Some of our classes in this room number thirty-five or forty. The smaller classes from this room recite in the recitation room. It is with difficulty that some of our men, weighing two hundred, get into the seats in the school-room, but they bear the crowding and close packing with great patience. The small boarding-houses in the yard are as badly crowded as the school-rooms. In two small rooms, having two beds each, there are twelve young men, six in each. Here they cook for themselves, sleep and study out of school hours. One can hardly find standing-room among the chairs, trunks, etc. Other rooms are crowded nearly as much. And still the scholars come. What shall we do with them? Our cry is more room. O, that God would put it into the heart of some one to give the money needed for another building at Brewer!
PARAGRAPHS.
The congregation of Lincoln Memorial Church, Washington, D.C., rejoiced in a renovated and newly-furnished church edifice, Sunday, Jan. 6th. The pastor, Rev. George W. Moore, preached an interesting sermon on "The Law of Christian Growth." At the conclusion of the services a statement of the cost of the recent improvements was read. The total cost was $1,500, about $200 of which was given by contractors and workmen. Hon. A.C. Barstow, of Providence, R.I., presented the church with one of the large and beautiful stoves, and gave the other at the cost of manufacture. The present membership of the church is one hundred, ninety of whom are resident members. The people have done nobly in their gifts and self-denials, and Pastor and Mrs. Moore have in their hands a great work which promises to be greater in the future.
From a pastor in a remote part of Georgia:
"I have seen more of the condition and wants of the people than ever before, but whiskey and tobacco are the great evils of this part of the country. The colored people are not very much in advance of what they were twenty years ago, but the sad part of it is, that the leaders are no better than the people. I think almost every minister about here uses whiskey and tobacco, as far as I can learn, and of course the members of the churches can see no harm in doing what their minister does. This is a sad picture, but it only shows the need of intelligent and consecrated leaders, such as the American Missionary Association is raising up for a people who have been led by those who are neither intelligent nor consecrated."
Mrs. Hattie B. Sherman, the daughter of Rev. R.F. Markham, died January 14th at her residence in Stockton, Kansas. For two years she was a missionary of this Association at Beach Institute, Savannah, Ga., where she rendered faithful and effective service in the education of the colored people. We tender our sympathies to her father, who was for so many years a useful missionary of the Association in the South, and to her husband, in their great bereavement.