Excitement ran high in Florida over the murder of United States Marshal Saunders.  A Southern man on the street, not knowing that any Northern man was present, remarked to a friend as follows:  “I would not give $250 to any man to shoot a United States Marshal, but I would give $500 to help defend any man that shot him.”  The colored people were agitated over this murder, for it hinted at the possibility of general outrage and murder, in which they would be sufferers.  I heard in a colored church in St. Augustine the following prayer:  “O Lord! overcome those who oppress us, not by sword and bayonet and blood, but by the power of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”  When the spirit that that prayer breathes becomes the spirit of the whole people of the South, black and white, the present desperate condition of things will come to an end.

The Girl’s Industrial School at Thomasville, Ga., is crowded with pupils.  The dormitory accommodations provide room for only forty pupils, and forty-two are already there.  One feature of the work in this school is especially worthy of mention; and that is, the thorough study of the Bible.  This is systematic and comprehensive.  It does not consist in learning and repeating, in a parrot-like way, different dates and names.  It is analytical, both in history and biography.  It also includes careful study of Biblical geography.  I am sure those in the North who visit this school will be especially gratified by the success in this department of the school work.

While looking for a friend in Tallahassee, Fla., I visited his office two or three times.  The office-boy finally informed me that he had “gone to Liberia.”  I asked him whether Liberia was a country or a town, and he replied:  “Why, boss! it’s de place dey reads books.”  He meant the library.  I related this experience to the barber at the hotel, and he turned to the porter and said, “You make just such mistakes, porter.”  The porter replied, “Yes, I knows I makes sentimental mistakes.”  He supposed a sentimental mistake was one that was made in a sentence.  Big words never stumble them.  And yet, little by little they are gaining in the use of language, and naturally they are orators.

It gives a Protestant Christian a strange feeling when he observes the Christian bearing of the Roman Catholics toward the colored people in the South, and the unchristian bearing of many Protestant denominations toward them.  Dropping into the Cathedral at St. Augustine, I saw graceful white ladies kneeling side by side with black women, and worshiping together.  At Pensacola I went into a Catholic church, and there in a crowded audience were colored and white people sitting in adjoining pews with perfect freedom.  I went from here into a Methodist church, and there was not a single colored person present.  It would not be strange if the Roman church gathered into its fold a large part of the Negroes of the South.  Whatever may be the superstition and errors of their church, they do recognize in every human being a child of God, and offer to all freedom in Christian service.