Through certain interferences with one of our schools at the South, on the part of some ambitious people there, it seemed at one time that we should feel it a necessity to reduce the grades and place two or three teachers in some other schools which are calling on us for help. We telegraphed them to remain, however, and the result is thus given: "Your telegram came this afternoon and the children were half wild when they got out of the school-house, running up and down the streets to tell the good news. A company of them met the chairman of the local school board, whom they did not regard as altogether friendly, and they shouted to him, 'We have got our teachers! We have got our teachers! The man says they can stay.' One old auntie came this afternoon to say, 'I'se heerd how they is trying to get the teachers away and I prayed and prayed to the good Lord to keep 'em.' Some of the boys are waist-deep in the water after clams to get their fifty cents for their week's tuition. It has been a great joy to me to see the character of the people when the unfriendly ones tried to break us up. They have shown much thought and ability, and they win our hearts by their faith in God."
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Notes From New England.
By Rev. C.J. Ryder, District Secretary.
An exceedingly good plan for increasing the collections for benevolent objects has been hit upon by some members of a Boston church. They have what they call an "Extra Cent-a-Day Band." Each member pledges himself to lay aside one cent each day for some benevolent object. They elect a treasurer and put into his hands this "Cent-a-Day" fund, as they please, some paying frequently, others waiting until considerable has accumulated. At a given time each month they divide the accumulated contributions among the different societies as they may elect. The American Missionary Association has occasion to be grateful for this "Extra Cent-a-Day" plan in the pledge of about thirty dollars to its treasury. I pass it along in these "Notes," as these friends hold no patent right upon the method, and would gladly see it adopted in many churches.
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There seems to be a great localization of patriotic Christian thought in New England upon the Southern problem now, as there has not been since the war closed. I bought recently one of the leading magazines on the train, and the leading article in it was on the Southern problem. I picked up the Forum, and the leading article was on the Southern problem. Mr. Grady comes from the South to address the business men of Boston, and turns aside from questions which would naturally be discussed to speak of the Southern problem. At a recent meeting of the Old Colony Congregational Club at Brockton, Massachusetts, they invited two Secretaries to speak upon this Southern problem, and listened with patience to two long addresses. The discussion which followed indicated that the churches represented in that large and intelligent club were most earnestly pondering this Southern problem. In its importance, it overtops every other consideration before the citizens and churches of America to-day! Thoughtful people are coming more than ever to realize this. The processes of thought through which they have passed already, and the facts they have settled in their own minds, indicate a very hopeful condition of things. In the first place, they are sure that this is not a local or sectional question. It is a National question, and will involve the whole country in anarchy and misrule, unless the anarchy and misrule of the Southern whites are stopped. New England's voice will be heard in solemn and earnest protest, unless there is a radical change in the conduct of the dominant race of the South very soon. Such outrages as those at Barnwell, S.C., and Jackson, Miss., which are only types of many such, must be stopped.
Another fact that has been settled in the minds of the people here, is that the education and moral elevation of the Negroes is a matter of painful exigency; that the forces employed by the American Missionary Association in that field must be largely multiplied. The President of the Old Colony Club summed up the discussion of the evening by saying most earnestly that all this meant that the contributions to the American Missionary Association must be largely increased among the churches represented in that Club, if we would solve this terrible Southern problem, and save our country from this threatened danger.
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