TRIBUTE TO OUR MISSIONARIES.
Apropos of the roll of our missionaries and teachers we quote an eloquent tribute from one of the children of the American Missionary Association who is now the strong pastor of a strong church in the South. He alludes to a teacher who had devoted many years of her life to our missionary work and had brought to it a sweetness of spirit and devotion that had won the confidence and inspired the zeal of those for whom she labored. We quote:
"The work which these teachers did was the result of no small sacrifice. For a woman to leave her Northern home of comfort and refinement to come South to engage in such a work and all that it implies was not a popular thing even at the North, but in spite of unpopularity at the North and unworthy treatment at the South, these self-exiled men and women wrought wonderfully. They proved the best friends that the black man has ever had. In the school they showed us the light of letters, which had never before dawned upon us. In the church they showed us the Light of the world, which was strangely dim in our souls. In the shop they showed us the light of life about us, of which we were densely ignorant. Thoughtful minds, skillful hands, enlightened hearts—this is the heritage they brought us.
"Throughout the length and breadth of the Southland there are such women among us working in a humble way. The work done by these moral heroes and heroines is work in the shade, but one day, when the sunlight of God's justice shall shine upon it, as it surely will, men will see it and admire it. For these friends we are devoutly grateful. Deep down in our hearts, too deep in many cases for tears, lies the feeling of whole-souled gratitude for these moral heroes and heroines. The half has never been told. We thank God for those who left home and went to the war to die, if need be, that the slave might be free. But we thank God equally for those brave men and braver women who, before the smoke of battle cleared away, came South, and, with the spelling book in one hand and God's holy word in the other, set the millions of freedmen on the way toward reading, reasoning and righteousness. Around God's throne may their crowns of life eternal glitter with the penitential tears of a grateful people redeemed unto a common Father by their prayers, their tears, their lives!"
Our last Annual Report is printed, and will be sent to those making application for it to this office.