I have spent nearly five years in teaching the little colored children
in this Southland. In my department there are over ninety bright,
enthusiastic little folks between the ages of five and thirteen. I have
often wished that the anxious inquirers as to whether the colored
children were as bright and smart intellectually as white ones, could
visit my room, and the little people would answer the question
themselves.

My pupils, with one exception, being day scholars, I have had an
excellent opportunity to know the colored people. I go to their homes;
some I find as cosy and prettily fitted up as the average home at the
North, while others are miserable apologies for the name.

I often, Sunday afternoons, take a bundle of papers and go through some
of the streets where I find boys playing ball or marbles, and flying
kites. When I ask why they haven't been to Sunday-school, or at home
reading, they tell me they have no clothes, and that they have nothing
to read at home; as I distribute the papers, they lay down bat and ball
and eagerly devour the stories and study the pictures.

I find some very bright little fellows among them. I asked one little
boy, "Won't you come to my Sunday-school?" He replied at once, "Oh yes."
I said, "Do you know where I teach?" The ready answer came at once, "Up
at the big college yonder," The next Sunday, as I went in, the first
child I saw was Dan. He sat with eyes and mouth wide open as we talked
about Joseph, sung our little hymns and repeated the commandments--
things he had never heard before. The next Sabbath he was there as
interested and eager as on the first, his bare feet hanging from the
chair; but the third Sunday as I went out the gate, there stood Dan,