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The American Missionary — Volume 42, No. 05, May, 1888 by Various
page 38 of 77 (49%)
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THREE PICTURES FROM LE MOYNE SCHOOL, MEMPHIS, TENN.

BY MISS ESTHER H. BARNES.

I would like to bring before you three pictures which I saw this week.
The first is the interior of a single room. The tattered, soiled bed
and the fireplace took up a large part of the room, and the rest was
nearly filled with the confusion of odds and ends that make up the
belongings of such a home. A feeble fire rested on the uneven bricks
of the fireplace, and the chimney above was covered with newspapers in
the last stages of dilapidation and dirt. There was no window, but a
little sliding shutter, moved aside a few inches, admitted light
enough to make the darkness visible as it fell on the smoke-stained
boards, and the dusky faces of the inmates seated close to the fire on
old chairs and boxes. A home more forlorn than this little pen, which,
with a smaller back shed, is the only residence of at least five human
beings, I can hardly conceive.

Now for a more cheering picture. It is a cozy sitting-room, papered
with taste and furnished in harmony. Everything looks neat, from the
snowy bed-spread to the pretty clock on the mantel, and the dainty
bunch of pansies on the wall above. Open doors give glimpses of other
rooms as well ordered as this, while intelligence and kindness beam in
the dark faces of gentle mother and cheery bright-eyed daughters. When
people ask us how we can bear to teach "niggers," they generally have
in mind those tattered, lazy persons, who are most wont to show
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