He won the esteem of the white people.  Two years ago he was elected a member of the Board of Education of the city, and proved himself to be a man of good judgment in practical affairs.  His funeral was attended by Rev. Dr. Cordley, Rev. R.B.  Parker and Rev. A.N.  Richards.  He was Secretary of the Minister’s Meeting of Lawrence, and resolutions of warm commendation and sympathy for his family were passed by that body, and also by the Board of Education of Lawrence.

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We have just learned that Mr. A.J.  Berger, formerly industrial teacher at Macon, Georgia, died at Claremont, Virginia, September 2d, at the age of sixty-six years.

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News has also come to us of the death of Miss J.P.  Bradshaw, a former teacher at Tougaloo University, Miss.  For five years she bravely battled for life, but finally died of consumption.

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STUDENT’S LETTER.

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A BIT OF EXPERIENCE.

BY A TALLADEGA STUDENT.

Not long since I was forcibly reminded of the work and worth of the schools of the American Missionary Association by witnessing the services in a church.  In a room large enough to comfortably seat one hundred were fully two hundred and fifty, and a large crowd hovering about the door.  There was abundance of singing and praying.  The songs were mostly on the solo and chorus style—­not set to music, what we call plantation or “made-up songs.”  While singing, the leader adds new words to suit his fancy and emotional fervor; thus the song often undergoes several changes of words in the course of a few months, all the time retaining the same tune.  This is what is meant by “made-up songs.”  Among those of my people in whom the emotional tide runs high this kind of singing is very popular.

In that meeting, while singing the last part of each song the audience would rise and turn their backs toward the pulpit.  One started the prayers, but soon the multitude of voices made it impossible to know who was leading or what was being said.  The minister came in late.  He slowly turned the pages of the Bible until he found his text.  With a murmuring voice he read a few verses and began preaching.  Moving off slowly, like an express train, he soon gathered a rapid motion of body and a furious rattling of words.  With head down and the white of his eyes turned upward he kept up a constant spitting and walking for forty or forty-five minutes.  All the while the hearers responded with thrilling animation.  The sermon over, the singing was started as before for a long jubilee.  A few nights ago, at such a meeting, not far from the writer’s church, a young woman so mutilated her head while going through a muscular jubilation, that she had to go to the doctor to have her head repaired.