Mr. Myers has preached during the year beginning with Oct. '82, one hundred and forty-two sermons. The services, together with the other public services just mentioned, have amounted to three hundred and forty. Have attended fifty or more meetings conducted by others. We spend all the remaining time our strength will permit in calling at the homes.
We have a neat modern church nearly finished, and so far without foreign help. But no one knows what an effort has been required. Mr. Myers would announce a working bee to draw stone or any such work; would try to enthuse the people as he has so often done in the North. But when the time would come he has worked all day alone. We have learned at last that this people don't enthuse.
We are hard at work in our high-school enterprise. We have Prof. and Mrs. W. and Miss G., all from the North, with us. We hope to get a school, the good influence of which will never die out of these mountains.
These are peculiar people. What I have said of them has reference to the general class of society. But there are some who seem of better stock, who are shrewd, keen, far-sighted people. You cannot find their superiors in native ability in any country. Though often lacking in culture and morality, they still hold a wide influence over the rest, so that something besides goodness is required in those who wish to come among them as helpers. There must be ability to adapt oneself to these widely diverse conditions. One needs wisdom and tact to get along with the shrewdest, and such a love for souls that he can come with a helping hand to the most degraded, nor be discouraged if, with a heart brimful of sympathy, he reaches the hand a long time only to see it rejected by those most in need.
The work is a work of time. The majority of the people are unstable, thriftless improvident and ignorant. Slavery left its blight of impotency and profligacy upon them. They come and go as did their fathers a hundred years ago. Their tools and utensils are the same their great-grandparents used, and they are content with them. We never worked harder and saw less result in the conversion of sinners than while in Kentucky, and yet never felt more satisfied that we were where God wants us, and doing an important work. Unless these people have help they will prove a fretting leprosy in our nation.
WORK AMONG THE COLORED PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH.
BY MISS IDA M. BEACH.
No small part of the work undertaken by the A. M. A. is that among the colored people of the South. Perhaps we may judge something of how vast this work is in itself, and how far-reaching in its results, if we consider for a few moments the numbers and condition of the colored people. Twenty years ago about 4,000,000 people were liberated from bondage, with all the evils resulting from the system of slavery resting upon them. There was great rejoicing among lovers of freedom when the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued. The slaves themselves, wild with joy, shouted, "We're free! We're free! The year of jubilee has come!" Free! yes, free! but with the burdens of manhood and womanhood suddenly thrust upon them. Freedom brought the right and opportunity of establishing homes. Glorious privilege! But do we not all know how much good judgment and wisdom and thought and planning it takes to maintain a true home? Freedom gave them the right of keeping their little ones and seeing them grow to manhood and womanhood, but oh! how much of patience and God-given power it requires to train the little feet to tread the right way!
Four million people, half civilized, uneducated, untrained, with the judgment and reason of children, hitherto knowing little of the ways of the outer world, suddenly brought into life's conflicts! What an amount of instruction they needed!