“I too have been impressed with this capability,” said Sara--“strongly impressed. Last Sunday I went to the Methodist colored Sunday-school on St. George Street. The teachers are Northerners; some resident here, some winter visitors; and the classes were filled up with full-grown men and women, some of them aged and gray-haired, old uncles and aunties, eager to learn, although they could scarcely see with their old eyes. They repeated Bible texts in chorus, and then they began to read. It was a pathetic sight to see the old men slowly following the simple words with intense eagerness, keeping the place under each one with careful finger. The younger men and girls read fluently, and showed quick understanding in the answers given to the teachers’ questions. Then the little children filed in from another room, and they all began to sing. Oh, how they sang! The tenor voice of a young jet-black negro who sat near me haunts me still with its sweet cadences. Singularly enough, the favorite hymn seemed to be one whose chorus, repeated again and again, ended in the words, “‘Shall wash me white as snow-- White as snow.’” “The negroes of St. Augustine were formerly almost all Romanists,” said John, “and many of them still attend the old cathedral on the Plaza, where there is a gallery especially for them. But of late the number of Methodists and Baptists has largely increased, while the old cathedral and its bishop, who once ruled supreme over the consciences of the whole population of la siempre fiel Ciudad de San Augustin, find themselves in danger of being left stranded high and dry as the tide of progress and education sweeps by without a glance. The Peabody Educational Fund supports almost entirely two excellent free schools here, one for white and one for colored children; and in spite of opposition, gradually, year by year, even Roman Catholic parents yield to the superior advantages offered to their children, and the church schools hold fewer and fewer scholars, especially among the boys. The Presbyterian church, with its pastor and earnest working congregation, has made a strong battle against the old-time influences, and it now looks as though the autocratic sway of the religion of Spain were forever broken in this ancient little Spanish city.” “At least, however, the swarthy priests _look_ picturesque and appropriate as they come and go between their convent and the old cathedral through that latticed gate in their odd dress,” said Sara. “Do you remember, in _Baddeck_, the pleasing historical Jesuit, slender too corpulent a word to describe his thinness, his stature primeval? Warner goes on to say that the traveler is grateful for such figures, and is not disposed to quarrel with the faith that preserves so much of the ugly picturesque.”