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Two cases of heroic self-denial have come under my notice recently.  In Macon there lives a colored woman whose husband is in an Insane Asylum.  Their home was recently burned to the ground.  She has four {164} small children with her, the eldest of whom is eleven years old, who are dependent upon her for support.  She earns just eight dollars per month, and yet she sends one girl, aged fifteen, to Atlanta University!

A young man, whose father was a white man and who is himself a blonde, has been urgently invited by his white grandmother to come to her home and take the position of her son’s child.  She is a wealthy woman, owning a large plantation.  The young man’s father, her son, is dead.  The boy would have all the privileges of a wealthy young white man and inherit the property on his grandmother’s death.  The sole condition which the grandmother makes is that he shall give up all association with his octoroon mother and refuse to recognize her in any way.  Thank God, the boy is too true to his gentle and loving mother to enter into any such arrangement, even though the bribe offered is thousands of dollars and a social position of great attractiveness.  There is a great deal of this quiet but heroic self-sacrifice among the colored people in the South, that never finds its way into print.

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THE ALABAMA ASSOCIATION.

PRESIDENT H.S.  DEFOREST.

The thirteenth annual meeting of the Alabama Association was held at Salma, March 30th to April 3d, when the floods were at their highest, yet fourteen of our seventeen churches were represented.  The Sunday-school Association convened a day earlier, and one afternoon the Woman’s Missionary Association had a session by itself.

The opening sermon by Professor Andrews, was a powerful exposition of Christian love, from the 13th of 1st Corinthians.  One evening was given to the higher, Christian education; one to three papers on “How to Secure Homes,” “The Home Indoors,” and “Home Piety;” and the last to three phases of the temperance question.  Pastor C.B.  Curtis, whose church most generously entertained the Association, read a very suggestive paper on “Self Support of the Churches,” a pressing and difficult question.  Almost of necessity, when there is so much to be done, and the resources are so small compared with the magnitude of the undertakings, practical rather than theoretical questions come to the front and engage earnest attention.

After a most satisfactory examination, six young men from the Theological Department of Talladega College were licensed to preach, and it is noteworthy, that, besides this latest gift of Talladega to the ministry, eleven of the fourteen churches represented at this meeting of the Association are ministered to by Talladega College or its graduates.  It is a wonder that some man wishing to put a comparatively small sum