One old Aunty was reading the fifth chapter of Matthew, when she came to a passage, which she read thus; “Neither—do—men—light—a—half-bushel—and—put—it—under—a—candle-stick.” On being stopped and told to look again, pointing with her finger all along the lines of the page, with a look of half despair she said, “Bress you, honey, I can’t find either candle or half-bushel now.” Those simple words were quite a sermon for me, and I’ve thought of them many a time since. Are not we, as Christians, in danger of losing our candles? Our good Aunty’s candle was soon found for her; but will ours, once lost, be as easily recovered? In those days, even in the day-schools, there were many difficulties that could hardly be encountered now. I remember hearing one teacher say that it was almost impossible to get the ages of her scholars. They would say, “My age is up country;” or “Ole missis has my age in the Bible, and she’s gone away.” The trick of giving one name to one teacher and another to the next was practiced. On giving a second name once, one little fellow was brought up with, “Why, I thought your name was George Johnson?” “I done got tired of that name,” was his cool reply. Perhaps the most interesting prayer-meeting that I ever attended among the Freedmen was in Alabama, where the Ku Klux outrages lasted so much longer than in other places, and where the missionaries looked to their guns and their rifles before retiring. I reached there just the evening of the weekly prayer-meeting at the school-house. ’Twas a stormy night, but with waterproofs and umbrellas we ventured. Wholly unused to bullets, I must confess there was a little trembling under one waterproof, as we wended our way along the little path through the woods, and across the one plank bridge over the Branch; but once within the building all fear vanished. The room was filled with the finest looking colored people I had ever seen. They had, many of them, been house servants in the best families in this aristocratic place. The pastor opened the meeting, and they carried it on with a liveliness that was truly refreshing. Two or three usually rose at once, with words right on their lips. This church had only been organized a little over a year, and then numbered about eighty. There had been much to dishearten all along. They had no church building, and had been striving hard to build; but no sooner would they begin to see little light through the clouds than the white people, fearing that the men with dark skins might acquire too great a hold on this world’s goods, would remove work from the most prosperous, and thus the clouds would gather again. Referring to this method of _keeping down_, one of the members once said, “No ’count niggers can rub along here well enough, but smart niggers had better look out for other quarters.” Even at that time the danger of their being obliged to disband from outside violence was hardly over, and