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| FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER. 773 not be a serious grievance to many; bat his children differently educated and trained by circumstances might feel political inferiority rather a bitter cup." " After all whether they encourage or discourage me, I belong to this race, and when it is down I belong to a down race; when it is up I belong to a risen race." She writes thjjia from Montgomery, December 29th, 1870: " Did you ever read a little poem commencing, I think, with these words: A mother cried, Oh, give me joy, For I have born a darling boy I A darling boy I why the world ig full Of the men who play at push and pall. Well, as fall as the room was of beds and tenants, on the morning of the twenty-second, there arose a wail upon the air, and this mundane sphere bad another inhabitant, and my room another occupant. I left after that, and when I came back the house was fuller than it was before, and my hostess gave me to understand that she would rather I should be somewhere else, and I left again. How did I fare ? Well, I had been stopping with one of our teachers and went back ; bat the room in which I stopped was one of those southern shells through which both light and cold enter at the game lime; it had one window and perhaps more than half or one half the panes gone. I don't know that I was ever more conquered by the cold than I had been at that bouse, and I have lived parts of winter after winter amid the snows of New England; bat if it was cold out of doors, there was warmth and light within doors; but here, if you opened the door for light, the cold would also enter, and so part of the time I sat by the fire, and that and the crevices in the house supplied me with light in one room, and we had the deficient window-sub, or perhaps it never had had any lights in it. You could put your finger through some of the apertures in the boose; at least I could mine, and the water froze down to the bottom of the tumbler. From another such domicile may kind fate save me. And then the man asked me four dollars and a half a week board. One of the nights there wag no fire in the stove, and the next time we had fires, one stove might have been a second-hand chamber stove. Now perhaps you think them people very poor, bat the man with whom I stopped baa no family that I daw, bat himself and wife, and he would make two dollars and a half a day, and she worked oat and kept a boarder. And yet, except the beds and bed clothing, I wouldn't have given fifteen dollars for all their house furniture. I should think that this has been one of the lowest down States in the South, as far aa civilization has been concerned. In the future, until these people are educated, look oat for Democratic victories, for here are two materials with which Democracy can work, ignorance and poverty. Hen talk about missionary work among the heathen, but it any lover of Christ wants a field for civilizing work, here is a field. Part of the time I am preaching against men ill-treating their wives. I have heard though, that often daring the war men hired out their wives and drew their pay. ******»«»* " And then there is another trouble, eome of our Northern men have been down thia way and by some means they have not made the best impression on every mind here. One woman here hag been expressing her mind very freely to me about gome of our Northerners, and we are not all considered here as saints and angels, and of ooane in their minds I get associated with some or all the humbugs that have been before me. Bat I am not discouraged, my race needs me, if I will only be faithful, and in spite of suspicion and distrust, I will work on ; the deeper our degradation, the louder onr call for redemption. If they have little or no faith in goodnets and eamestnew, that is only one reason why we should be more faithful ind earnest, and BO I "hill probably »l»y here in the South all winter. I am not making much money, and perhaps will hardly clear ex- |