fare cut down to the lowest possible limit to preserve health and strength. They do not complain and seem perfectly willing to sacrifice to keep bills down.

Old clothes, and warm ones, for wo have cold weather for three months, will be most acceptable. Two cents will

give a bowl of hot soup with a cracker to a hungry child. I have sent many appeals but this is the most urgent and pathetic of all. The need is great and I most earnestly beg for help this hard year. I will most carefully distribute any clothes and any money you may see fit to send for relief.

You may be interested to hear of a marriage ceremony lately performed by our pastor. For nearly two years, this couple had been planning to get married. The woman made herself a white dress and put it away. The man bought her shoes; but work was scarce and shoes and clothing for himself did not materialize. This year,the oldest child, a girl of about fourteen years, was quite ill as was also the baby afterwards. We helped with the sick children and finally were cheered to learn that they would very soon be ready to be married. At the appointed hour, I walked down to the Melilla, and passed through the neatly kept little flower garden in front of their cabin. As it was night, I could not see the many pretty tropical flowers and vines nor the single spray of our own golden rod that I knew grew there, but entering the cabin. I saw a great mass of these flowers on the little table in the center of the room. Things looked rather dim and weird inside, lighted

only by a small kerosene lamp. The four children were ranged close to the wal!, all standing, as chairs were few; they were prepared for the fete, being neatly and carefully dressed, in the simplest materials, wearing shoes and stockings. No wonder it takes time to prepare for a wedding, when so many must be clothed. One little girl standing silent against the wall with little artificial curls falling round her sweet face looked like a doll. The mother looked very pretty in her white dress. "Is this the same dress you made last year?" I asked. "No," said she, "this is another one." Soon the pastor came and a neighbor, a woman, looking very neat and dignified as befitted the occasion, to be one of the necessary witnesses; papers were made out by the pastor and signed by us, as the parties most concerned cannot write. I took the baby from the mother and the ceremony began. Soon, it was over, flowers and thanks were given us. We said "adios" and passed out.

The weeks of this school for our Indians have passed so swiftly that it seems only a few days since the pupils began to arrive. The evening previous to our opening day brought us a party of fifty young Indians by train. usual lengthy and difficult journey from the station to and across the river in the dark and then by team again to the Mission was so long on this occasion that

The

we began to be anxious. About ninethirty, however, the happy voices of chil dren told us that they were safely across the river. The arrival at the dining hall was an exciting time. The children, big and little, scrambled out from all sides of the four big hay racks. Some faces we recognized as they came into the light, but a great many were new. Supper was soon over, for as usual some

were too polite to eat at the first meal, and others so shy they wouldn't glance side ways, much less take a bite to eat. In a few days, however, this shyness disappears entirely with the little children when in the dining room, and with most of the older ones. Then one hundred and fifty pounds of flour and fifteen of corn meal is none too much for the bread and corn bread for the three meals a day. The children were too sleepy and tired to be homesick this first night, but the following few nights there was some weeping after they were in bed. The rest of the pupils have come in a few at a time. The enrollment lists for all the dormitories were all full long before school opened, and ninety-eight have been refused admittance because there is no more room. And still letters and telegrams come from parents asking and begging that their children be taken.

We are thankful for such a full school, and also for the earnest desire of the parents to send their children to a Christian school. Each year there is a larger number who appreciate the care and training given by the school to the children and they are willing to sacrifice to pay something toward keeping their children here. The new pupils are always very interesting to me. Some of the older ones are so reserved and shy that it takes most of the year to really know them. Several girls who are with me a larger share of the time have not

yet spoken above a whisper in my hearing. It will not be long, however, until they will converse freely and audibly while at their work, but in the class room it takes much longer to reach the point where they can recite aloud. It is interesting and encouraging to know that these very reserved and shy pupils often have the great possibilities for development which time and patience will discover. Former pupils of the school have been working for several years to help raise the money to put up a new building; they have also given quite a sum toward furnishing it, but there is still one very urgent need which is not provided for. In the basement of the new building, is a large room which is to be reserved for the domestic science department, but we cannot use it until we have something to put in it. Our present domestic science room is a very small kitchen in one of the private homes. This is very inadequate to the need. The cooking department which is so much needed and desired by the girls has suffered greatly for lack of room and equipment, but we have hopes that the money will soon be forthcoming to furnish this new room.

I am telling you this need with hope that there may be some societies and individual friends who will be glad of this opportunity to have a share in this part of the work. I shall look forward eagerly to hearing from you.

life I spent as a slave. I never saw a school house, a book or a colored person who could read until I was twelve or thirteen years old.

Two years after the close of the civil war my mother was married to a man named Henry Hill, my own father having lost his life in a magazine explosion at the close of the

war. The last owner of my stepfather was Mr. John Frye, but like many other colored people who had had more than one owner he preferred to take the name of the first. This step-father took my mother, my sister and myself to the plantation of Mr. John Frye where with his four motherless children and my mother's two he began farming for half the crop. After he had farmed on this plan for about two years he bought from Mr. Frye on credit three hundred acres of land and an old two room smoke-house, tore it down and re-erected it for a dwelling.

As the piece of ground he purchased of Mr. Frye was not far from his home, they were near-by neighbors and mutually helpful and Mrs. Frye and mother became the best of friends. They saw each other often, and my mother kept her supplied with butter and eggs, and helped in other ways.

There came into the community from somewhere a young colored man who could read and write, the first we had ever seen. He taught me the alphabet from the old Webster blueback spelling book in the yard by the light of pine knots at the close of the hard day's work on the farm. Besides teaching me my letters this young man also told me that if I could get to Mobile--a hundred and fifty miles away-I would find schools open to colored boys and girls. I decided to go and getting together my few garments, I put them into a pillow-case and started. When I had learned there to write and began sending letters to my mother (I did not send her a letter until I could write it) Mrs. Frye

read and answered them for her through the years that I remained in Mobile prior to going to Talladega College and during the eight years of my student life there, the two years of my pastorate in Louisville, Ky., and through five years of my pastorate in Birmingham, Ala.about twenty years in all-until Mr. Frye had died and Mrs. Frye had left the community, the correspondence for my mother was thus conducted by her.

This Mr. John Frye who had owned my step-father and whose wife had so kindly conducted the correspondence, was the son of Mr. George Washington Frye who many years before the civil war came from Maine to Alabama. Teaching school first, he afterward bought slaves and began farming. He was related to Judge Simon Frye of Maine, a very prominent man who held many offices.

While I was a student at Talladega College and Mrs. Frye was reading and answering my letters to my mother, the much loved wife of Rev. Edwin Parker Wilson, pastor of the Woodfords Congregational Church of Watertown, Mass., through the Sunday school was sending money to help me through school. Mrs. Wilson was the daughter of Mrs. Cordelia Frye Farnsworth of sacred memory, well known to the the people of New England through her usefulness and helpful

ness.

The Mr. Frye whose wife was a friend of my mother's was of the same ancestral family as William P. Frye, Senator from Maine, and President pro tem of the Senate for many years.

A few weeks ago I wrote Mrs. Frye our old friend now living at Anniston, Ala.--telling her of the death of my mother and referring to the friendship that had existed between them in which my mother rejoiced to the last days of her life. I wrote that I had heard that while she was visiting in the North she was asked whether she thought, from what she knew of the colored people in the South, it was wise for the Northern people to spend so much time, energy and money in the effort to educate them, and that she replied telling them what she knew of Sepneer Snell, a little ignorant boy on her husband's plantation who never saw letters until he 12 or 13 years old; how when he had gotten a taste of learning, he left the community to go one hundred and fifty miles to Mobile without a penny that he might go to school; how after reaching the city he waited and wished and toiled until the way opened first in night school and then in a day school of the A. M. A.; how he finally reached Talladega College, prepared for the ministry and entered upon his work. I asked Mrs. Frye if such a question had been asked and replied to, and in a most interesting reply to my letter this is her answer: "The question was asked me by our cousin in Portland, Maine, Mrs. Edwin P. Wilson whose husband was former pastor of the Watertown Church. As I proceeded with your history she grew more and more interested and broke right in, "Tell me the name of this boy," You can well imagine the surprise of the group of Northern and Southern Fryes, when I said, Spencer Snell. All thought it a very

wonderful coincidence. All the more so since there had been no communication between the two families for many years. After the

civil war we accidentally got into communication and were fond of each other."

After I had completed my course of study at Talladega College and given nine years of pastoral services in Louisville, Ky. and Birmingham, Ala. I returned to be College Pastor at Talladega. While I was there Mrs. Wilson, and Rev. E. P. Wilson, her husband, visited Mrs. Frye, their cousin at Anniston, Ala. and extended their journey down to Talladega to see me whom their former Sunday School had helped to educate, at the school to which the student aid had been sent.

It looks as if interest in Spencer Snell had brought the Fryes of the North and the Fryes of the South closer together. Both had been interested in and helping me without either knowing that the other was doing the same thing.

My mind has been going over certain events on which it likes to dwell. I recall how I was taken to the plantation of Mr. Frye where after years, when no longer a slave boy, I met the young man who taught me the alphabet and told me where I could go to school. I remember that of all the boys and girls who were on the plantation with me I am the only one that left there and went in search of an education. The others remained there in ignorance and degradation; some of the boys became gamblers and criminals. I can never forget how this Southern wife of our former master helped my mother and my

self with the correspondence, while the Fryes of the North without knowledge of this were helping with my education at Talladega College. I love to meditate on the vision of a new world that burst upon me through letters as I took my place first in the night school and then in the day school. It is a pleasure for me to think that I endeavored to render faithful service as minister in the Congregational churches in Louisville, Ky. and Birmingham, Ala., and that my life was enriched by a pastorate of ten years at Talladega College where my auditors were the resident people, the student body and the teachers and faculty, among whom were President H. S. DeForest and Dr. G. W. Andrews both of whom had been my teachers and whose words and deeds were abundantly helpful and whose approval made my ministry easy and delightful. It was an experience always to be cherished to go on speaking tour through the NorthWest for several weeks in 1896. When I think of the delightful part of four winters which took me into every one of the New England states and New York and New Jersey, speaking for the A. M. A. with the kindly assistance and direction of the A. M. A. office in Boston, which gave me opportunity to see the cultured people in their beautiful churches and homes, I count it among the greatest privileges of my life. I have now been for twelve years pastor of the First Congregational Church of Mobile where I began my christian life and in the A.

a

Let me say "over my own signature" that during all these years since Mr. Snell began his ministry he has been one

I am

M. A. school my education. now walking the same streets to do pastoral work that I once walked as a rag picker, begging them or buying them to sell at a little profit and eating biscuits from the bakery as I walked and peddled. I think of all these things. "There is a divinity that shapes our ends." I wonder if the mysterious working of Providence did not have something to do with it in relation me when George Washington Frye left Maine and came to Alabama, which resulted in there being a Frye's plantation, to which I was carried, to finally meet man who uncovered to me letters, showed me their meaning and prepared the way for all that has followed in my life. "God moves in a mysterious way."

Note.

In a letter Pastor Snell writes, "If it is not contrary to the policy of the A. M. A. I wish you would kindly say over your own signature that the church of which I am pastor was badly damaged by a terrible storm last July and before we could make permanent repairs a second storm came in October, two withiu four months. The parsonage was also damaged badly. It will require $250 to repair the two buildings and put them in a decent condition.

We people in the far South have had much to contend with this year in the way of storms and Mobile has had her full share of winds and disasters. The storms which visited us not only destroyed churches and all kinds of houses and trees but also swept the earth and destroyed farms and gardens.

Could you express the hope that this article in the American Missionary might come under the eye of people who will give to this cause? I hope so."

of the most faithful and useful pastors in the churches under the auspices of the American Missionary Association: wor