Most pitiful of all the objects she found in New Orleans were the old women worn out with years of slavery.  They were usually rag-pickers who ate at night the scraps for which they had begged during the day.  There was in the city an Old Ladies’ Home; but this was not for Negroes.  A house was secured and the women taken in, Joanna Moore and her associates moving into the second story.  Sometimes, very often, there was real need; but sometimes, too, provisions came when it was not known who sent them; money or boxes came from Northern friends who had never seen the workers; and the little Negro children in the Sunday schools in the city gave their pennies.

In 1878 the laborer in the Southwest started on a journey of exploration.  In Atlanta Dr. Robert at Atlanta Baptist Seminary (now Morehouse College) gave her cheer; so did President Ware at Atlanta University.  At Benedict in Columbia she saw Dr. Goodspeed, President Tupper at Shaw in Raleigh, and Dr. Corey in Richmond.  In May she appeared at the Baptist anniversaries, with fifteen years of missionary achievement already behind her.

But each year brought its own sorrows and disappointments.  She wanted the Society to establish a training school for women; but to this objection was raised.  In Louisiana also it was not without danger that a white woman attended a Negro association in 1877; and there were always sneers and jeers.  At length, however, a training school for mothers was opened in Baton Rouge.  All went well for two years; and then a notice with skull and crossbones was placed on the gate.  The woman who had worked through the cholera still stood firm; but the students had gone.  Sick at heart and worn out with waiting, she at last left Baton Rouge and the state in which so many of her best years had been spent.

“Bible Band” work was started in 1884, and Hope in 1885.  The little paper, beginning with a circulation of five hundred, has now reached a monthly issue of twenty thousand copies, and daily it brings its lesson of cheer to thousands of mothers and children in the South.  In connection with it all has developed the Fireside School, than which few agencies have been more potent in the salvation and uplift of the humble Negro home.

What wisdom was gathered from the passing of fourscore years!  On almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations of proverbial pith: 

The love of God gave me courage for myself and the rest of mankind; therefore I concluded to invest in human souls.  They surely are worth more than anything else in the world.

Beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous.  God can not use discouraged people.

The good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do but by praising God for what had been done.

So much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for the Bible lesson.  Do not misunderstand me.  I do love music that impresses the meaning of words.  But no one climbs to heaven on musical scales.