Prof. G.W. Andrews, D.D., the pastor this year, conducted the services; there was no sermon proper and no time for any, but there was much of the beautiful music of these colored people; they sing out their fervid souls with their rich and powerful voices. Nearly all were baptized, and much more was made of the right hand of fellowship than is usual in any Northern church. And it is needful for these children, for they will call for constant help months and years to come. With few exceptions, they are not reared in Christian homes, are not educated from the cradle in the Christian faith. The services were both solemn and joyful, and very tender and touching.
Such an avowal is the most significant of all things, anytime, anywhere, but here we know that every life is to be one of toil and bitter struggle, a fight in which the odds are, to appearances, all against them; more than all, that this young man, that young woman, with the dusky face, the mellow voice and the eager spirit, now in covenant with us, is to be a missionary to the heathen, and of his own people. What may he not accomplish? What may she not do for Christ? And these heathen are in our own country; they are our own people. These young missionaries are very peculiarly ours, and it is through the Northern churches that they are trained for their work. Shall not then those churches adopt them in their hearts, carry them in their prayers, and let them suffer no lack in their preparation? Their work in the future for the Master's kingdom will depend very much upon us Christians of the North.
Talladega College is exceedingly prosperous. The day-school is very large; the Sunday-school packs the chapel, and the Sunday congregation is much too crowded for health or comfort in a room seating but two hundred and fifty. The college is working all the time, for a church, earning many small sums. The result, with some gifts, amounts to about $400. Where is the man or the woman to aid in this godly enterprise? to share in this work so essential and so abundantly fruitful?
THREE PICTURES FROM LE MOYNE SCHOOL, MEMPHIS, TENN.
BY MISS ESTHER H. BARNES.
I would like to bring before you three pictures which I saw this week. The first is the interior of a single room. The tattered, soiled bed and the fireplace took up a large part of the room, and the rest was nearly filled with the confusion of odds and ends that make up the belongings of such a home. A feeble fire rested on the uneven bricks of the fireplace, and the chimney above was covered with newspapers in the last stages of dilapidation and dirt. There was no window, but a little sliding shutter, moved aside a few inches, admitted light enough to make the darkness visible as it fell on the smoke-stained boards, and the dusky faces of the inmates seated close to the fire on old chairs and boxes. A home more forlorn than this little pen, which, with a smaller back shed, is the only residence of at least five human beings, I can hardly conceive.
Now for a more cheering picture. It is a cozy sitting-room, papered with taste and furnished in harmony. Everything looks neat, from the snowy bed-spread to the pretty clock on the mantel, and the dainty bunch of pansies on the wall above. Open doors give glimpses of other rooms as well ordered as this, while intelligence and kindness beam in the dark faces of gentle mother and cheery bright-eyed daughters. When people ask us how we can bear to teach "niggers," they generally have in mind those tattered, lazy persons, who are most wont to show themselves on the street corners, and so make the deepest impression on the average white mind.