The Rev. Frank E. Jenkins, who succeeded the Rev. C.J. Ryder as a Field Superintendent, and who has served the Association since that time with an untiring devotion and with signal ability, has at his own urgent request been transferred from this general work to a specific part of the field.
He has accepted the pastorate of the Congregational Church of New Decatur, Ala., with which we are in co-operation. Our consent to this change would have been the more reluctant but for the fact that we are in heartiest sympathy with the missionary purposes contemplated in this exchange of service.
We congratulate the New Decatur church upon its entrance into its tasteful edifice—recently dedicated,—with a pastor whom we relinquish from the relationships of Field Superintendent only upon his own repeated convictions of duty, and in view of his preference for this particular work.
Southern Notes.
By Secretary A.F. Beard.
The "sleeper" had been transformed into a parlor car, which was used that day chiefly by the colored porter and myself. The "paper-boy" came through and offered me a New York Illustrated Weekly, adorned on the first page with the portrait of Jefferson Davis, for whom the South was then mourning with great abundance of white and black cotton cloth.
After I had declined with thanks to invest in this picture, I turned to the colored porter who was travelling in the white man's car in apparent "social equality" and casually remarked, "Your people should feel very grateful to Jefferson Davis for what he did for you. You ought to have that picture." With a surprise that he could not conceal, he intimated that he did not understand me. He "didn't care for it," and "didn't know what Jeff Davis had done for his people."
Time being at some discount, I undertook to tell him that "Jefferson Davis did more than any other person to take the South out of the Union. He was chief among the secessionists. Then, as President, he made so many mistakes, he did more than any other man to prevent the success of the Confederacy. He did more to bring about the freedom of the slave than any other man. Since the emancipation of your race came on as a consequence of secession, why should you not be grateful to Jefferson Davis and cherish his memory?"