Looking upon the one, you would shrink back in dismay, wondering if it be not hopeless to try and illumine a darkness so gloomy, to raise a class so utterly buried in ignorance, superstition and sin. But, could we turn to you the other view, show the work done, acquaint you with the trials, the sacrifices, the glorious victories over fiery temptations, the patient continuance in well-doing in the face of obstacles almost insurmountable, then, indeed, you might be tempted to take the other extreme and feel that missionaries are hardly needed among a people whose Christian record shines brighter than our own. So, coming as pledged witnesses before you to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, we shrink from the vastness of the undertaking, for while exactly fulfilling the last requirement and telling nothing but the truth, we keenly realize the many contradictions, and know that the whole truth cannot be told in a single hour—can never, indeed, be fully known till seen in the light of eternity. We read of nations with no word for home. Come through the cabins of the South and you will find not the name but the reality wanting. You will not find there any incentive or help to personal modesty, any retirement or any sense of impropriety in the state of things. From these influences and homes many of our girls come to us with minds and characters such as might be expected from such surroundings. We sometimes speak of them as _children_, but the comparison is hardly just. Never do I realize more keenly their deprivations than after talking with Northern children—little children whose precocity, to one fresh from the South, seems almost alarming, suggestive of brain fevers and early death. From babyhood their wits have been quickened by contact with other and mature minds, their many questions wisely answered till they have _absorbed_ knowledge enough to be intelligent companions before their so-called education begins. But put them in the place of the colored children, remove all books, all papers, all pictures, let them have no knowledge of the outside world, let all their questions be addressed to people as ignorant as themselves, and you will find the youth of sixteen far behind the child of six. To many of the girls, entering school is like entering a new world. They sit for the first time in their lives at a well ordered table, utterly at a loss as to the proper manner of conducting themselves. The refined manners of the older students bewilder them.