While looking for a friend in Tallahassee, Fla., I visited his office two or three times. The office-boy finally informed me that he had "gone to Liberia." I asked him whether Liberia was a country or a town, and he replied: "Why, boss! it's de place dey reads books." He meant the library. I related this experience to the barber at the hotel, and he turned to the porter and said, "You make just such mistakes, porter." The porter replied, "Yes, I knows I makes _sentimental_ mistakes." He supposed a sentimental mistake was one that was made in a sentence. Big words never stumble them. And yet, little by little they are gaining in the use of language, and naturally they are orators. It gives a Protestant Christian a strange feeling when he observes the Christian bearing of the Roman Catholics toward the colored people in the South, and the unchristian bearing of many Protestant denominations toward them. Dropping into the Cathedral at St. Augustine, I saw graceful white ladies kneeling side by side with black women, and worshiping together. At Pensacola I went into a Catholic church, and there in a crowded audience were colored and white people sitting in adjoining pews with perfect freedom. I went from here into a Methodist church, and there was not a single colored person present. It would not be strange if the Roman church gathered into its fold a large part of the Negroes of the South. Whatever may be the superstition and errors of their church, they do recognize in every human being a child of God, and offer to all freedom in Christian service. * * * * * THEN AND NOW. BY MISS L.A. PARMELEE. THEN. Nearly twenty years ago a little company of Christians at Byron, Ga., decided to form a Congregational Church. Their place of worship was a bush arbor or "bush harbor" as it was usually called. Feeling the need of more frequent ministrations than the pastor of Macon could furnish, they asked to have one of their own number licensed as a leader. A Council of churches was called at Andersonville, and the candidate presented himself for examination. He was a working man in middle life; his personal appearance bespoke him better fitted for the blacksmith's forge than the pulpit. His literary qualifications reached their limit when he could slowly read from his pocket Testament that "God so loved the world," and "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." In theology, he was prepared to discuss, with race shrewdness and quaint corn-field illustrations, the doctrines of election and future punishment. His Congregationalism comprised three points,--"To live by the Bible, to have only one wife, and to not drink whiskey"--good points for that time, and popularly supposed to represent the new denomination.