and
goes forward. The frame is put up and pretty much enclosed. For want
of money the enterprise comes to a stand, and now for these four years
the stranded structure has been taking damage from the storms.

The place has been visited repeatedly by the superintendents of the
A.M.A., to find the state of the case and to see if anything could be
done to utilize the partial plant. The pastor of the lady donors
became interested to save the investment through the A.M.A., or to
stop the pouring of more funds into the venture, but after all his
correspondence and personal conference, he found that, if the whole
property were to be offered to the Association, it could not afford to
accept it and undertake to carry forward the school. It already has a
prosperous academy in that county and another in an adjoining county,
and these, wisely located in congenial communities, are all that is
needed for those and for contiguous counties. There is no way to
utilize it, Alas, "Wherefore this waste?"

An Orphanage for colored children is a tempting charity. The A.M.A
early undertook such work. At Wilmington, N.C., and at Atlanta, Ga.,
it bought lands and erected ample buildings, but the experiment
satisfied the authorities that the Association was not called to that
department of work. The children's god-fathers and god-mothers, in
devotion to their covenant, or grand-parents from personal interest,
would soon be taking them out, and others having care of them would
call them out as soon as, by some growth and training, the scholars
were made profitable for work, and so those properties were sold and
the avails put into the ordinary educational process. Then the
conclusion was reached that this was the obligation of the local
communities, and _not of foreign charity_. According to this idea, an
Orphanage in a Southern city, undertaken not by the patronage or
approval of the A.M.A., though made to appear so because the
originator had been under its commission there as a missionary, has
been transferred to a local board and to the support of the city {154}
and county. That is as it should be. Those local authorities ought to
take care of their own orphans, and not appeal to the charity of the
North to relieve them of their proper burdens of humanity.

Another so-called Orphanage at still another Southern city, started as
an individual venture. It was allowed for a short time to have a
conditional endorsement from the A.M.A., which was