BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.

MISS D. E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.

Our readers will recall an article issued in this department of the April "Missionary" entitled "A Plan with Reasons." We are happy to report that a good many cheering words in approval of the plan have reached us, and not a few of a practical character. We select from the latter the following:

FROM NEW YORK.

—I have received a delightful letter from our teacher at the Santee Agency, and our Committee are much pleased with her account of her work. I have directed our Treasurer to send to your A. M. A. Treasurer the first quarterly payment on account of the $150 appropriated, and trust it will reach you in due season. Our payments will be made hereafter May 1, Aug. 1 and Nov. 1, as we are dependent on our weekly collections, and hence cannot pay oftener than quarterly.

—Inclosed find $40 for two shares in support of a missionary teacher, from whom we may receive a monthly letter.

FROM MASSACHUSETTS.

—Inclosed please find $20. Our Ladies' Benevolent Society wish to take one share in the expense of a lady missionary teacher, from whom we shall enjoy letters, hoping in this way to call out more interest in the work.

—A recent circular from you was read to our ladies by our pastor's wife, to whom it was sent. We have no separate organization for the Am. Miss. Assoc. but our ladies contribute something to its funds—though probably not enough to take a full share in the support of a teacher. Encouraged by what you say in the circular, we write to ask that we may be included in the list of those to whom monthly letters will be sent, as promised to those who take one or more shares. We are small and few, but the interest is genuine, and we want to increase it. Our contribution goes into the general fund.

FROM MINNESOTA.

—Last week, on a very stormy day, with less than twenty ladies present, the subject of taking shares in the support of a missionary teacher was introduced, and a little over $40 pledged, to be paid before October. I felt very much encouraged, and shall do all I can to increase the amount, though I am too much of a stranger—having been here but a year—to have any idea what we can raise. You promised us letters from our missionary if we took but one of the $20 shares; so we shall hope to receive them. After another month I hope to send you word about a much larger pledge.

—Ours is a country church, laboring under the disadvantage of constant depletion of our younger members; the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis are close by, and our broad frontier also attracts strongly. Last year a determined few, by great exertion, raised almost $100 for division among the Am. Board, A. H. M. S. and A. M. A. The outlook is not encouraging for this year, and, as a regular correspondent might add interest to our small meeting, we voted yesterday to take one share; and should we succeed better than we hope, our rule of division will give you one-third, whatever the amount may be. We need more prayer for warm hearts and the open hand.

FROM OHIO.

—We have been reading "A Plan, with the Reasons," and like it much. We have a class of young girls in our church who ought to be in missionary work. Can you give us a little fuller account of the work? and do you have teachers among the poor white women of the South? Please let us hear soon from you; we want an object to work for. We may not be able to do very much, but would like to do something.

ALABAMA WOMAN'S MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

MISS M. K. LUNT.

The annual meeting of the Alabama Woman's Missionary Association was held in the prayer-room of the Congregational church in Montgomery, Monday, March 31. The devotional exercises were conducted by the President of the Association, Mrs. H. S. De Forest, who gave the opening address, welcoming the members of the local societies, now numbering seven.

The reports of the Secretaries and delegates showed an increase of interest, labor, and funds collected, as well as a constant growth in missionary intelligence.

Nearly all the societies have remembered the foreign work and the Indians, in addition to their own needs and people, and have shown a deep interest in the advancement of Christian education.

Mrs. Ragland, the wife of one of the Talladega theologians, read a paper upon Home Influence, the prominent points of which were filial obedience, the important place the wife, mother, and daughter fill in the home, and the importance of training the daughter in domestic duties.

Mrs. Ash, whose husband was an acceptable pastor in one of the A. M. A. churches, and who not long since was called home, read a paper, giving a comprehensive history of the work of the American Missionary Association in the South, relating incidents connected with the earlier teachings, and showing how the work had broadened, and brought into the ranks the colored people.

Mrs. Andrews, of Talladega, prepared a paper on the "Origin and History of Our Alabama Movement in Woman's Work," read by Miss Partridge, giving a full development of the organization and growth of the society during its seven years' existence, and showing how much greater results are accomplished by organized effort and unity of action, and advising that the relation of this society as an auxiliary to the W. H. M. A. of Boston be severed and become allied to the Woman's Bureau of New York, which has the Southern field under its special care; referring also to the interest, courtesy and sympathy which the Boston society had always shown toward the Alabama branch.

Mrs. O. F. Curtis, of Emerald Grove, Wis., was present, who has two sons in the South as missionaries and one on the foreign field—Rev. W. W. Curtis, of Japan—who addressed the meeting on the condition of the women and girls in that country; what is being done by the missionaries to lead them to Christ; also speaking of the hindrances to the Christian religion.

This interesting meeting could not fail to awaken a deeper interest in the hearts of all present, and we believe that no one left without feeling that she had gained a new impulse to renewed consecration and work for the Master.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK AT TOUGALOO.

MISS JOSEPHINE KELLOGG.

The Sunday-school of this Institution has always—under the present management at least—been considered one of the most important, if not the most important means of grace and spiritual enlightenment. The power of sustained attention and consecutive thought is greatly lacking in all untrained minds; hence the superiority of the hand-to-hand question-and-answer method of the class-room over the sermon as a means of informing the mind and clearing away the rubbish of superstition and the misapprehensions of meaning, derived from the ignorant preachers who have been in many cases the only previous expounders of the word, and resulting also from a very vague and limited understanding of the language of the Bible, the preacher—even the teacher.

It would be impossible for one new to the work to even grasp at the distorted images and superstitious misconceptions connected with religious subjects in the minds of the more ignorant colored people without the free interchange of personal conversation. So for years the Sunday-school has been placed at the head of the Sabbath services here, and given the forenoon, the review by the Superintendent occupying the time of a short sermon, with the lesson for the day, already explained and impressed by the several teachers, for its text. Later in the day class prayer-meetings are held, and here young Christians learn to take up the cross of bearing testimony for Christ, and making audible prayer for themselves and others. Many of the scholars feel these meetings to be very valuable.

At the close of the school year a Sunday-school Convention is held, and it is urged as a duty upon all Christian students who go out to teach that they should organize and conduct Sabbath schools in connection with their day schools.

We have recently received two donations of library books, so that we now have enough to go once around, and we loan them out each Sunday. We also generally have papers to distribute, sent us by kind and careful Sunday-school scholars in the North who make their papers do double duty. If some school changing song-books would send our school a hundred or more well-preserved copies of those they lay aside, it would be a gift highly appreciated.

One of our neighbors is a good Mother in Israel, who has always taken a warm interest in this institution in all its departments and appreciated its uplifting influence upon her people. She belongs to one of the branches of the Methodist Church, and felt that she wanted something done for the improvement and revival of interest in the schools of that denomination in the vicinity. Accordingly, she worked up a S. S. Convention among them last Fall, and invited Mr. Pope and some others of us to go and help to make it profitable. We could not get off until after dinner and might as well not have gone at all. Soon after our entrance a young man introduced a resolution that superintendents and teachers be compelled to be at their schools at the hour set for opening. One of the preachers rose and said that teachers could not be compelled, and moved as an amendment that they be acquired to come promptly.

Then ensued along, windy, wordy controversy on "compelling" and "acquiring." Seeing no prospect of a conclusion we withdrew. The good auntie who had invited us followed us out in deep humiliation. I said, we are sorry to go without contributing something to the interest of the meeting, but this is such a waste of time, there is no coming to the point. "That's jus' so, dear," she said, "but that their ign'rance. Ign'rance does waste time, honey. Ign'rance can't come to a pint." That last sentence struck me as a piece of epigrammatic wisdom.