[Illustration: LADIES’ HALL, TOUGALOO, MISS.]
It is very edifying to note how those who come without any taste or neatness in their personal appearance, with sorry attempts at finery and painfully-laced waists, improve under the tuition of the lady principal and the influence of those who have been here longer, the expression of the countenance often changing more rapidly and noticeably than even the manner of dress. But, O! the patience and the faculty required for this most important work of training the girls in womanly virtues and housewifely ways!
With all the patience and with all the faculty possible, it is a great and constant strain to have the care of such a household, and the matrons and lady principals need the uplifting prayers and sympathy of the warm Christian hearts interested in these schools, in a special degree.
And then the instruction in the Bible, as “the only and the sufficient rule both of faith and practice”—the value of this work cannot be over-estimated. The case of a young man who came into school for the first time this fall, comes to mind. Living far back from the railroad, in the country, he had had no advantages of any schooling but a few brief sessions of the public school. He was entered in the Third-reader grade and was to all appearance a most unpromising specimen, although a professed Christian, and apparently a sincere one, with a real experience of trust in God, but wofully untaught as to Christian character and duty. As the Scripture was from time to time plainly and searchingly expounded, and the vices which are sometimes permitted under the garb of religion were exposed, it was plain to see that he was listening as to a new revelation. In school-room work there was a marked improvement, especially in the expressiveness of his reading, but the great benefit that came in his term of school was in the way of moral enlightenment. A month ago he joined the temperance society. The last prayer-meeting was taken up largely with speaking of the temptations that would be met at Christmas-time to violate the pledge, and one young man said that, in view of these temptations he would rather spend Christmas at Tougaloo than anywhere else. This young man then “spoke in meeting” for the first time, I think, and said he did not feel that way. It seemed to him that the principal thing he wanted to go home for, was to tell his people he had become a temperance man. He had been a good deal of a drinker, a member of church, too, and his people were all in the same way, and didn’t know any better, but now he would tell them that he had found a better way, and that they, too, must forsake the old bad way, or they would surely go down. He said, “If I can’t keep my pledge, I may as well find it out first as last, but _I do believe I can_. I does feel as if temperance _is grafted in here_,” laying his hand upon his breast. He hopes to return and bring a sister with him, but if he cannot get the means and never comes, is there not here a little bread cast on the waters?