ur students, three more of the senior class,
quietly but hopefully profess to become followers of the Master, with
scores more earnestly seeking to enter in.
Since writing the above, two days of great but quiet interest have
passed in our work. Between thirty and forty of our scholars, including
five of the seniors and nearly every pupil of the other higher classes,
have learned the joy of Christian experience, and there are yet others
to follow.
The night meetings at the church are very interesting and in them
conversions are occurring in considerable numbers. The class work of the
school has not been interrupted, as half-hour meetings only have been
held, morning and noon. We rejoice greatly in this work that crowns and
confirms all the other work of the school.
* * * * *
EVERY-DAY LIFE.
MRS. A.W. CURTIS.
Put on your best glasses, dear friends, and take a peep at the regular,
every-day life of some of the workers among the colored people South.
Rap, rap, rap.
"Come in!"
It is a toil-worn, sad-faced woman, with hard, bony hands, and that look
of patient endurance that is so pathetic. She is poorly clad, with only
a thin bit of an old shawl around her shoulders, and a hat so
disreputable that she instantly removes it, and drops it behind her on
the floor. After a few kindly words of greeting, she tells her story. A
sickly husband, deranged for the last nine years of his life, whom she
had to support and care for; a daughter who married a wretch who treated
her so cruelly that she, too, lost her mind, when he left her entirely,
with their child. She kept the daughter confined to bed or chair, while
she worked out as cook, to support them all. She had several other
children. Finally the crazy daughter got away, and she does not know
whether she is dead or alive.
What had she come to us for? Money, old clothes, help of some kind?
No, indeed. She came to see if we would take her grand-daughter and her
own daughter, both about twelve years old, into our school. She had
never been able to make them fit to go to any school, so they could not
even read, but she would do her very best, if we would take them now. I
wish Mr. Hand could have seen her shining face and tearful eyes, when we
told her of the kind friend who had provided so grandly for just such
cases as these.
A patter of small feet, a hasty rap at the door.
"Please ma'am, send little sister some medicine."
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