NOTES FROM NEW ENGLAND.
Reading edition
BY REV C.J. RYDER, DISTRICT SECRETARY.
"Miss ——:
"DEAR MADAM: I understand you have got the school, but I can't possibly board you, as social equality is not custom in this country. I don't think it would be pleasant for you nor for us, either. I wrote this in order for you to look out some other place. You need not depend on getting board with us.
"FEBRUARY 2, 1889."
This letter was written to a cultivated Northern young lady who had graduated at one of the best high schools in the country and held a special recommendation, besides her diploma, on account of her excellency as a student and practice teacher. She went South to help these people in their great need. It was for Christ's sake and in "His name" that she entered this field. She secured board of a white family, but when they learned that she was going to teach the blacks and seek to lead them to Christ, this letter was sent her. Every door was closed against this Christian woman because she was trying to save the poor and ignorant! And it is eighteen hundred and eighty-nine of the Christian era and in free America!
But this plucky Yankee girl did not so give up her school. She found a boarding place in the home of one of our missionaries, two miles away, and she tramps across these two miles twice a day, patiently putting in her best services, to bring light into the dense darkness of the very community whose doors were closed against her!
In connection with this incident of narrow prejudice read these words from Dr. Haygood's "Pleas for Progress." "In all truth and common sense there is no reason for discounting in any respect a white man or woman simply for teaching negroes. It is absurd. I believe it is sinful." These earnest words were spoken by the eloquent divine to his Southern brethren, August 2, 1883, six long years ago. If they only carried the conviction of the people to whom he appealed! How strangely they sound, standing so close to this letter refusing board to a young lady because she is teaching these very negroes! "How long, O Lord, how long?"
The semi-annual meeting of the Woman's Home Missionary Association met in the Beneficent Congregational Church, or "Old Round Top," as the street car conductor called it, Providence, April 3d. The weather was extremely unfavorable, as New England weather has been lately, as a rule, but there was a good attendance and deep interest. All the missionary societies of the Congregational churches which do work in America were represented. The field work of the Woman's Association has passed into the control of the national societies. The future looks very bright for its increasing usefulness.
And now Pleasant Hill, Tenn., rejoices in the sweet music of one of the Smith organs. Mr. S.D. Smith is making many schools happy and adding greatly to their efficiency by his generous gifts of organs.