The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 03, March, 1889

REVIVAL AT LE MOYNE INSTITUTE

It has been my privilege and my great joy to write you often during my nearly twenty years of continuous service under the Association, of God's blessing upon our work. We are now in the midst of one of the most gracious visitations that I have ever experienced, and I recall "times of refreshing" not a few. In 1875, the first great revival in connection with this school saw over a hundred and twenty-five of our pupils hopefully converted to Christ, and the young converts, by their faithfulness, overcame all the fixed notions and ways of the old churches on the subject of early conversions.

I have since that time, year by year, followed many of these young people, and know that the great majority of them have proven faithful followers of the Saviour, and many have lived lives of exceptional influence and usefulness. Since that notable year in the history of the school, but one year has passed without most evident tokens of God's gracious presence in the conversion of pupils attending the school. In some years the number has been large, and in others not so many have made open profession of faith in Christ. I think I am safe in saying that not a year, nor a month, has passed in which the school has not been markedly under the influence of the Spirit, giving guidance and instruction, and drawing, as with cords of love, many of our pupils to see in the religion of the cross a peace and joy to be found nowhere else. To this influence, the school owes all its success in every direction. For myself I can truly say that in the midst of the sorrow that has been my constant and only companion, besides my Saviour, the joy of this work and the consciousness of its acceptance with God have alone held me to the task laid upon me these years. I rejoice now, with all my fellow workers, that we are in the midst of another season of reaping, after months of sowing precious seed.

During the past week, two members of the senior class, young men, professed their faith in Christ in the quiet prayer meeting of the school, as did also a young lady of a lower class, and now, this week, Brother Wharton is with us, and to-day, at the first meeting led by him in the school, sixteen of our 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

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."

"What ails sister?"

The little fellow looked puzzled for a moment, then confidently answered, "Her stomach has settled on her bowels!"

It is a perplexing diagnosis, but a few skillful questions draw out the fact that she has a bad cold, and some chamomilla is sent at a venture. Word comes back the next day that "Sister is well: that medicine did her all the good."

Next comes, one after another, a perfect rush of small boys and big girls, with now and then a man or woman for variety, on various errands. "Please ma'am, give me a settin' of eggs. Our old hen wants to set, and we haint got no eggs." The great brown eyes grow round with astonishment when we tell them that the hens are A.M.A. hens now, and not ours, and these hungry teachers eat every egg they lay. Two or three others, who have been accustomed to rely on our good nature for their winter supply of greens and salad, receive the same reply, and it is evident that the new order of things is very unsatisfactory and perplexing to them.

"Please ma'am, give me some castor oil for the baby; she's awful sick; Doctor says it's indigestion of the lungs."

She gets the castor oil, but soon comes back to say in most cheerful tones—"Baby is dead. She died at ten o'clock, but she's better off, and please, ma'am, give mother a black basque to wear to the funeral."

Heartless? Oh no. There was great wailing and moaning at the funeral, and when the one carriage, with as many of the family as could crowd in beside the poor little coffin, started for the cemetery, this same child stood in the doorway, waving her handkerchief, and shouting tragically, "Fare thee well, baby! Fare thee well!"

A half-grown girl came up the steps with two tiny chickens about as large as pigeons, their legs tied together, their voices lifted up in shrill squawks.

"Father sent you these two chickens for a Christmas present, and says please send him a coat and pair of breeches, and a vest, too, if you can. And mother sent you these eggs for a present, and please send her a warm underskirt and a pair of shoes!" A modest request, surely.

Next, a great girl, barefooted, though it was a raw, cold day that made us huddle gladly over a big fire, and with her a small boy, literally naked so far as his bony little legs were concerned. A few fluttering rags that had once been pants depended from the remnant of what had once been a calico waist. An old bag was pinned around his shoulders, which completed his entire outfit. "Please ma'am, mother says she'll send Johnny to school if you'll give him a coat and some breeches." Alas, there is neither on hand, nothing for the boy except a thin cotton shirt, and a pair of thin overalls to make over, by a mother who is more accustomed to the use of a hoe than a needle, and who has seven children as ragged and miserable as poor Johnny.

A messenger rushes in without knocking. "Come quick—Mattie's baby burnt!"

"Yes, I'll come. Wrap it in cotton and oil."

Away flies the messenger. I seize the bottle of morphine and a hat, and follow to the child's home. The floor is strewn with fragments of burnt clothing. A sickening odor of burnt flesh fills the room. The scorched high chair, in which the child was tied and put before the open fireplace, while the mother went to a neighbor's for milk, lay in a pool of water, and beside it, the burnt whisk-broom that an older baby had put in the fire, then dropped blazing under the baby's long clothes, these told the whole sad story. They were all at the grandparent's house next door—a crowd of screaming people. Upon the bed lay what was left of the poor child, moaning in conscious agony. A drop of water containing the precious anodyne which alone could ease it then, soon brought blessed unconsciousness until death kindly bore the little soul to God. But oh! the heart-rending grief of that poor mother! God grant we may never witness such suffering again. We tried to comfort her with our tearful sympathy and prayers, but God alone can ever heal her sore heart.

A sad-faced man wants to see the minister. We know his pitiful story and his errand before he speaks. A sick wife and six young children. The desperate daily fight with the hunger-wolf at the door, spite of the little lifts we try to give them. Now the wife is dead, and he comes to ask for money to buy a coffin and a place to lay her away. He has tried in vain elsewhere, so comes to us, and we cannot refuse. A few hours after, the pitiful little procession passes by. The pine coffin in an old cart, the husband and children, the minister and a few friends, following on foot. Such calls are frequent. Does the money ever come back? Once it did.

So it goes on, day after day, twenty, thirty, sometimes forty calls, for all these incidents are actual facts, and fair samples of our daily experiences and only a small part of our work. There is a large household to look after, and between times there must be flying visits to the distant kitchen to see that everything is going on right there. A watchful eye must look after the details of the dining room and see to the comfort of the whole household. Supplies must be ordered; bills must be paid; there are countless letters to write; there are sorrowful hearts to be comforted; wayward church members to look after; cold, dead prayer meetings to warm up; the Sunday-school to carry along; mother's meetings and children's meetings and missionary societies. An unlimited stock of patience, tact and good nature must be constantly on hand to keep all the machinery running smoothly, while the work is exhausting, wearing out body and soul far too soon.

Does it pay? Yes! for slowly but surely this people is being lifted up to a higher life, and while we sometimes grow faint and heartsick and discouraged, still there are rifts in the clouds and bits of sunshine now and then to cheer our hearts, and someday we hope to hear the Master say, "Well done!"

CROWDED SCHOOL-ROOMS

Perhaps some of our friends would be glad to hear a few words concerning Brewer Normal School, Greenwood, S.C. The work goes on, but we are hurried and crowded almost beyond endurance. We have only two school-rooms and one recitation room. In one school-room fitted for fifty-eight scholars, there are ninety-seven. They are obliged to sit, three in a seat made for two, on chairs, stools and even on the teacher's platform. Classes are sent from this room, and their recitation room is the teacher's kitchen and dining-room—not very pleasant for the teachers, but a necessity. The teacher of these classes is the Principal's daughter, who has been taken from her own school to aid in this emergency. In the other school-room, fitted for fifty-eight, there are eighty-six—not quite as many as in the other room, but what is wanting in numbers is made up in size. There are several men six feet tall, and one minister six and a half. In many instances, we are obliged to look up to our scholars.

Some of our classes in this room number thirty-five or forty. The smaller classes from this room recite in the recitation room. It is with difficulty that some of our men, weighing two hundred, get into the seats in the school-room, but they bear the crowding and close packing with great patience. The small boarding-houses in the yard are as badly crowded as the school-rooms. In two small rooms, having two beds each, there are twelve young men, six in each. Here they cook for themselves, sleep and study out of school hours. One can hardly find standing-room among the chairs, trunks, etc. Other rooms are crowded nearly as much. And still the scholars come. What shall we do with them? Our cry is more room. O, that God would put it into the heart of some one to give the money needed for another building at Brewer!

PARAGRAPHS

The congregation of Lincoln Memorial Church, Washington, D.C., rejoiced in a renovated and newly-furnished church edifice, Sunday, Jan. 6th. The pastor, Rev. George W. Moore, preached an interesting sermon on "The Law of Christian Growth." At the conclusion of the services a statement of the cost of the recent improvements was read. The total cost was $1,500, about $200 of which was given by contractors and workmen. Hon. A.C. Barstow, of Providence, R.I., presented the church with one of the large and beautiful stoves, and gave the other at the cost of manufacture. The present membership of the church is one hundred, ninety of whom are resident members. The people have done nobly in their gifts and self-denials, and Pastor and Mrs. Moore have in their hands a great work which promises to be greater in the future.

From a pastor in a remote part of Georgia:

"I have seen more of the condition and wants of the people than ever before, but whiskey and tobacco are the great evils of this part of the country. The colored people are not very much in advance of what they were twenty years ago, but the sad part of it is, that the leaders are no better than the people. I think almost every minister about here uses whiskey and tobacco, as far as I can learn, and of course the members of the churches can see no harm in doing what their minister does. This is a sad picture, but it only shows the need of intelligent and consecrated leaders, such as the American Missionary Association is raising up for a people who have been led by those who are neither intelligent nor consecrated."

Mrs. Hattie B. Sherman, the daughter of Rev. R.F. Markham, died January 14th at her residence in Stockton, Kansas. For two years she was a missionary of this Association at Beach Institute, Savannah, Ga., where she rendered faithful and effective service in the education of the colored people. We tender our sympathies to her father, who was for so many years a useful missionary of the Association in the South, and to her husband, in their great bereavement.

LOO QUONG'S APPEAL

Loo Quong is one of our Evangelistic Helpers. His special field at present is Southern California. The appeal is not only original, but spontaneous; written out of the anxious longings of his own heart, and not upon any suggestion from me. I have simply condensed it, to bring it within the limits of our space. I ask for it a kind and responsive hearing.

Dear friends of the American Missionary Association:

We, the Chinese, have appreciated the generous Christian acts of the members of this great Association, who not only have done good to other souls of the United States, but have saved hundreds of poor sinners of our Chinese race, in which I, myself, was one of the lost and now am found. It was through the generosity and God-loving heart of the Association that the Chinese found Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world. And it was through the hard labors and patience of our Superintendent of the California Chinese Mission that the Chinese have become partakers of the blessings of the gospel. Though it is here that the good news is told, it has echoed back far away across the Pacific, where the four hundred millions of heathen Chinese are living. Just as our Lord said to his disciples, "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the house tops." Luke 12: 2, 3.

Those who have been converted in California and who have visited their homes in China, have seen the necessity of Christianity for their countrymen in China. Within these ten years there were hospitals established and missionary societies organized by native Christians and by those who have returned to China from California. Contribution books are often sent over to the United States to the different denominations of Christian Chinese to raise money and send back to support the hospitals and missionary societies in China. But this is not all; not long ago the Congregational Association of Christian Chinese in California organized a missionary society to Southern China, from which part nearly all the Christian Chinese that are now in the United States have come, and this is the most important part of China in which to do the missionary work. There are now many native preachers and evangelists. This society proposes to buy property in China, for a headquarters must be established in some of the middle cities in the south of China, and then to sustain some of those native preachers and evangelists.

Now I must come back to our work in California among the Christian Chinese. There are about one thousand Christian Chinese in California. You may hear in our towns and cities Chinese preachers and Chinese evangelists preaching the gospel to their countrymen. The American Missionary Association has put three more Chinese missions in Southern California during the year 1888, one of them in Tuscon, one in San Buenaventura and one in Los Angeles. Each of these is doing good work. As to our mission at Los Angeles, which was only opened April 1, 1888, it has twenty-five Christian members, and it has nearly one hundred pupils who attend the evening schools and preaching service at the mission house from night to night. There are union meetings of all the denominations of Christian Chinese at Los Angeles, and at San Francisco and Santa Barbara. These meetings occur once a month; Chinese preachers and speakers are appointed to address the meetings, a week beforehand. We have found these meetings a great help to us. Street meetings were often held in the Chinese quarters in many cities and towns throughout the State. Thousands of Bibles and tracts in Chinese were given away to Chinese readers, and thousands of heathen have heard the blessed gospel of Jesus, and, perhaps, there are other thousands who may give their hearts to Christ through this operation. Surely God is hastening the time when His will will be done in all parts of the earth, since the Chinese themselves have summoned their people to Christ. And now I respectfully and earnestly request of all the friends of the A.M.A., and even people of every name, race and creed of this Christian land of the United States, to follow the example of our Master who has given himself for us all, and we do ask for your prayers both for the Chinese in your country and in China.

WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS

ME.—Woman's Aid to A.M.A.

Chairman of Committee, Mrs. C.A. Woodbury, Woodfords, Me.

VT.—Woman's Aid to A.M.A.

Chairman of Committee, Mrs. Henry Fairbanks, St. Johnsbury, Vt.

VT.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. Ellen Osgood, Montpelier, Vt.

CONN.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. S.M. Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Ave., Hartford, Conn.

N.Y.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. William Spalding, Salmon Block, Syracuse, N.Y.

ALA.—Woman's Missionary Association

Secretary, Mrs. G.W. Andrews, Talladega, Ala.

OHIO.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. Flora K. Regal, Oberlin, Ohio.

IND.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. W.E. Mossman, Fort Wayne, Ind.

ILL.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. C.H. Taintor, 151 Washington St., Chicago, Ill.

MINN.—Woman's Home Miss. Society

Secretary, Miss Katharine Plant, 2651 Portland Avenue, Minneapolis, Minn.

IOWA.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Miss Ella E. Marsh, Grinnell, Iowa.

KANSAS.—Woman's Home Miss. Society

Secretary, Mrs. G.L. Epps, Topeka, Kan.

MICH.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. Mary B. Warren, Lansing, Mich.

WIS.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. C. Matter, Brodhead, Wis.

NEB.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. L.F. Berry, 724 N. Broad St., Fremont, Neb.

COLORADO.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

Secretary, Mrs. S.M. Packard, Pueblo, Colo.

DAKOTA.—Woman's Home Miss. Union

President, Mrs. T.M. Hills, Sioux Falls;

Secretary, Mrs. W.R. Dawes, Redfield;

Treasurer, Mrs. S.E. Fifield, Lake Preston.

We would suggest to all ladies connected with the auxiliaries of State Missionary Unions, that funds for the American Missionary Association be sent to us through the treasurers of the Union. Care, however, should be taken to designate the money as for the American Missionary Association, since undesignated funds will not reach us.

One of the most encouraging signs of the times is found in the numerous letters that are now received at the Woman's Bureau of the following import:

"We have started a 'Young Ladies' Missionary Society,' and are anxious to inform ourselves in regard to the different Indian Missions. Please forward whatever you have that relates to the past and present work."

"We have received the missionary letters you sent and are very anxious to learn more about the colored people of the South, and also the Mountain Whites, of whom we have very little knowledge."

"Kindly send us all information at your command regarding the Chinese and Mountain Whites and the work of the Association among them. The ladies of our Missionary Society are taking up these subjects as studies for their meetings."

"The missionary letters are full of interest, and the ladies are always attentive listeners."

"We take pleasure in enclosing check for forty dollars toward the salary of Miss –. The ladies of our society are much interested in her work and have also been sewing for the boarding hall."

In response to inquiry from many who wish to sew, while also studying the missions and contributing to the support of teachers, we give below a list of standard needs in all our mission homes and boarding halls.

Furnishing.—Sheets and bed-ticks for double beds; pillow cases for pillows twenty to twenty-two inches wide; bed spreads, large size; quilts of medium weight; tablecloths from three to five yards long; napkins, kitchen towels; rugs or mats for the floor.

Garments.—Underwear for boys and girls of ages from twelve to twenty, especially night wear, of strong, unbleached muslin; work aprons for students in industrial schools; dresses of all sizes, of print, gingham or wool; long-sleeved aprons for children.

Sundries.—Shoe bags, soiled-clothes bags, spool and thimble bags, whisk broom cases, comb and brush cases, hairpin holders, pin cushions, paper and letter racks, bureau covers, stand covers, lamp mats, etc.

Whatever a girl or boy may need away from home to maintain habits of neatness and order, and for refining influences, these students need in our boarding-schools. We can always assign special schools to those who will render this form of help.