I asked her: “Daughter, can you read?” Her face brightened as she said: “Yes, sir; a little.” “Can you write?” The brown eyes sought the ground as she answered: “No, sir.” “If I will send you some books, will you try to teach your little sisters to read?” The glad look in her eyes I shall never forget, as she answered: “Yes, sir; I will try.” We sent her a good supply and it made them all glad. They are not beggars; the father would not take money for a fine bunch of fish he sent, with his compliments, to my wife, and when he found that we had left some money for little services by the children he flushed and could hardly be persuaded to let them keep it. Some people call these “white trash.” I declare to you I never heard a Southern white man or woman use the expression in speaking of such persons. Mr. President, there are tens of thousands of white people in the South as poor as my friend of the fishing camp. If you can help them, in Christ’s name do it. As to our higher schools, some of our best colleges have died since 1865; others are dying now. Such a death is a loss, not to the South only, but to the whole country. Yours have grown rich. I do not envy you; I rejoice in your strong and well-furnished institutions. But you should be patient toward us, and, I am not ashamed to say, you should help us as God gives you opportunity. Men and brethren, it is time to have done with 1860–65. Said a Brooklyn man to me last year who, unsolicited, had helped two Southern schools: “I think my friends here approve what I have done; but if any should ask, ‘Why did you not give this money to your own people?’ my answer is: ‘They also are my people—we are one people.’” On that platform we can become a Christian nation strong enough to bless the world. Northern money has done much to “develop the South” during the last decade in pushing railroads and other great industrial enterprises. It is all welcome, and ten times as much. But I do not question that each $100 invested in Christian education in the South since the war has done more to develop it in every best sense than each $1,000 placed in railroads and factories. But enough on these lines of thought. I must say a word or two as to the relations of your work to Africa. The first atlas I ever saw made a desert of sand cover all the wonderful lands that Livingstone, Stanley, and others have discovered, and they printed across the map of Africa 28,000,000, with an interrogation point to indicate a guess as to the population. Now we are studying the maps of interior Africa, and they tell us of great nations and a population that may reach 200,000,000! Can any man who believes in the Bible, or in God, doubt for one moment that Providence is in the history of the negroes in the United States? Can we doubt that these millions of negroes, now committed to us as the wards of the Christian church, must, some day, attempt and accomplish the evangelization of Africa?