In connection also with the Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association, and by their invitation, there will be an all-day Mass Meeting of Women's Home Missionary Unions in the New England Church, Chicago, October 29th. Every State Union is urged to send representatives.
GLIMPSES FROM THE FIELD.
SCHOOL LIFE.
I think you could not find a busier company of young people anywhere. As soon as one task is accomplished, another is ready to be taken up, and this goes on from early morn till time for retiring. Going into the kitchen you will find a dozen or more girls, with bright and happy faces, doing the homely work of dish-washing and preparing the vegetables for dinner. In the laundry, you are greeted with as many more smiling faces, some singing, others telling funny stories, but all busy at their allotted work. The bell rings for school and you will see them flying from every direction, perhaps having taken a moment to smooth the hair, or arrange the dress. All out of breath they reach the school room, ready for the five hours' work with books, which is the same as any average school in the North. This work being accomplished, they are off to the farm, shops, the sewing room and the cooking class. Here they learn to prepare all substantial food which would be necessary for any table, and become initiated into the intricacies of bread, pie and cake-making.
Our Sabbaths are not idle days either, for with Sunday-school, church service, and prayer meetings, our day is pretty well filled. Some of our girls are doing real missionary work by going out into the neighborhood, to relieve the sick, read to the old and infirm, and to carry food where it is needed. This they seem to enjoy, and it will, perhaps, prepare them for usefulness as they go out to work among their people.
HOME LIFE.
Perhaps, if I give you a glimpse into the home of one of our pupils, you can more easily understand what we have to work against among these people. In a miserable old hovel, of one small room, lives a family of eleven, father, mother, five children, two pitiful little orphans, to whom the mother out of the kindness of her heart has given shelter, and a young man and a young woman as boarders. The mother toils hard each day to furnish bread for the little ones, and does what she can to keep her family respectable. The father is what is termed, "no 'count." He has no regular employment, but, when so inclined, will chop wood, and thus earn a few dimes. Their house is lighted by one small window, in which bunches of rags and papers supply the absence of glass. The room is heated by an old fire-place, which is crumbling to decay. The furniture consists of two straw beds covered with ragged quilts, a little pine table, and four broken chairs. I need not tell you of the moral atmosphere which exists in such a home. Yet this is only a type of the home we see too often when we are making our round of calls.
SACRIFICES FOR EDUCATION.
Our school refuses none on account of age. Pupils are there, from the little three-year-old who attends the "Kinny-garten," as they call it, to those who are forty and fifty years old. I have been exceedingly interested in one woman who is now attending school in the primary room. She said to me: "I done sent my daughters through school and now I thought I would try and get a little education myself."