Читать книгу The American Missionary. Volume 44, No. 03, March, 1890 - Various - Страница 4

Our schools, with scarcely an exception, are asking for more teachers for their over-crowded rooms, and two or three pulpits stand vacant because we have not suitable pastors for them. We are able to report great enthusiasm along every line of our work and a spirit of uncommon consecration among all our teachers this year. We are having a noble year of thorough work.

From Greenwood, S.C., comes this word: "For the last month we have had over two hundred and thirty students, and have refused between seventy-five and one hundred applications for admission because there was not one inch of room for them."

Our school at Meridian has outgrown the building erected for it, and has overflowed into the church. It is another illustration of the fact that the children of the emancipated freedmen are as earnest for education as were their fathers and mothers when they swarmed into the temporary schools provided for them.

A letter from Wilmington, N.C., says: "Without another teacher, I do not know what to do, unless it be to send away about twenty-five pupils. This I would be very sorry to do, as I would hardly know which ones to send and there would be no school for them to re-enter, as the public schools are full to overflowing; besides, many would consider it a calamity to be thus dropped out."

We have just opened anew the Storrs school, which was not re-opened in October with the other schools. The Principal writes us: "The joy of the people at witnessing the preparations is extravagant. One old man said to-night, 'There will be seven hundred scholars there when you open.' These are not 'the words of soberness,' probably, but the enthusiasm with respect to the re-opening of school is beyond all expectation." Five teachers have been sent and more are called for.

Our teachers in Troy, N.C., write us: "Can you not send us a pastor? There is such an earnest need of one. We really do not think the work here can prosper unless we have a pastor. We do the best we can. The prayer meetings are all well attended, but it makes one's heart fail, to think of these 'sheep without a shepherd.' The work is very absorbing. Is there no one you could send here, if only for a time?"

Through certain interferences with one of our schools at the South, on the part of some ambitious people there, it seemed at one time that we should feel it a necessity to reduce the grades and place two or three teachers in some other schools which are calling on us for help. We telegraphed them to remain, however, and the result is thus given: "Your telegram came this afternoon and the children were half wild when they got out of the school-house, running up and down the streets to tell the good news. A company of them met the chairman of the local school board, whom they did not regard as altogether friendly, and they shouted to him, 'We have got our teachers! We have got our teachers! The man says they can stay.' One old auntie came this afternoon to say, 'I'se heerd how they is trying to get the teachers away and I prayed and prayed to the good Lord to keep 'em.' Some of the boys are waist-deep in the water after clams to get their fifty cents for their week's tuition. It has been a great joy to me to see the character of the people when the unfriendly ones tried to break us up. They have shown much thought and ability, and they win our hearts by their faith in God."

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