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A PRAYERFUL AND INDUSTRIOUS FAMILY.

One of our deacons is the father and grandfather of a large number of people among whom he lives, and by whom he is greatly honored.  He and his aged wife, who is good as can be, like himself, toil for their living all the week, and walk six miles Sunday morning to church.  Sometimes she fails, for she is not quite so strong as her husband, but he is seldom absent.  One of his sons-in-law, who has himself a son in Talladega College, is the most prompt and regular attendant the church has, and he comes the same six miles.  These are not only faithful in church attendance, but are also to be counted among the truest of upright, honest, pure, industrious people.

Between twenty and twenty-five years ago, when they did not have homes of their own, they rented of a man, who, like Shylock, would hold them close to their bargain.  One year the “destroyer” came, and crops were short everywhere.  When the day was at hand for the landlord to come with his wagons for his share of the crop, they were greatly distressed.  Acting upon the advice of a Christian woman, who was among them as their first teacher, they observed a day of rigid fasting and earnest prayer.  “They were heard in that they feared.”  The dreaded day arrived; the man came with his wagons.  In fear and trembling they turned everything over to him, but to their surprise he kindly said that he knew it had been a bad year.  His crops, also, had been ruined.  He loaded up a little, but left them enough for seed another year, and something to live on besides, and drove most of his wagons home empty.

For twenty-one or twenty-two years on the anniversary of that fast day all work has stopped, and a fast as rigid as the first, with special religious services, has been kept, and on June 21st a day of thanksgiving.  On the first, which is in February, they ask for God’s special blessing on the seed about to be planted, and on the work of their hands for the year, and on the day in June they praise the Lord for what prosperity they have enjoyed in the past.  It was my privilege to attend both of these anniversaries this year.  I found the people earnest, intelligent and strictly moral.  These people appreciate the American Missionary Association and her work in their behalf.  It would be long before they could themselves sustain such institutions as the Association has placed among them, but they are disposed to do so as rapidly as they become able.

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A VISIT TO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

BY J.W.  HOLLOWAY, OF TURIN, GA.

(Graduate of Class of 1894, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.)

  On a hillside near a turnpike,
    Just a mile or so from town,
  In a double room log-cabin,
    Lives a hero of renown. 
  There beneath a shady maple,
    Summer evenings warm and fair,
  You may find my swarthy hero
    Calmly smoking, in his chair.