The American Missionary — Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888

by Various

Our teacher is invited to visit the home of a Kentucky girl, one somewhat above the average. Beautiful for situation, up a winding road, past cascades and mountain waterfalls, upon a high plateau the home is found—a box house, one room, no windows, two beds, four chairs, a table, a few dishes, father, mother, seven children, dogs, cats, and chickens. At retiring hour the teacher is pointed to the corner and is told she is to sleep there. A pile of dirty, ragged quilts are pulled out from under the beds, some bags and rags rolled for pillows, and the family dispose of themselves for the night, with no change of clothing, scarcely the removal of shoes. Change the box house to a tent, put the fire in the centre, and with less furniture, but no more smoke or dirt, you have the tepee home of the Indian. Match the dilapidation and the dirt, the narrow quarters and the large family, and you have the cabin home in the Georgia swamps and the lowlands of Louisiana. The conditions in the main are the same—an untutored father and mother, no books, no pictures, no newspapers, no clean clothes, no Sunday, no God.

At first sight our sympathies are aroused by the lack of all ordinary comforts and conveniences of home life, but transplant the family into a neat cottage, suitably furnished for a home, explaining to them its advantages and uses, and let us see if thus we have met the need. What a disappointment! Their old habits still cling to them. They do not know the names or use of the kitchen utensils; they have no proper knowledge of cooking, no orderly habits; there is no family or personal reserve. There are books and newspapers, but they cannot read them, or cannot read intelligently because of their meagre vocabulary. Evidently the real degradation of these people does not lie wholly in the poor cabins or tents, the scant furniture, the ragged clothing, the shiftlessness and poverty. It is deep in the nature, and far harder to overcome than any outward conditions.

We want to help them: we ought to help them. For what were we nurtured and shielded in Christian homes; why taught self-restraint, self-reliance, the law of God as applied to our duty to ourselves and our neighbors? Why have our hands been trained to skillful work, our minds opened to knowledge, if not to make these our talents ten more by their exercise in behalf of such needy ones? But how shall we convey to them the blessings of intelligent, Christian home life? I am sure every womanly heart gives the same response: through the children.

That is our way—the foundation of the broad work of this Association. We cannot expect the mothers to teach their children what they do not know themselves, have never seen and cannot understand. So we bring the youth out of these homes, cut off as far as possible from their low surroundings, into our missionary schools, where they are lifted into a purer atmosphere and are brought into daily contact with refined Christian womanhood. Here mind and heart and hand are trained. Not only do they learn habits of fore-thought and industry, but by the blessing of the Holy Spirit very many of them learn the saving power there is in Jesus Christ. Ten thousand youth we have thus reached within the last year. Is it not a grand work, worthy your heartiest support? There is encouragement in all our fields, but especially now in what is accomplished for the girls of the colored race. Their perils are peculiar. Your hearts would ache could you know all the dangers that encompass them. They are beset on every hand. Not a girl in our schools is safe. They, of all others, are the ones that are tried, tempted, allured. Do they go out to teach, they are watched, written to, harassed, and only as strong in God's strength and deliverance can they escape. When you think of the snares set for these girls, and that no father or brother may even yet dare defend them, and when you know that there are those—yes, very many—who, guided by Christian teachers stand firm in the purity of their womanhood, clinging to the Everlasting Arm, how plain it is that God has a plan, a purpose for this race, when we shall have fulfilled our duty to them, and when their fiery furnace of trial shall have done its work!

And these people are not in Asia, or Africa, or the Islands of the Sea. They are within our own domain—ten millions of them—a constant reminder of our duty, a threat of danger if duty is neglected. You may say, what are ten thousand youth among ten millions? They are the leaven, which, if a woman take and properly direct shall leaven the whole mass. The American Missionary Association has these youth, and through these, access to larger numbers. It has been no easy matter to win the alienated Indian until he would give up his boys and girls to our care; nor to break through the ignorant pride and reserve of the mountaineers; or even to wisely direct the impulsive, selfishly ambitious, undisciplined colored people. But it has been done. Our school homes are there, upon the sure foundation of gospel, no caste principles, and we need the help of every Christian woman in the land to sustain what has been established at such painstaking and cost, and to meet the demand for the new phases of help that can now be given.

That some of our church woman in the North are interested, is shown by the twenty-eight thousand dollars of contributions received from them during the past year. That they are alive to the advantage of reaching this field through the American Missionary Association and thus keeping in sympathy with the work of the churches in their annual contributions, is shown in the formation of State Unions, for direct co-operation with us. We consider it especially favorable that the purpose of these State organizations is to increase the flow of money and other forms of helpfulness through the regular channels to this part of the home field; that thus the young people and strangers who are gathered into the church auxiliaries are being interested in the history and work of the American Missionary Association and that the children—the future church members—also are learning to give to it, for the sake of the people to whom it ministers.

It has been a great help to us, that in the past year the Woman's Aid of Maine sustained four teachers, that the Woman's Aid of Vermont contributed so faithfully to their adopted school at McIntosh, Ga., and Connecticut ladies to the Industrial School for colored girls in Thomasville. We cannot speak too highly of the efficiency of the New York Woman's Union, which pledges us a definite sum, increasing the amount annually, and keeping its pledge. The Ohio Union has sustained Miss Collins' mission in Dakota and a teacher in the South. The Minnesota Union met nearly two-thirds the cost of our school at Jonesboro', Tenn., and the Iowa Union more than one-third the expense of Beach Institute, Savannah, Ga. The ladies of other States have helped in the girls' department of our school at Tougaloo, Miss., the schools at Athens and Mobile, Ala., Austin, Tex., Williamsburg, Ky. and Santee Agency, Neb. These friends have been in communication with the schools they have aided, learning of the needs and economical measures of help. They have been permitted to know for themselves the hopeful results of patient Christian endeavor. For many of our scholars are beginning quietly and persistently to do noble Christian work in the locality in which they live, relieving the destitute, reading, singing, praying with the sick and infirm and themselves growing stronger and wiser in religious work every day. There are many who appreciate and long for a better and purer life for their own people, and they are doing much to elevate the tone of society. They are the leaven. They can transform the home life—to some extent the old homes—but in much larger degree the new, in giving intelligent parentage to the little ones of their own households.

In order to make the work so well begun tell most for the future, the woman's skill is required in its every phase. The homes must have their visitors, schools their teachers; pastors urgently call for the special missionary. There are those who are willing to go. Will the ladies of the churches provide the means? Will you Christian women—the women of our churches, come to the aid of the American Missionary Association, in support of your sisters in the field? If you will do this, we shall have no more debt. If you will do this, there will be far less of heart-aching denial to those who plead with us year by year to send them just one—only one Christian woman to guide and teach.

It costs but four hundred dollars a missionary. Yet of those who have been appointed for the new year—some already at work, others now on the way—there are one hundred whose support is not yet provided; and only four hundred dollars a missionary! What a glow would enter the hearts of these noble, self-denying woman, if from the Woman's Bureau word might go that the ladies of such churches have provided for you, and you, and you! Weary with the constant drain upon mind and heart, as they come in contact with the warped, barren lives of the people whom they would help, how it would refresh them to feel that because they are your missionaries you are working for, thinking of and praying for them. One hundred woman missionaries unprovided for!

At the word of the Lord we put out into the deep and let down the nets. The draught is great, our nets are breaking, and we beckon unto you, our partners in the other boat to come and help us—to share in the work and the reward.