Read Ebook: The American Missionary — Volume 32 No. 07 July 1878 by Various

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"THESE STUPID BLACKS."

That they are not altogether idiotic, is occasionally made to appear rather significantly. In a class in Yale College, not long ago, was a colored youth of high scholarship and fine promise. In the same class was a white student from South Carolina, with nearly or quite the same name, and consequently a seat at recitation next to the sable scholar. Anent which occurred, substantially, the following correspondence between the Southern father and a gentleman of the faculty:

"DEAR SIR:--My son informs me that he is obliged to sit next a negro day after day, which is highly disagreeable to him and offensive to me. Will you please provide some different arrangement? Yours, etc.,

"YALE COLLEGE, New Haven.

"DEAR SIR:--Your favor is at hand. It is true that the students are arranged alphabetically for the present term, and a colored student has his place next to your son. But, at the commencement of the next term, the arrangement will be in the order of scholarship, in which case, the colored youth will be so near the head of the class, and your son, I regret to say, so near the other extremity, that there will be no farther embarrassment on that score. Yours, etc.,

Speedy result: A note from a disgusted father, calling home a disgusted son.

AN AGED MINISTER'S ENTHUSIASM.

JERSEY CITY, CONN.

THREE EXTRACTS.

From a paper read by MR. J. H. ALLEY, of Boston, before the Essex South Conference. The writer testifies, from his own observations, as to

The Africans in Africa.

The African, in his native land, is little known by us; but a year among that people gave me opportunities for observation. They are far from being the stupid race we so often hear them called. Keen at a bargain, they are often a match for some of us in that boasted Yankee trait. Apt to learn, quick to understand and to appreciate advantages, they are a people easy to assume and appropriate the best results of civilization--brave in the defense of their rights and homes, yet not aggressive, except when forced by circumstances and their teachings. We forget the whole history of this people in looking only at some particular phase or trait. Their land, the field of the slave-stealer for centuries, has been the scene of cruelty, fraud, and all the worst forms of vice. A people educated by so long a course of schooling in its vicissitudes might well be cruel and vicious. The land has been hunted, from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope, by foreign and native stealers. Tribes have been driven for self-protection, or by greed of gain, to make captures from other tribes or other parts of their own. To show the debasing power of slavery and slave-hunting, let me say that I have seen slaves brought to the coast from the central parts of Africa who were the most abject specimens of the human race I have ever known--brought by a strong, stalwart tribe, noble in bearing, and brave in war; and these, too, were the same tribe or people only a comparatively short time before. Why this great difference? A simple explanation is only required to show it all. Together and at peace, they had a generous and varied diet of animal and vegetable food, for they had extent of territory in which to hunt and gather; but divided and at war, fighting for self-protection, one party gained the supremacy. Then the other were a defeated people; circumscribed within small limits, unable to hunt, they were soon confined to a vegetable diet alone, and then to a single kind, and often to a few simple roots; courage gone, they were reduced to servitude and slavery, and brought to a market. This is no new theory, for the same effects have followed the same causes over and over again.

After references to the evils of slavery in this land, and the good to be accomplished by it under the Divine overruling, follows this

Thrilling Incident.

The paper closes with a plea for the liberal support of our work among the freedmen, enforced by

Two Examples of Liberality.

About giving, let me relate two incidents and I close, for if they appeal to you as they did to me they will be more effective than any mere words of mine. As I sat in Mr. Woodworth's office, the other day, an elderly lady came in and took a chair by his desk, saying, as she opened her bag, that she had come to bring her offering. Her dress was not of the latest fashion, her bonnet was not of the spring style; but her face was one of those beautiful motherly faces you and I used to look into years ago, and which, though years have come and gone since they were covered from our sight, are still as sweet to our memories as ever--such faces as we know will greet us lovingly in heaven, for they are watching and waiting for us, and our entrance there will be, in no small measure, in answer to their prayers. From her pocket-book she took a bill and handed it to Mr. W., saying, she wished it were more, and in such a tone that I knew it was a heart gift, and that the wish was almost a prayer, which might go with the gift and make it as effectual as if it were all she had desired it to be. Gifts made in such a spirit, in His hands, who multiplied the bread of old, grow to wonderful results. The bill, to my surprise, for I had imagined the circumstances of the donor to be very limited, was twenty dollars.

OBITUARY.

ITEMS FROM CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS.

DUDLEY, N. C.--"A deep and increasing religious interest is reported. The work of conviction and conversion is going on. Backsliders have been restored. Brother Peebles was assisted for a time by Rev. Mr. Smith of Raleigh."

GEORGIA.--Of the thirty-seven graduates from Atlanta University, thirty are teachers, two are pastors, one is a missionary in Africa, one a theological student at Andover. Only three are not teaching or preaching--two who are wives and one who has died.

ALABAMA.--The Trinity Church, Athens, Rev. Horace J. Taylor, pastor, received one on profession at the May communion. This church has a flourishing missionary society, which contributed in February for the support of colored missionaries in Africa. It has sustained during the year just closing, thirteen mission schools, in which over 700 have been taught.

LOUISIANA.--The Minutes of the Southwestern Congregational Conference, which met at New Iberia, April 3-5, have been printed. The statistics give fourteen churches, with a total membership of 865.

--The following relates to a recent convert in one of our churches: "Mr. K. proves a very strong man in the church. He is evidently of the material which makes a first-class sinner or a first-class saint. He was lately invited to a dinner-party by his brother, who, when he entered the room, began in a mocking way to give an account of his conversion. Mr. K. listened patiently, and when the account was finished, said it was true, but all had not been told. He then gave his own story in such a way that one of the company there determined to follow his example."

MEMPHIS, TENN.--Miss Woodward writes: "For the past thirteen weeks the Murphy temperance movement has been very successful among the white people of Memphis. A few earnest workers, seeing the need of a like effort among the colored people here, inaugurated a series of meetings at the Second Congregational Church. From the first there has been a very decided interest manifested, and the meetings are productive of great good, both directly and as a means of awakening thought on this important subject. Some two hundred in all have signed the pledge, and new names are added at every meeting."

TOUGALOO, MISS.--A teacher writes: "I think there is not one in the school who has not signed the pledge. They came in one by one, till last week one who has stood out all these months, came and put his name on the list of total abstainers. He said: 'You all got away with me at the meeting last night, and I am going to sign the pledge, for I cannot teach others to do what I will not do myself.'"

--The following is a good illustration of perseverance among the colored people of the South. While the missionary was persuading a sick woman to put her trust in Jesus, the husband came in, when the following conversation took place: "Mr. Williams, are you a Christian?" "No, Miss, I's left on de docket yet." "Do you ever think about becoming one?" "Yes, Miss, I thinks a heap about it sometimes. I tries a while, then I stops." "I fear you do not seek for it as you do for money; you should keep at it all the time, as you do when working for money." "Yes, Miss, that is jes the way I works for money. I works a while for the ole man, then I stops. Jes the same way, Miss."

CHINESE ITEMS.

--Wong Sam has returned from China, and has resumed his place in the Barnes School. Lee Hame, who was there before, has been sent to Sacramento. There are now four Chinese helpers regularly employed.

--Mr. Dakin has retired from the Central School, having removed to Arizona. Mr. Henry C. Pond, a son of our efficient superintendent, takes his place. He is a graduate of the State University, and well qualified for the work.

--Mr. Gilbert is doing good work at Woodland, and approving himself to all.

--Six Chinamen were received to Bethany Church June 2d, making forty-four Chinese members in all. There are two Chinese Christian families in the church.

GENERAL NOTES.

The Negro.

--Howard University, for colored students, Washington, D. C., shows a strength of two hundred and twenty-five in all departments. There are thirty-two theological students, fifty medical, six law, twenty-two academical, eighteen preparatory, and ninety-five in the Normal department.

--The Reformed Episcopal Church has organized fourteen colored congregations in and around Charleston, S. C. Some of them meet in log buildings. One church is staggering under a debt of ten dollars.

--The Baltimore Annual Conference of the A. M. E. Church passed resolutions denouncing the action of the School Commissioners of that city, in refusing to employ colored teachers for the separate schools for colored children. Two colored delegates, representing the African Methodist Church, were most cordially received.

--The first negro who has sat on an important jury in New York, in many years, was accepted May 22d, in the Supreme Court circuit, in a case involving ,500.

--A French Roman Catholic mission is to be established at Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, in Central Africa, with government aid to the amount of ,000. Ten missionaries, who have seen service in Northern Africa, will soon set out for Zanzibar. They have already large and extending missionary enterprises in the north and in the south.

The Indian.

--It is hard to tell, from the contradictory accounts, whether Sitting Bull will continue seated over the Canada lines, trading in the spoils of raids on Black Hills trains, or will issue from his camp of 1,500 lodges to take possession of his old home and fight out his claim to the end. Authorities differ.

--Meanwhile, the Bannock Indians, numbering about 200 warriors, under the command of Buffalo Horn, the noted scout, are encamped in the lava beds, between Big Campus Prairie and Snake River, and have ordered the whites to leave the prairie on penalty of death. The Indians on the Upper Columbia are equally hostile, and the Sioux still threatening.

--General Sherman says that, if the present indications of an Indian war are realized, and he fears they will be, the army, as it now stands, would be entirely insufficient to cope with the weight of Indian strategy and valor that would be thrown against it.

--The Commissioner of Indian Affairs is about to try a new experiment with the Indians. He has given orders forbidding further gratuitous issue of coffee and sugar to them at their agencies. In order to secure application to duty on their part, he says that only as they work, and in payment for their labor, will they receive coffee and sugar rations in future.

--A small Indian church was dedicated at Jamestown, Clallam County, Washington Territory, Sunday, May 12th, by Rev. M. Eells. The idea of erecting it originated entirely with the Indians, who bought the lumber, and have done all the work. The windows and casings, nails, paint, oil, and lime came as annuity goods. They have also had encouragement, pecuniarily, from white friends. It is the first church building in the county, although it has been settled for about twenty years, and the first white house in the Indian village.

THE FREEDMEN.

COMMENCEMENT AT HAMPTON INSTITUTE.

BY TELESCOPE.

This always interesting occasion came on the 23rd of May. The special feature of public interest this year was the attendance of the President of the United States, with his private secretary, Rogers, and General Devens and Mr. McCrary of the Cabinet. A large party went, also, from New York and Boston on this most enjoyable and instructive excursion.

"All this was abundantly manifest by their general bearing on this occasion, the prompt organization of their meeting, the dignity and good sense of their presiding officer, a negro black as night, the secretary likewise, but models of courtesy and tact, their self-possessed and orderly manner of conducting their business in a large presence of trustees, teachers, and visitors, in the accounts they gave of their work, their trials, their methods, and successes."

After giving reports of their varied experiences, hindrances, and hopes, a discussion followed as to the desirableness of raising the educational standard of Hampton and making it a real college. There was a good deal of feeling in favor of such a move, and the alumni came, finally, to a standing vote requesting such a change of the trustees and faculty.

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