The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
The mercury is passing the 72 deg. point at sunrise; but the morning, as the
sunshine sparkles on the dewy grass between the wide-spreading live-oaks
of the grove, seems as cool as a morning on the Berkshire hills. The
wide-rolling plantation fields to the west give no hint of the long hot
mid-day hours when the cotton revels in a heat that sends all animate
nature to the deepest coverts.
The Tougaloo grounds are a paradise for all feathered life. The quail
with their cheery "Bob White" whistle in the kitchen garden, following
in plain sight the boys hoeing out the "grass." The blue-jays, martins
and mocking birds render a trip to the Paris Exposition entirely
unnecessary, if one wishes to hear all parties talk at the same moment
and in unintelligible syllables. Curious, is'nt it, that these shy
denizens of field and forest are so bold, in term as well as vacation
time, where these colored lads and lasses congregate, for people of a
low, brutal nature, incapable of any spark of generosity or ambition,
are no friends to innocent nature. The papers that characterize the
Negro as such, a creature unfit to live in a white man's country, cannot
be blinded by prejudice!
What of the human life at Tougaloo? College is out; the teachers are in
the far North. Miss Emerson, Preceptress of the Girl's Hall; Mr.
Hitchcock, Treasurer; Mr. Klein, Superintendent of the Farm; and Mr.
Kennedy, Superintendent of Carpentry; and Mr. McKibban, borrowed from
Macon school, are present to supervise the necessary work, for Tougaloo
cannot be closed a day. With its farm and forest and its shops, it is to
become for the Southwest what Hampton is for the Eastern South. May the
Lord prompt some of his stewards to make investments here which will
bring in a ten-fold interest for the nation and for heaven!
The dining-hall shows a number of tables well filled at meal times. Most
interesting are the ten little girls whom Miss Emerson has taken to
bring up to womanhood with habits of industry and economy, and with
characters pure and joyous. Each day has its routine for them; the
bedroom, the dining-room, the kitchen, the sewing-room, the lesson hour,
the play time and the period for personal advice and religious
instruction, have their appropriate but never-forgotten place.
There are a dozen of the large girls, young women who do the washing,
"clean house," cook the daily meals and can fruit from the garden and
orchard for the Sunday-night dish of sauce during the coming year. Part
of these are girls in the regular domestic course, a few are kept to
work for their board and instruction rather than have them obliged to go
into the cotton fields at home under unscrupulous overseers. These girls
have a long, busy day, for the work needed to keep any one of the great
boarding schools in efficient operation would surprise any one of our
contributing friends who has never been "thro' the mill."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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