Atlanta University has a Y.W.C.T.U., composed of over seventy girls in the Higher Normal department.  I wish our Northern friends could look into their intelligent faces and watch their eager interest in this work.  A committee for visiting the poor reports every week; the press superintendent reports her work, and if there is time reads what she sent to the papers; the social purity superintendent gives a little talk or has something read on the subject; and the most cheering thing of all is the report from our literature superintendents, who often report as many as thirty books or leaflets read during the week from our little circulating library.  This library cost about five dollars.

Every officer in all these four Unions is a Negro except one.  They preside with such intelligence, grace and dignity, that our Southern white {pg 218} ladies who sometimes visit them are enthusiastic in their praise.  The Unions plan for a mass meeting every three months in some large church.

Its forty departments of organized work give each a place where she can do her best, and its opportunities for visiting the lowly are excellent.  To give our money is generous, but to give ourselves is Christly.  House-to-house visitation and personal contact of the ignorant and unfortunate with those who are only a little wiser and better, even, is a mighty elevator.  A W.C.T.U. visiting committee with short terms of office, and so including a large number of women during the year, can, in an official capacity, call on a poor or wayward sister without antagonizing her or wounding her self-respect.

* * * * *

OUR YOUNG FOLKS.

CHILDREN’S DAY AT TALLADEGA.

MRS. H.S.  DEFOREST.

A glorious sun ushered in the 29th of April, when for the first time Children’s Day was observed by the College Church.  Deft fingers had adorned the white walls, the chandeliers and the rostrum, with living green, and from pulpit and organ glowed and burned the roses which blossomed in rare profusion for this happy day.  Early, from every quarter, flocked the children, many with faces “black, but comely,” and all in attire neat and clean.  Seats reserved for their use were speedily filled, and as their voices rose in songs of praise, canary and mocking bird from swinging cages swelled the glad sound.  An ascription of praise to God by the choir opened the exercises, the pastor following with appropriate Scripture and prayer, and a word as to the object of the decorations and special service—­not for a picnic or celebration, but that the children might ever remember this day with solemn and peculiar interest as their very own.

After the chanting by the choir, soft and slow, of “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” twenty children were presented by their parents for baptism, two of the youngest belonging to officers of the College.  Parents brought two, and even three, little ones, that the man of God might place upon their foreheads the seal of their consecration, and in solemn and tender words they were reminded of the meaning and obligation of the rite.