American Missionary Association.

FINANCIAL.

In some respects our report is favorable. Our receipts for the eight months ending May 31st are $18,487.18 more than for the same period last year. If the Association had received funds from the Government this year for the eight months, $10,127.95, the receipts would have been 28,615.13 more than last year. The payments for the eight months have been $11,315.16 less than last year. With this showing the debt of the current year to May 31st is $19,419.98 as over against $49,222.32 to May 31st of last year, but as this debt of the current year is to be added to the $45,028.11 due at the close of the year September 30th, 1893, it makes the total debt May 31, $64,448.09. Those who have read the statements made in the Missionarywill recall that in the month of March our debt was reduced $10,718.47, and in April $4,847.40, but the fear was then expressed, which has since been realized, that these reductions might not continue. The month of May shows an increase of the debt, bringing it now to $64,448.09. We appeal most earnestly to the friends of the Association to stay the progress of this debt.

SCHOOL ANNIVERSARIES.

We begin in this issue of the Missionary to print the reports of the anniversary exercises of our schools. They will occupy largely this number and the next, and will appear somewhat in the order of time in which the schools closed. When the whole are published, they will make an impression of the vastness, variety and usefulness of the work. It will show institutions of higher grade in nearly all the States of the South, normal and graded schools in nearly all the large cities, and parochial schools connected with many of the churches. The industrial feature of these schools will appear most conspicuously in the details given.

In the account of the larger schools, Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University and Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas, we give but in part the full extent of the plan originally laid down by the Association, for it does not include Hampton Institute, Atlanta University and Berea College, children of the Association which have set up and are conducting housekeeping on their own account.

The origin of Hampton Institute was in that first freedmen's school at Fortress Monroe, enlarged year by year, and at length falling under the sagacious eye of Gen. Armstrong, it opened to him in almost prophetic vision what his great genius and untiring industry brought to full consummation. Nor did the American Missionary Association send this child forth empty-handed. It turned over to its use the one hundred and twenty-five acres of beautiful land, with its buildings, permanent and transient, on which the wonderful plant is now established.

Atlanta University was founded by the Association, and under the wise leadership of President Ware, and the steady support of the Association for many years, it at length reached a condition of independence and self-support.

Berea College, founded by the intrepid John G. Fee, a missionary of the American Missionary Association, owned by its own Board of Trustees from the first, was for many years assisted by the generous contributions of the Association.

These three institutions, though independent of the Association and not under its care or support, if added to the list already given of our higher schools, will show a line of educational lighthouses stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf and thence into the heart of Texas. Such was the original plan of the Association, and such has been the remarkably successful result.

But the work of the Association is not confined to the Negro race. In the mountains of the South it touches with the wand of Christian education the noble Highlanders of America with their proud achievements and yet with their long-neglected education, needing the inspiring uplift of the school and cultured church. To these influences they yield a most hearty response, and no brighter reports will be found than from these mountain regions.

The Indians have from the outset been the subjects of our watchful care, and with some variation in their activity, the services among them have brought forth some of the brightest results. Revivals during the past year of greater power than any reported from any other part of the field were experienced in these Indian churches.

The Chinese work on the Pacific Coast, under the admirable leadership of Dr. Pond, has made steady progress in the conversion of souls here and in carrying the gospel to China.

The mission in Alaska, brought to so sudden and terrible a close by the murder of Mr. Thornton, is expected to be opened again this summer by the return of Mr. and Mrs. Lopp to Cape Prince of Wales. With their knowledge of the language and of the people, and with the advantages of their past experience, we hope the mission will enter upon a new and much more successful life than heretofore.

We invite the friends of the Association to study this work in its variety and extent. We make no comparisons, but surely this work touches the sympathies of the patriot and the Christian, and calls for a steady and abundant support.

VACATION.

We congratulate our teachers who are now returning from the South on the vacation that awaits them in the hills and on the seashores of the North. They have had the unbroken toil of eight or ten months in the South, far from their homes and friends, finding little companionship except with the pupils and their parents, sometimes ostracized and scorned by the whites—and yet not always—for we rejoice to say that there are many localities in the South where the work of our teachers is appreciated and where they are themselves treated with Christian courtesy by the whites.

We need not ask their friends at the North to welcome these returned workers with that kindness that is restful, but we do ask that the facts they reveal in regard to the South may be heard and heeded. There is no set of witnesses more competent to tell of the actual situation at the South, its home life, its industries, its struggle with difficulties, than these same teachers. Sometimes the teachers have been there but a short time and their labors may have been confined to one locality, but in that narrow range their observations among the colored people have been most minute. They have watched the operations of the pupils closely from day to day, and have been brought constantly in contact with the people in their cabins, in their work, and in their trials.

But many of the teachers have been there for years and in different locations, and their representation of the state of affairs is as reliable as any that can be found from any source whatever. If the observations and experiences of this corps of teachers could be set forth, they would furnish, with all its lights and shades, the most accurate picture that could be presented of the state of affairs in the South. Pastors and churches would do well to give these returned teachers an opportunity to present in the prayer-meeting and elsewhere the exact facts as they have found them in the South.

MR. WHARTON, THE EVANGELIST.

Under the head of "Church Work" will be found in these pages a sketch of the work of an evangelist in our churches during the past year, written by himself. That evangelist is so unselfish and consecrated to his work, and has been so long and so successfully employed in it that we are sure our readers will be glad to have some account of the man himself.

Mr. James Wharton is an Englishman, resident at Barrow-in-Furness, near to Furness Abbey and the English lakes. He is not an ordained minister, but a lay preacher, as Mr. Moody is. He accepts no salary for his services, and consents to receive only the amount of his traveling expenses. For over twenty years he has been thus engaged, residing at his home in the summer but busy in gospel work, and in the winters traveling to distant places. His labors have been in England, Ireland, Scotland, the Shetland Islands, Wales, Canada, Spain and America. During these ministrations he has traveled 88,000 miles, and has made eleven trips to America.

In 1876, he learned of the condition of the emancipated slaves of this country, and entered into correspondence with this Association with reference to work here. He has spent eleven years here, and has evinced great wisdom, good judgment and, as will be seen by the report of his work this past year, has had great success. He was the first man to attempt an open-air service in New Orleans after the war. He stood on a cotton bale at the foot of Canal St., and continued the service for several weeks, although the white people threatened to shoot him. In his labors among the blacks of the South, he strikes the happy medium between undue excitement and cold formalism. As he returns from year to year, he rejoices to find the converts of earlier years holding on their way with faith and a stable Christian life. Our readers will be interested to read the sketch which Mr. Wharton gives of his labors.

OLD SPANISH DOLLARS.

A friend sends, with the following brief note, two Spanish dollars of ancient date. We hope that some lovers of ancient coin will be able to make a good offer for them:

"I send you by express two old Spanish silver dollars of date 1786 and 1800, for the work of the American Missionary Association. They belong to my wife, who has had them a long time and now thinks they had better be sent out to help in the Lord's work through the American Missionary Association. Our hope is, that some lover of the great and good cause, who has also a fancy for old and rare coins, may appear, who would pay a liberal premium for them. If such should be the case, we would be much gratified to be informed as to how much they bring to the work."