Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889», страница 4
VACATION AT TOUGALOO
BY FIELD SUPERINTENDENT E.S. HALL
Awake? With the "Rat-a-tat Quir-r-k, tat-tat" of the great crimson-crested woodpecker hammering just for noisy fun on the wide cornice of the "mansion," with the summer sun shining in through the window, and the five o'clock bell pealing sharply from Strieby Hall, the seven sleepers would have to be awake and doing at Tougaloo University.
The mercury is passing the 72° point at sunrise; but the morning, as the sunshine sparkles on the dewy grass between the wide-spreading live-oaks of the grove, seems as cool as a morning on the Berkshire hills. The wide-rolling plantation fields to the west give no hint of the long hot mid-day hours when the cotton revels in a heat that sends all animate nature to the deepest coverts.
The Tougaloo grounds are a paradise for all feathered life. The quail with their cheery "Bob White" whistle in the kitchen garden, following in plain sight the boys hoeing out the "grass." The blue-jays, martins and mocking birds render a trip to the Paris Exposition entirely unnecessary, if one wishes to hear all parties talk at the same moment and in unintelligible syllables. Curious, is'nt it, that these shy denizens of field and forest are so bold, in term as well as vacation time, where these colored lads and lasses congregate, for people of a low, brutal nature, incapable of any spark of generosity or ambition, are no friends to innocent nature. The papers that characterize the Negro as such, a creature unfit to live in a white man's country, cannot be blinded by prejudice!
What of the human life at Tougaloo? College is out; the teachers are in the far North. Miss Emerson, Preceptress of the Girl's Hall; Mr. Hitchcock, Treasurer; Mr. Klein, Superintendent of the Farm; and Mr. Kennedy, Superintendent of Carpentry; and Mr. McKibban, borrowed from Macon school, are present to supervise the necessary work, for Tougaloo cannot be closed a day. With its farm and forest and its shops, it is to become for the Southwest what Hampton is for the Eastern South. May the Lord prompt some of his stewards to make investments here which will bring in a ten-fold interest for the nation and for heaven!
The dining-hall shows a number of tables well filled at meal times. Most interesting are the ten little girls whom Miss Emerson has taken to bring up to womanhood with habits of industry and economy, and with characters pure and joyous. Each day has its routine for them; the bedroom, the dining-room, the kitchen, the sewing-room, the lesson hour, the play time and the period for personal advice and religious instruction, have their appropriate but never-forgotten place.
There are a dozen of the large girls, young women who do the washing, "clean house," cook the daily meals and can fruit from the garden and orchard for the Sunday-night dish of sauce during the coming year. Part of these are girls in the regular domestic course, a few are kept to work for their board and instruction rather than have them obliged to go into the cotton fields at home under unscrupulous overseers. These girls have a long, busy day, for the work needed to keep any one of the great boarding schools in efficient operation would surprise any one of our contributing friends who has never been "thro' the mill."
The boys—little fellows some of them only seventy-two inches tall in their bare feet—comprise the regular students in the industrial courses; the baker, the butcher or meat boy, the irrepressible John boy of all work about the kitchen; then the stock, the farm, the carpenter and blacksmith apprentices, together with several kept for general help, for work of an unusual magnitude was to be undertaken this vacation.
The Girl's Hall, a great three story building with seven thousand five hundred square feet of ground plan, had been slowly settling into this treacherous alluvium, which is three hundred feet deep to the first sand and gravel, until the building was in danger of falling. Southern contractors advised taking it down because it could not be safely repaired. But the American Missionary Association's force was equal to the emergency. The weight, with the resulting strains and thrusts, was calculated. Concrete footings of sufficient area were planned, brick piers and heavy timbering were skillfully placed, and the building will stand stronger than new and much improved in plan.
If these youths, who pulled on the forty-eight great "jack-screws," lifting and blocking up the building section by section, who excavated exactly to the surveyor's stakes, who mixed concrete and mortar, who framed and handled the huge "hard pine" timbers, who earnestly undertook whatever was told them—for this was new and strange work—if these youths had not been "Negroes," the outside world would have been glad to picture them in magazine and review.
The writer has had a long experience as master of a boy's boarding school in the North, situated in a village which also contained a young ladies' seminary. Had those young people been as sober and in earnest as these dusky-skinned ones, as free from midnight mischief, how many weary vigils would he have escaped!
The religious life at Tougaloo does not cease with term time. Two or three young men go out to hold Sunday services in the country cabins, the Sunday-school is full and the older ones serve as teachers, for many children come in from surrounding fields, making a school of nearly one hundred teachers and pupils. The young people's society meeting each Sunday afternoon, and the prayer meetings on Sunday and Wednesday evenings are characterized by a quiet, earnest Christianity, that would do credit to any circle in our Northern States.
FROM A TEACHER IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS
Let me tell you of the general interest manifest in several of the counties west and north of us in attending this school. One of our students has visited many cabins over the mountains during his vacation, and finds school advantages very scarce and poor. He finds poverty and degradation, and ignorance of the world and of books. Some of the people are still using the old-time method of kindling their fires by flint and steel instead of matches. He has met many young people who are thirsting for books and school, has also found numbers who have struggled up through the darkness and have become teachers in their own neighborhood, "the blind leading the blind." Such almost invariably wish to come to our school and say they shall be here as soon as their schools close. Many are too poor to come. This is true of a number of young girls who would come if they could work their board or in any possible way pay for it. Whoever will provide funds to meet the expenses of these neglected girls, and place them in our school and prepare them for the future duties of life, will be doing an angelic work, and in the end will do the greatest good that can be done to this people. Very much of the money spent for this mountain people will be the same as thrown away if this effort is not made to educate the girls.
The natives are having their big yearly meetings and lively times shouting and actually chasing each other in and around their log churches to pull them to the "mourner's bench," and, in their wild efforts, they upset stove pipes and benches. It is so much like a circus that everybody runs to the big meetings.
SIGNS OF PROGRESS
BY PRES. R.C. HITCHCOCK
Every little while, some article giving ultra views of "The Problem," gets into the papers, sometimes painting a roseate-hued picture, and again some one, who does not find people of dusky hue all angels, writes that there is no hope; that all experiments leading to intellectual and especially to moral elevation are failures; and that she (as one wrote) is ready or almost ready, "to throw away the Bible and advise the negroes to be honestly heathen."
I will indicate a few plain signs of progress. The negroes are rapidly learning self-control. Six years ago, if a package was left in the hall over night, there would be signs in the morning that it had been meddled with. The contents might be all there—I have not found them greatly given to peculation, from the first—but they did not seem to have the power to resist the temptation to peep. Now, this is never done; a package of any kind may be left where it is freely accessible for weeks, and it will be untouched.
The first time a fire occurred in our neighborhood, what a panic there was! All were screaming and tearing about, trunks were dragged out of rooms, and one boy threw his out of a second story window. It was all we could possibly do to quiet them and restore order. Since then, there has been a fire so near as to scorch the rear fence and no panic, no screaming, hardly a student left his room. Formerly, on the receipt of bad news, as the intelligence of the death of a friend, it was not uncommon for one to have a fit of hysterics or something resembling it; now, such news is received with deep feeling indeed, and with tears, but no hysterics or fit of any kind.
There is, also, a grand growth in the sister virtue of gratitude. In this, they have more to overcome, probably, than in any other matter, for here they carry an inheritance of great weight, from the old slave days. Why should they be grateful? What chance to exercise the feeling! It became, like the eyes of the fish in the Styx of Mammoth Cave, useless, and to all appearances disappeared. But the germ is there, and with light it will again come to the surface.
I could cite scores of anecdotes. I will give but one, and I give this because it also illustrates a most loveable trait of character which abounds among these people—sympathy for suffering. Mrs. H. and myself started one day, to drive from New Iberia to the Avery salt mine, some ten miles distant. It was Monday following a hard Sunday's work speaking; it was as hot as days can be out in the Teche country, and when a little more than half way there, I was suffering from a terrific headache. We were too far to go back, and so drove on. Arrived at the "Island," we drove, as directed, to the boarding house, seeking a place where I could at least lie down, to find only a shed filled with tables, where the men ate, going elsewhere to sleep. I asked Mrs. H. to drive on and, holding on behind the carriage, was groping my way along, more dead than alive, when I heard a voice cry out, "Why, howdy, Professor, how ever came you here?" Glad was I to hear a friendly voice. It was that of a young girl who had been, some months before, a visitor at the University, and to whom I had given a little book and spoken some friendly words. My bread came back to me—a whole loaf for a crumb. All day long, she and her mother, who left her wash tub to attend to me, worked over my miserable head. A mile and more she ran in the burning sun for ice, and no herb that grew on "Petit Anse" from which a decoction could be made, was left untried, until ice, herbs, and a tough constitution prevailed, and I was able to ride home. I offered pay, but it was almost indignantly refused. I wish space would allow me to tell a hundred stories to illustrate their kind-heartedness, not only to each other, but to strangers, and even to their old masters and mistresses.
Their Christian faith is something wonderful. It has been my blessed privilege to be at the bedside of several young people as the death angel hovered near, and nowhere did I ever feel so near the pearly gates. Such pure faith and perfect confidence, such perfect resignation, one could almost hear the rustle of the wings as Azrael bent down to take the sweet spirit home.
They have gained much in stability of character. Frivolity and silly nonsense are not the rule. Our boys and girls who go out to teach, carry a load of responsibility with them. Some of the parishes have been almost entirely transformed by their work. Three of our boys last summer built the school houses in which they taught, the people contributing time, lumber and money, and they are the only school houses in the State, outside of the large towns, that were built for, or are fit for, the purpose. Two of them have halls above for meetings, are fitted up with blackboards, desks, etc. The stories our boys tell of their efforts to introduce modern appliances and methods, remind me of those I used to hear from the old veterans Barnard, Camp, and others, of their struggles in the early days in Connecticut.
They have grown in cleanliness and industry beyond expression. When I first came here, it was sometimes harder to get a bit of work done than to do it myself. Now, it is a pleasure to work with them.
In nothing, perhaps, has there been so great a gain as in the habit of reading. The progress in this is simply astonishing, and cannot be described in a few words. Seven years ago, there was hardly a reader in the school. Now, many of our young people come to my library and, looking over my books, talk of them and their authors as intelligently as young people of the same age in Massachusetts would.
I conclude by saying that, in this far-away corner, God has greatly blessed the efforts made by faithful teachers, and there is every cause for encouragement and hope.
