to place a reading table in one corner of the normal room, furnished with the best weeklies and monthlies, a handsome clock and some tasteful mottoes on the wall, each of which we may hope is a little rill flowing into that stream of silent influences which serves not only to brighten the lives of the pupils but to help them to a nobler manhood and a purer womanhood. We have enrolled during the year three hundred and twenty-one different pupils under the care of six teachers. We have an industrial department connected with our school, in which sewing and fancy work are taught. We meet for two hours each Friday evening at the close of the regular session of school. This evening hour is a happy climax to the week for the girls, but is a great tension upon the nervous force of the teachers at the end of the week’s wear and tear. We close this department of our school with a fair, where the articles made by the girls are offered for sale, the proceeds of which are to be divided between foreign missions and our own worthy poor.
