iver while the cold winds blow through the cracks
in the floor and sides of the house. There are six children and only two
excuses for beds. One of these has on it a tick, the other has a pile of
dirty rags. There is not a whole table or chair in the house.

And yet, these people, like many others just as poor as they, are trying
to educate their children. They believe that in Christian education lies
the only redemption from this condition for them and their race, through
their children, who are enjoying privileges that were denied to them.

There are not more than a dozen individuals in the church who are earning
a comfortable living. More than that number did so when times were better,
but now there is not much for them to do except conduct very poor farms,
on which they cannot earn enough to make themselves comfortable.

There have been very few years in the history of the church when it did
not have a revival of religion. Of late it has been the custom to have two
series of special services each year--one during the winter, while the
school is in session, and another during the summer vacation. Effort is
made each year to have all the students converted. Of all the young people
who have graduated here only two have left without being professing
Christians.

The growth of the church has not been rapid, but steady. During the days
of slavery the colored people were members of the churches to which their
masters belonged. None of them belonged to Congregational churches, and
so, when Congregationalism came to the South after the war, it was
entirely new to the former slaves and to those who had been their masters.

The masses of the children and the young people still cling to the
churches which their parents were taught to love. It will, therefore, be
some time before Congregationalism will grow rapidly in the South. The
church has no building of its own, and no parsonage, but worships in the
chapel of Talladega College. The building in which the chapel is located
was erected by the white Baptists of the Coosa Valley Association before
the war as a college for their sons. Some of the old slaves who helped to
put up the building lived to see freedom, to see the building come into
the hands of the American Missionary Association, and to see their own
children study and graduate in it.

MEETINGS AMONG THE HILLS AND AT A CONVICT CAMP.

BY REV. H. E. PARTRIDGE.

Perhaps nowhere is a religious meeting made m