After the minister had finished telling them how he had been in the very same land where Jesus had lived, the school sung, “We’re going home to-morrow.” I wish you could have heard those children. They sang at the top of their voices, their white teeth showing more than ever in contrast with their black skin. After the superintendent gave out the papers which we had brought, the exercises closed, and I was glad to be relieved of the sixty pairs of eyes which had been upon me. Another time I went with some teachers to a Mission Sunday-school. This was in a most lovely place, right in the thick woods, far away from any houses or sounds of any kind, except the songs of the birds. We found we were early that day, for neither the teacher nor scholars had come. We went inside the school-house and waited. Perhaps you ask how we got in. That was an easy thing to do, for there was no locked door to keep us out, and no door of any kind, only an opening in one side of the house. This was an old building, built in the same way as the first one I visited. In some places the logs were a foot apart. Here the benches were made of round logs split in two, the flat part being the top, and in each end of the rounded part were two legs. And such queer looking seats as they were! Only one or two of them had backs. Before long the teacher and a few scholars came. The school was small that day, as there was a “big baptizing,” as they call it, not far away, which always attracts crowds of colored people. After the scholars had left, and as we were preparing to go, a terrible thunder shower came up which detained us there. The rain came in, drip, drip, at every crack, till after a while there was only one dry corner in the house. The teacher told us that when showers came in school time, the scholars had to sit on their books to keep them dry. The shower continued for some time, and being very tired, after a sixteen-mile drive over new-cut roads through woods, we put on our water-proofs and lay down on the damp benches; but finding the drops were falling into our faces, we were obliged to put up umbrellas. This was resting under difficulties. There, in that open building, far away from any one, with the rain coming in and standing in pools on the floor, we fully realized what these poor country people have to go through to learn their A, B, C; and those who continue their schools in the winter must suffer greatly from the cold, as they only have a fire-place in one end of the room. One teacher told us that his fire-place was so poor, that in winter he built a fire out of doors, while the children gathered around it sitting on stumps and logs. There are not only these two schools I have spoken of, but many such scattered all over the Southern States.