There is something, I say, in the education of the colored man—though why they call him “colored,” I don’t know. A man was once asked if he was colored; he said no, he was “born so”—something to build on in themselves. And then there is their desire for education. We here in the North can hardly conceive the earnest desire of those people to learn. When Straight University was burned, I received a letter asking me for some books; and I had the privilege of sending some two or three hundred volumes to them. I was told in the letter that on the very morning after the fire the scholars assembled, and, standing among the ruins, they sang, “Hold the Fort,” and then formed themselves into classes all around about the ruins that they might not lose their lessons. I have an idea—I shall get bewildered here a little, because I am talking about education, and I never was educated myself—that education may not make a man a better Christian, but it will make him a more useful Christian. One poor woman, living in a smoky cabin, when asked how she could endure to live in such a smoke, said: “Why, honey, I’se thankful to de good Lord to get anything to make a smoke of.” There was a good deal of ignorance, but there was true thanksgiving. Another one said: “God whips you and leaves you alone sometimes, to see if you won’t work; but la, it’s just like a baby—as soon as you cry He hears ye!” Some of the most beautiful sentiments have been uttered by those who are the most ignorant; but when we are appointing men to preach the Gospel, my opinion is that education is needed, and we must so arrange the machinery of the American Missionary Association that hundreds of thousands of men who are now waiting the opportunity to preach the everlasting Gospel intelligently shall be brought into the field of labor. O, it is a glorious work, this lifting, lifting up of the low, this ministering to those who are poor, this helping those who have no helper! It is a grand work, and I thank God that there is such an Association as this, stretching out its hands and its arms in every direction to lay hold on those for whom the world has cared so little.—_John B. Gough, Esq._ * * * * *