OUR INDUSTRIAL TEACHERS are heavily taxed just now in providing sewing material for classes. We need basted patchwork, and basted under garments for the sewing departments throughout the field, but especially for Anniston and Mobile, Alabama; Memphis and Jonesboro, Tennessee; Tougaloo, Mississippi; and Austin, Texas. One missionary writes, “I find my classes very large. In beginning I have about one hundred girls in sewing, about thirty in Household Economy and Cooking, and later I shall have a large class in Nursing. This work added to the care of the Mission Home will, I fear, be more than I can carry, unless I have help, and I do not see how I can let one bit of the work stop. I am sure there are plenty of good friends at the North who will gladly help when they know.”
WE HAVE ADDED a special industrial teacher to the force in Trinity School at Athens, Alabama. Miss Perkins writes: “I am charmed with the school and the inside of the building. I wish each day that our Northern friends could look in at Chapel. I think they would feel repaid in great measure by the goodly sight. I was glad to find a Christian Endeavor Society in the school, it seemed so like home.”
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WOMAN’S WORK IN NORTH CAROLINA.
BY MISS A.E. FARRINGTON.
On Thursday, Oct. 3d, a Woman’s Missionary Union was organized for the Congregational churches of North Carolina. A year ago, at the meeting of the State Association in Wilmington, the subject was discussed, and a committee was appointed to confer with the ladies of the churches in regard to a local organization in each church. The plan met with favor, and on coming together this year it was found that nearly every church reported a missionary society in some form. All were therefore ready for the State Union, when the Association of Congregational Churches convened in the little country church at Oaks. As there was no chapel or church parlor to be placed at the disposal of the ladies, they withdrew to the grove, and there under the tall, symmetrical oaks by the veranda of the little mission home of Miss Douglass, the organization was effected with the aid of Miss Emerson, of New York, who was present.
The following evening a public meeting was held at which reports were heard from the local societies. The dark countenances were light with eager interest, as they listened to the account of the work done by the women. One told of a society, organized in February with two members who became President and Treasurer. The numbers soon increased to eight, all of them hard-working women, one of them the mother of twelve children for whom she found it difficult to provide, yet that society reported $10.61 as the result of their eight months’ work.
Another reported a weekly Bible reading in connection with the Woman’s Society, at which one who could read took the Bible while others gathered around, and “as they got to understand the Word” they spoke to one another of the work of the Lord in their own hearts.