Out of a population of 40,000, one-third are colored. Many of the children attend school a few months during the year; but the parents think if their son John Quincy Adams Anderson attends school two weeks out of four, he will “learn a heap,” and be ready to graduate in a year or two. However, some of the children do make good progress at school; but the home influence is so degrading that the necessity of missionary work among the mothers is felt more and more, as we see more of their homes. Many are too poor to send their children to school at all; consequently they have no opportunity of becoming better. In my daily visits from house to house I found them in a wretched condition, filth and vermin reigning supreme. Often, on entering these abodes, my sensibilities were so shocked that I could not speak at first--dogs, cats, chickens and children clamoring for the hoe cake in the ashes or the unleavened dough baking on the stove-cover, which, when done, is broken and handed around to each, sometimes with the addition of a dripping bit of bacon. In many of these homes the table is never set, the entire furniture consisting of a bed, two chairs, a trunk, box, cupboard, bundle of rags and a poor stove, if there is no fireplace. They sometimes own the board shanties in which they live, and rent the ground they stand on; and when they wish to move, they pull down the shanty, move it to the new place, and put it up again. I was usually received kindly; by some enthusiastically. One old ex-slave, learning the nature of my errand at her house, said, raising her hands above her turbaned head, “Oh, bless the Lord! Thank the Lord! for He has heard the prayer of His downtrodden people, and put it into the hearts of His dear children in the North to send some one to instruct us. My blessed baby, come as often as you can, and read to Aunt Hettie, for she is an ole Etheopum, and don’t know nothing.” After I left, she rushed around to her neighbors, saying, “Bless the Lord! for He has heard our prayer, and sent an angel right down from heaven to instruct us, and she has been to my house this evenin’.” They were usually glad--many were anxious--to hear the Bible read, some insisting on paying me, saying, “Do take it. We wants you to come often, for we don’t hear anything like it anywhere else.” One woman, wishing, as she said, to do something for the Lord, and having no money, sent me a nice warm dinner. They are very liberal, giving as long as they have a nickel, whether they rightly own it or not.