Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 07, July, 1889», страница 4

WILLIAMSBURG ACADEMY, WHITLEY CO., KY

BY MISS EDITH WILLIAMS

In this land where the people live by their crops, it was most encouraging to see the number of older boys who remained in school till the last of the term. Two of our boys remain with us during vacation, to do the needed work. They are earnest Christians and faithful workers, and appreciate the home influences here.

Many of the girls tell me that their fathers used to be "moonshiners," and they say that at that time they thought it all right; did not realize the evils of alcohol until taught about it in the school. We believe, however, that the morals of this part of Kentucky are steadily improving, and feel confident of it in our own little town.

Last week I visited a country school house about four miles from town. It was made of logs. Three small holes were cut in the logs for windows. The benches were split logs, and the floor was the earth. The great stone chimney, (the only spacious thing about the building,) was beginning to crumble away. This is a typical log school house of the past, but much better ones are going up all over the country, giving brighter hopes for the future.

With the better school buildings through the country, our Academy will be ready to furnish them with better teachers than they have had in the past. Our hope for the future among the Mountain Whites is great.

SCHOOL AT MARSHALLVILLE, GA

BY MRS. ANNA W. RICHARDSON

Our school is very large, there being enrolled two hundred. Our great trouble is a lack of teachers. There are only three of us.

New facts regarding the people among whom we work are brought to us constantly. Yesterday four pupils entered school who were perfect wonders. The oldest of them is seventeen years of age, and the youngest perhaps ten. The oldest has been to church three times during her life, the others have never been. They have never been to Sabbath-school, and know nothing about Christ and God. They have never in their lives heard the word Bible. The oldest one has seen a preacher three times—the same man each time. They made their first visit to town, and beheld the first railroad car yesterday. They do not know who made them! Ever since their arrival I have been saying over and over, "Surely we have Africa at our very door." I cannot realize it. The responsibility is so great that it makes me tremble.

Many of our pupils have little or no religious training at home. We have a good many pupils whose parents are "Hard Shell Baptists," and do not allow them to go to Sabbath-school, and teach them not to pray for forgiveness of sins. A few afternoons ago, the pupils were all asked what they desired to be. One little boy raised his hand to say that he was going to be a "Hard Shell" minister, for they were already saved, and had no praying to do. This answer was a result of his training at home.

We have many features of encouragement connected with our work here. Especially are we pleased with the work that is being done by a class of our advanced boys and girls. There are ten of them out in the wooded country, teaching for three months those who cannot find their way to our school. Every two weeks, these pupils come in to give a report of their work. It is understood by them that it is a part of their duty to tell us just what work they do and how they do it. We supply them with reading matter for their pupils—especially are we careful to let them have Sunday-school books, etc. These pupils will be out of school three months, and will then return to their school work. Every one who is out is a Christian, and we feel that their influence for good is very great. It is a joy to us to feel that our little school here in this town is spreading its influence out into darker portions of the State. Each one of these pupils has no less than forty pupils in his school, so that the work of the school here at Marshallville reaches over six hundred souls! This is indeed a dark portion of the field, but God's loving care is about us, and we are content to labor here.

ALBANY, GA

BY MR. W.C. GREENE

Our school is overrun with pupils this school year. I was compelled to turn away a large number because I didn't have room for them.

The people on their part are manifesting a deep interest in education They are trying to take advantage of the opportunity as it is given them. Many are going hungry to get a chance to send their children to school.

This last week has been one of profit in this part of the State. The people have been made to see their duty to the colored man more plainly by the lectures delivered by Dr. Lansay and others in the Georgia Chautauqua. There were some fine speeches made in behalf of the Negro.

Judge Hook was down one day and visited our school, and said that he was surprised and glad to see the rapid progress we had made here.

GREGORY INSTITUTE, WILMINGTON, N.C

A densely packed church of white and colored people witnessed the closing exercises of the Gregory Institute, a school of high grade for colored people founded and supported by the American Missionary Association, and aided by Mr. Gregory. This school has been in operation some eighteen or twenty years, and has done a most excellent work among the people it was designed to benefit. The writer of this article has attended public exercises of the Institute three times, and has been each time impressed with the dignified and self-respecting deportment of the scholars and visitors.

The neat programme called for graduating essays from six girls—there were no boys in the class—and there were six songs rendered by the whole school, or by the class, and every one present agreed with Dr. Pritchard when in his address he declared that such was the musical and literary excellence of the occasion that it would have done credit to any institution of learning in North Carolina.

The address of Dr. Pritchard was humorous, practical and highly complimentary to the school, and was received with much favor by the audience. After the conferring of the diplomas by Mr. Woodard, the pleasant occasion came to an end. The Institute is an honor to the city, and certainly reflects great credit on the officers who conduct it.—Morning Star.

SENIOR CLASS AT LE MOYNE NORMAL INSTITUTE

MEMPHIS, TENN

The Senior class of the present year is the largest graduated from the school, numbering eleven members, seven young ladies and four young men.

Tennessee is the native State of all but one, who was born in Virginia.

The youngest is seventeen years old, the oldest twenty-eight; average age, twenty and one-half years.

The tallest member of the class is five feet, eight and one-half inches in height, the shortest in stature measures five feet; average height, five feet, six inches.

The heaviest weight turns the scale at one hundred and sixty-five pounds, and the lightest at one hundred and twenty; average weight, one hundred and thirty-seven pounds.

The longest attendance at this school is ten years and the shortest, four; average term in school, six and one-half years.

ITEMS

We have received No. 1, Vol. 1, of the Academy Student, published and printed by the students of the Williamsburg Academy, Williamsburg, Ky. The little paper is large with promise. It is as bright as a new dollar.

A teacher asked her class in geography where the Turks live. The remarkable reply was, "In the woods." Thinking the pupil had confounded the Orientals with the Aborigines, the answer was pronounced to be "incorrect." The pupil rejoined, "Well, I have seen them there roosting in the trees."

The following extract is from a composition on "The Blacksmith."

"Man in his state of incarnation has various ways of making money to supply himself with nutriment so that the body may be able to exhiliarate its immortal tenant, 'the soul.' The one about which I shall speak is the Smith. This trade is of momentous importance.... It is quite amusing to hear him when he is mending a piece of malleable work; he has a way of striking the iron that makes it sound harmonious to the ear, and children very often stop to hear him."

THE INDIANS

A TRIP AMONG THE OUT-STATIONS

The out-station work among the Indians is a feature almost peculiar to the Indian Missions of the A.M.A. These stations are the picket-lines pushed forward into the Reservations beyond the line of established schools and missions. Each one consists of a cheap home connected sometimes with a cheap school-house, and these are occupied by one or two native Indian missionaries who teach and preach, and thus accomplish an immediate good and lay the foundation for the more permanent church and school. The Association has about twenty such stations on the Cheyenne and other rivers in Dakota. One of the teachers from Oahe gives a racy sketch of a trip among some of the out-stations. We make room for a large extract, regretting that we have not space for more.

THE JOURNEY

We started Thursday morning, going about seven miles above the Mission to cross the river. We took dinner at the house of a white man who has an Indian wife, and then started out on the long drive. Our direction was almost due west, a little south toward the Cheyenne River. We reached an out-station on the Cheyenne about dark, where James Brown, a Santee Indian, is stationed. Two of our Santee school-girls are here, and it was encouraging to see their neat dress, and hear them use their English, though they so seldom see any one with whom they have occasion to use it that it is not easy for them. The next morning, the girls had classes in reading and writing. Some of the children were ragged and dirty, with faces unwashed, and hair uncombed, one little boy with both knees coming through his trousers, but their faces were, almost without exception, bright and intelligent, with the intelligence of childhood, which would inevitably change to the stolid indifference of ignorance, were it not for the influence which this Christian household among them may exert. To be sure, the girls are young and inexperienced, but that they do their best means a great deal. Two young men were learning to read the Dakota Bible. Soon after eleven, we were on our way again, keeping the Cheyenne River in sight. We stopped at one of the villages on the Cheyenne, where a Frenchman with an Indian wife has built up quite a little colony, all related to one another. Several of our pupils come from here, and the mode of life at their home has been modified by their influence.

We reached Plum Creek, where Edwin Phelps is stationed, about dark, and after two long days' ride I was glad when bed time came. Ellen Kitto and Elizabeth Winyan had come up from the Cheyenne, and I felt sure that Elizabeth had given up her bed for me. The next morning I asked Ellen if we could go out to some of the houses, but she said the people were all on the other side of the river, that there was a dance there. This was a disappointment to me, as I wanted to see the homes of the people, but after dinner Edwin offered to take Elizabeth, Ellen and me across the river to Cherry Creek, so that I gained rather than lost.

THE DANCE

As we drew near the dance-house I could hear the monotonous yet rythmic beat of the drum, and get glimpses through the door-way of the feathered heads moving in time to the music. Outside there was a crowd of women, girls, and young men, the young men wrapped in white sheets under which they carry off, and make love to, the dusky maidens. This is the way a Titon "makes love." As a recent writer describes this dance, bringing before one only its poetry, and that which may be perhaps really beautiful, it does not seem shocking or revolting in the least; but the reality is simply dreadful. Not so much in itself, perhaps, though that is bad enough, as in its influence, its consequences, all that it means and all that it leads to.

THE CONTRAST

Just beyond the dance house is the mission station where Clarence Ward and his wife are; a civilized Christian family in the midst of this heathenism.

Sunday was to be the eventful day, and as early as half past nine the congregation began to arrive. When the bell rang for service, the school-room was filled almost immediately. Everything possible was utilized for seats; trunks, boxes, wagon-seats, kegs, and those who could not be provided with seats sat on the floor. There were probably a hundred in all. The weight of so many people on the floor was too much for the sleepers. Some of them gave way, and the floor settled somewhat, but the audience was not "nervous" and was only amused. As I sat at the organ, a group outside the door attracted my attention; several bright faced girls, their shawls drawn over their heads with a grace a white girl might envy, but could not hope to attain, and beyond them a face that would pass on the most perfectly appointed stage for one of Macbeth's witches, without being "made-up." The faces of some of the men were as wooden and expressionless as the figures in front of a tobacco shop, but these are they into whose lives the power of the Gospel of the Son of God has not come. After this service came the church meeting, and a Cheyenne River branch church was established which still has connection with the mother church at Oahe.

The school-room being too small for the afternoon communion service, this was held out of doors. There must have been a hundred and fifty present, perhaps more. First came a marriage ceremony, then the admission of four new members, and the baptism of two children. Probably four-fifths of the congregation had been drawn thither merely from curiosity, and on the faces of many of these were the traces of yesterday's paint. The simple service, which the new communion set made perfect, could not fail to impress them that there is something better than they have known. At its close, Edwin Phelps's scholars stood and sang "Whiter than Snow," in Dakota. Have not those girls gained a great moral victory, when in native dress, with their shawls worn after the native fashion, they stand up among their own people and proclaim themselves on the side of right? It was a day full of new experiences and new impressions for me. The contrast between this scene and the one of the day before, presented itself to me over and over again.