romising,
and loveable people. I admire those of my classmates who have heard the
voice of God (not the prompting of inclination) calling them to remain in
dear old hair-splitting New England; but, while I admire their bravery, I
am sorry for them, for it must seem as if they were striking in the air.
Here we see the enemy, and can strike directly at him, and one has some
satisfaction in getting weary and sick at heart in fighting at great odds
against a visible power instead of the more subtle powers "of the air."
But I digress! It is such a temptation to let myself out when
communicating with one who understands this discouraging, fascinating, and
encouraging work. This year's work has given me experience, as well as
gray hair, and even if my labors in the South should terminate this year,
I should feel that I had gained a great deal. I wish that all Northerners
could come to know the best element of the South, and show their
magnanimity as victors by helping the American Missionary Association do
the work which alone will make a new South. To me the South presents a
touching but heroic picture as she struggles nobly, but somewhat
uncertainly, toward the light, still the victim of her cavalier training,
still held back by the poor black and the poor white, the products of her
accursed institution. Now that is all abolished, she needs help from the
North. I doubt if we in the North would be any better had we been placed
in the same environment, and our superiority may be due as much to soil,
climate, and the consequent unprofitableness of slave labor, as to our
Puritan ancestry.

The tide of immigration is beginning to turn toward this State from
Georgia, and many coming from the Dakotas. The mass of ignorance is
appalling. I realize in part, I think, the difficulty of getting the needs
of the whites before a sympathizing audience. When it comes to a white
man's needs and his condition, too many church members and others
substitute the scientific theory of the survival of the fittest for
Christ's law of love. They forget too, I fear, that many of these people
in the mountains are victims of slavery as innocent as the Negro; and they
do not see that their indifference is letting them lie in the hard bed
which circumstances, largely beyond their control, have made for them. If
they will only give us money, "greenbacks," if need be, and enable us to
get the young out of bed on their intellectual and spiritual feet, I shall