Such naturally feel as if the great good of life were denied them.  They feel themselves neglected.  Their condition cuts them off from communion with educated and refined people.  They think they have little or no stake in the general weal of life.  They feel as though they have no character to lose, consequently intemperance takes possession of them.

This evil of intemperence is said by some to be the greatest of all evils.  It is the cause of the ruin of some of our fathers and brothers, and I am sorry to say it ruins some of the mothers.  When we, the temperance girls and boys, ask them to leave off their habit of drinking, they tell us that it does them good.  When cold it makes them warm, when warm it makes them cold.  When troubled, it cheers them.  When weak, it strengthens them.  It is certainly killing them by degrees.

* * * * *

Student’s letter.

The blue-jacket teacher—­first school experience.

From youth I was impressed that the “Yankee” was the terror of the world, capable of literally swallowing a small fellow, so it was with great difficulty that Judge M.J.  S——­, a Southern white man, induced me, in 1873, to enter Burrell Academy, then an A.M.A. school located in Selma, Alabama, and taught by some of those “blue jacket” beings whose names did not always begin with “blessed.”  The principal having sent me to Grade 2, I followed a little girl to the door of that room.  She passed in while I stood at the door and thought thus, “Shall I go in here when one of those awful “blues” is there?” Half doubting, half fearing, trembling throughout, I slipped shyly inside the first school-house I ever entered, and lo! to my greatest surprise there sat a woman who was anything but “blue,” whose face was as white and fair as any ever seen, whose hair was slightly golden, whose voice seemed more sweet, mellow and musical than the softest flute note; she was one whom all praised and loved.  The only blue about her was her eyes, which marked her pure Saxon lineage.

When I felt sure that no monster would suddenly spring from those queer walls of white and black, I silently exclaimed, “Why, that’s a white woman!”

In March, 1873, she began teaching me the alphabet, when I was thirteen years old.  I had no mother and no home or friend, other than Judge S——­, in whose family I served.

In 1874 he left the city, leaving me homeless.  I vainly sought work but was turned away with “too small.”

Pinched and pressed by hunger and want, I was despairing when that angel-like teacher, one of the purest and best of women, came to my rescue, and thenceforth with her own hands and earnings continued to help supply all my needs—­material and spiritual.  She taught me the alphabet of school, of life and of heaven; she influenced me to pray, and in answer to our prayers I was converted and joined the church in 1875.