Читать книгу The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 05, May, 1889 - Various - Страница 5

A Northern visitor in the South, writing in a recent number of The Advance speaks of the rapid improvement of the Negroes in that locality. He says that the Negro is prosperous; that commercially he is honest; that one house has had no less than thirteen hundred names of colored people on its books, each having a credit from a few dollars to forty or more; that the Negro respects education—even if he is unable to read himself, he wants, with all the determination of his soul, that his children shall be educated; that the merchants say that they are buying better and better goods, are learning the value of money, are exercising wiser judgment, are becoming farmers and mechanics, are becoming better men.

These items, taken from a long article, show the bright light glowing in that locality. Of course the writer gives some dark touches to the picture, and thus modified, it may be repeated of thousands of places throughout the South. Some of our friends, we fear, look too much upon the dark side. There is a dark side, and it is dense. But if we can only continue and enlarge the sphere of these bright spots, and kindle others in new localities, the time will come when the light will displace the darkness and the dawn of a new era will come. Friends of the Negro race, patriots and Christians! furnish the oil for these bright spots and help to multiply them.