THE BLACK WOMAN OF THE SOUTH:

Her Neglects and Her Needs.By REV. ALEXANDER CURMMEL, D. D.,Rector of St. Luke's Church, Washington, D.C.

It is an age clamorous everywhere for the dignities, the grand prerogatives, and the glory of woman. There is not a country in Europe where she has not risen somewhat above the degradation of centuries, and pleaded successfully for a new position and a higher vocation. As the result of this new reformation we see her, in our day, seated in the lecture-rooms of ancient universities, rivaling her brothers in the fields of literature, the grand creators of ethereal art, the participants in noble civil franchises, the moving spirit in grand reformations, and the guide, agent, or assistant in all the noblest movements for the civilization and regeneration of man.

In these several lines of progress the American woman has run on in advance of her sisters in every other quarter of the globe. The advantage she has received, the rights and prerogatives she has secured for herself, are unequaled by any other class of women in the world. It will not be thought amiss, then, that I come here to-day to present to your consideration the one grand exception to this general superiority of women, viz., "The black woman of the South."

In speaking to-day of the "black woman," I must needs make a very clear distinction. The African race in this country is divided into two classes, that is--the colored people and the negro population. In the census returns of 1860 this whole population was set down at 4,500,000. Of these, the colored numbered 500,000; the black or negro population at 4,000,000. But notice these other broad lines of demarcation between them. The colored people, while indeed but one-eighth of the number of the blacks, counted more men and women who could read and write than the whole 4,000,000 of their brethren in bondage. A like disparity showed itself in regard to their material condition. The 500,000 colored people were absolutely richer in lands and houses than the many millions of their degraded kinsmen.

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The causes of these differences are easily discovered. The colored population received, in numerous cases, the kindness and generosity of their white kindred--white fathers and relatives. Forbidden by law to marry the negro woman, very many slaveholders took her as the wife despite the law; and when children were begotten every possible recognition was given those children, and they were often cared for, educated, and made possessors of property. Sometimes they were sent to Northern schools, sometimes to France or England. Not infrequently whole families, nay, at times, whole colonies, were settled in Western or Northern towns, largely endowed with property. The colored population, moreover, was, as compared with the negro, the urban population. They were brought in large numbers to the cities, and thus largely partook of the civilization and refinement of the whites. They were generally the domestic servants of their masters,and thus, brought in contact with their superiors, they gained a sort of education which never came to the field hands, living in rude huts on the plantations. All this, however casual it may seem, was a merciful providence, by which some gleams of light and knowledge came, indirectly, to the race in this land.

The rural or plantation population of the South was made up almost entirely of people of pure negro blood. And this brings out also the other disastrous fact, namely, that this large black population has been living from the time of their introduction into America, a period of more than two hundred years, in a state of unlettered rudeness. The Negro all this time has been an intellectual starveling. This has been more especially the condition of the black woman of the South. Now and then a black man has risen above the debased condition of his people. Various causes would contribute to the advantage of the men: the relation of servants to superior masters; attendance at courts with them; their presence at political meetings; listening to table-talk behind their chairs; traveling as valets; the privilege of books and reading in great houses, and with indulgent masters--all these served to lift up a black man here and there to something like superiority. But no such fortune fell to the lot of the plantation woman. The black woman of the South was left perpetually in a state of hereditary darkness and rudeness. Since the day of Phillis Wheatly no Negress in this land (that is, in the South) has been raised above the level of her sex. The lot 00033of the black man on the plantation has been sad and desolate enough; but the fate of the black woman has been awful! Her entire existence from the day when she first landed, a naked victim of the slave-trade, has been degradation in its extremist forms.

In her girlhood all the delicate tenderness of her sex has been rudely outraged. In the field, in the rude cabin, in the pressroom, in the factory, she was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant men. No chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty. From her childhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passions. All the virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. If the instinct of chastity asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tigress for the ownership and possession of her own person; and, ofttimes, had to suffer pains and lacerations for her virtuous self-assertion. When she reached maturity all the tender instincts of her womanhood were ruthlessly violated. At the age of marriage--always prematurely anticipated under slavery--she was mated, as the stock of the plantation were mated, not to be the companion of a loved and chosen husband, but to be the breeder of human cattle, for the field or the auction-block. With that mate she went out, morning after morning to toil, as a common field hand. As it was his, so likewise was it her lot to wield the heavy hoe, or to follow the plow, or to gather in the crops. She was a "hewer of wood and a drawer of water." She was a common field-hand. She had to keep her place in the gang from morn till eve, under the burden of a heavy task, or under the stimulus or the fear of a cruel lash. She was a picker of cotton. She labored at the sugar mill and in the tobacco factory. When, through weariness or sickness, she has fallen behind her allotted task then came, as punishment, the fearful stripes upon her shrinking, lacerated flesh.

Her home life was of the most degrading nature. She lived in the rudest huts, and partook of the coarsest food, and dressed in the scantiest garb, and slept, in multitudinous cabins, upon the hardest boards!

Thus she continued a beast of burden down to the period of those maternal anxieties which, in ordinary civilized life, give repose, quiet, and care to expectant mothers. But, under the slave system, few such relaxations were allowed. And so it came to pass that little children were ushered into this world under conditions which many cattle raisers would not suffer for 00044their flocks of herds. Thus she became the mother of children. But even then there was for her no suretyship of motherhood, or training, or control. Her own offspring were not her own. She and husband and children were all the property of others. All these sacred ties were constantly snapped and cruelly sundered. This year she had one husband; next year, through some auction sale, she might be separated from him and mated with another. There was no sanctity of family, no binding tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities and the endearing affections of home. None of these things were the lot of Southern black women. Instead thereof a gross barbarism which tended to blunt the tender sensibilities, to obliterate feminine delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her heritage from generation to generation; and it seems a miracle of providence and grace that, notwithstanding these terrible circumstances, so much struggling virtue lingered amid these rude cabins, that so much womanly worth and sweetness abided in their bosoms, as slaveholders themselves have borne witness to.

But some of you will ask: "Why bring up these sad memories of the past? Why distress us with these dead and departed cruelties?" Alas, my friends, these are not dead things. Remember that."The evil that men do lives after them."

The evil of gross and monstrous abominations, the evil of great organic institutions crop out long after the departure of the institutions themselves. If you go to Europe you will find not only the roots, but likewise many of the deadly fruits of the old Feudal system still surviving in several of its old states and kingdoms. So, too, with slavery. The eighteen years of freedom have not obliterated all its deadly marks from either the souls or bodies of black woman. The conditions of life, indeed, have been modified since emancipation; but it still maintains that the black women is the Pariah woman of this land! We have, indeed degraded women, immigrants from foreign lands. In their own countries some of them were so low in the social scale that they were yoked with the cattle to plow the fields. They were rude, unlettered, coarse, and benighted. But when they reach this land there comes an end to their degraded condition. "They touch our country and their shackles fall."

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As soon as they become grafted into the stock of American life they partake at once of all its large gifts and its noble resources.

Not so with the black woman of the South. Freed, legally, she has been; but the act of emancipation had no talismanic influence to reach to and alter and transform her degrading social life.

When that proclamation was issued she might have heard the whispered words in her every hut, "Open Sesame," but, so far as her humble domicile and her degraded person was concerned, there was no invisible but gracious Genii who, on the instant, could transmute the rudeness of her hut into instant elegance, and change the crude surroundings of her home into neatness, taste, and beauty.

The truth is, "Emancipation Day" found her a prostrate and degraded being; and, although it has brought numerous advantages to her sons, it produced but the simplest changes in her social and domestic condition. She is still the crude, rude, ignorant mother. Remote from cities, the dweller still in the old plantation hut, neighboring to the sulky, disaffected master class, who still think her freedom was a personal robbery of themselves, none of the "fair humanities" have visited her humble home. The light of knowledge has not fallen upon her eyes. The fine domesticities which give the charm to family life, and which, by the refinement and delicacy of womanhood, preserve the civilization of nations have not come to her. She has still the rude, coarse labor of men. With her rude husband she still shares the hard service of a field-hand. Her house, which shelters, perhaps, some six or eight children, embraces but two rooms. Her furniture is of the rudest kind. The clothing of the household is scant and of the coarsest material, has oftentimes the garniture of rags; and for herself and offspring is marked, not seldom, by absence of both hats and shoes. She has never been taught to sew, and the field labor of slavery times has kept her ignorant of the habitudes of neatness and the requirements of order. Indeed, coarse clothes, coarse living coarse manners, coarse companions, coarse surroundings, coarse neighbors, both white and black, yea, everything coarse, down to the coarse ignorant, senseless religion, which excites her sensibilities starts her passions, go to make up the life of 00066the masses of black women in the hamlets and villages of the rural South.

This is the state of black womanhood. Take the girlhood of this same region, and it presents the same aspect, save that in large districts the white man has not forgotten the olden times of slavery, and, with, indeed, the deepest sentimental abhorrence of "amalgamation," still thinks that the black girl is to be perpetually the victim of his lust! In the larger towns and in cities our girls, in common schools and academies, are receiving superior culture. Of the fifteen thousand colored school teachers in the South, more than half are colored young women, educated since emancipation. But even these girls, as well as their more ignorant sisters in rude huts, are followed and tempted and insulted by the ruffianly element of Southern society, who think that black men have no rights which men should regard, and black women no virtue which white men should respect!

And now look at the vastness of this degradation. If I had been speaking of the population of a city, or a town, or even a village, the tale would be a sad and melancholy one. But I have brought before you the condition of millions of women. According to the census of 1880 there were, in the Southern States, 3,327,678 females of all ages of the African race. Of these there were 674,365 girls between twelve and twenty, 1,522,696 between twenty and eighty. "These figures," remarks an observant friend of mine, "are startling!" And when you think that the masses of these women live in the rural districts; that they grown up in rudeness and ignorance; that their former masters are using few means to break up their hereditary degradation, you can easily take in the pitiful condition of this population, and forecast the inevitable future to multitudes of females, unless a mighty special effort is made for the improvement of the black womanhood of the South.

I know the practical nature of the American mind, I know how the question of values intrudes itself into even the domain of philanthropy; and, hence, I shall not be astonished if the query suggests itself, whether special interest in the black woman will bring any special advantage to the American nation.

Let me dwell for a few moments upon this phase of the subject. Possibly the view I am about suggesting has never before been presented to the American mind. But, Negro as I am, 00077I shall make no apology for venturing the claim that the Negress is one of the most interesting of all the classes of women on the globe. I am speaking of her, not as a perverted and degraded creature, but in her natural state, with her native instincts and peculiarities.

Let me repeat just here the words of a wise, observing, tender-hearted philanthropist, whose name and worth and words have attained celebrity. It is fully forty years ago since the celebrated Dr. Channing said: "We are holding in bondage one of the best races of the human family. The Negro is among the mildest, gentlest of men. He is singularly susceptible of improvement from abroad. . . . His nature is affectionate, easily touched, and hence he is more open to religious improvement than the white man... The African carries with him much more than we the genius of a meek, long-suffering, loving virtue."*

"Emancipation." By Rev. W.E. Channing, D.D. Works of W.E. Channing, D.D. A.U.A. Ed. Pp. 820.

I should feel ashamed to allow these words to fall from my lips if it were not necessary to the lustration of the character of my black sisters of the South. I do not stand here to-day to plead for the black man. He is a man; and if he is weak he must go to the wall. He is a man; he must fight his own way, and if he is strong in mind and body, he can take care of himself. But for the mothers, sisters, and daughters of my race I have a right to speak. And when I think of their sad condition down South, think, too, that since the day of emancipation hardly any one has lifted up a voice in their behalf, I feel it a duty and a privilege to set forth their praises and to extol their excellences. For, humble and benighted as she is, the black woman of the South is one of the queens of womanhood. If there is any other woman on this earth who in native-aboriginal qualities is her superior, I know not where she is to be found; for, I do say, that in tenderness of feeling, in genuine native modesty, in large disinterestedness, in sweetness of disposition and deep humility, in unselfish devotedness, and in warm, motherly assiduities, the Negro woman is unsurpassed by any other woman on this earth.

The testimony to this effect is almost universal--our enemies themselves being witness. You know how widely and how continuously, for generations, the Negro has been traduced, ridiculed, derided. Some of you may remember the journals and 00088the hostile criticims of Coleridge and Trollope and Burton, West Indian and African travelers. Very many of you may remember the philosophical disquisitions of the ethnological school of 1847, the contemptuous dissertations of Hunt and Gliddon. But it is worthy of notice in all these cases that the sneer, the contempt, the bitter gibe, have been invariably leveled against the black man --never against the black woman! On contrary, she has almost everywhere been extolled and eulogized. The blackman was called a stupid, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, long-heeled, empty-headed animal; the link between the baboon and the human being, only fit to be a slave! But everywhere, even in the domains of slavery, how tenderly has the Negress been spoken of! She has been the nurse if childhood. To her all the cares and heart-griefs of youth have been intrusted. Thousands and tens of thousands in the West Indies and in our Southern States have risen up and told the tale of her tenderness, of her gentleness, patience, and affection. No other woman in the world has ever had such tributes to a high moral nature, sweet, gentle love, and unchanged devoteness. And by the memory of my own mother and dearest sisters I can declare it to be true!

Hear the tribute of Michelet: "The Negress, of all others, is the most loving, the most generating; and this, not only because of her youthful blood, but we must also admit, for the richness of her heart. She is loving among the loving, good among the good (ask the travelers whom she has so often saved). Goodness is creative, it is fruitfulness, it is the very benediction of a holy act. The fact that woman is so fruitful I attribute to her treasures of tenderness, to that ocean of goodness which permeates her heart. . . Africa is a woman. Her races are feminine. . . In many of the black tribes of Central Africa the women rule, and they are as intelligent as they are amiable and kind.*

"Woman." From the French of M.J. Michelet, page 132. Rudd & Carleton, New York.

The reference in Michelet to the generosity of the African woman to travelers brings to mind the incident in Mungo Park's travels, where African women fed, nourished, and saved him. The men had driven him away. They would not even allow him to feed with the cattle; and so faint, weary, and despairing, he went to a remote hut and lay down on the earth to die. One 00099woman, touched with compassion, came to him, brought him food and milk, and at once he revived. Then he tells us of the solace and the assiduities of these gentle creatures for his comfort. I give you his own words: "The rites of hospitality thus performed towards a stranger in distress, my worthy benefactress, pointing to the mat, and telling me that I might sleep there without apprehension, called to the female part of her family which had stood gazing on me all the while in fixed astonishment, to resume the task of spinning cotton, in which they continued to employ themselves a great part of the night. They lightened their labors by songs, one of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of it. It was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a sort of chime. The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words, literally translated, were these: 'The winds roared and the rains fell; the poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree. He has no mother to bring him milk, no wife to grind his corn. Let us pity the white man, no mother has he,'" etc., etc.

Perhaps I may be pardoned the intrusion, just here, of my own personal experience. During a residence of nigh twenty years in West Africa, I saw the beauty and felt the charm of the native female character. I saw the native woman in her heathen state, and was delighted to see, in numerous tribes, that extraordinary sweetness, gentleness, docility, modesty, and especially those maternal solicitudes which make every African boy both gallant and defender of his mother.

I saw in her civilized state, in Sierra Leone; saw precisely the same characteristics, but heightened, dignified, refined, and sanctified by the training of the schools, the refinements of civilization, and the graces of Christian sentiment and feeling. Of all the memories of foreign travel there are none more delightful than those of the families and the female friends of Freetown.

A French traveler speaks with great admiration of the black ladies of Hayti. "In the towns," he says, "I met all the charms of civilized life. The graces of the ladies of Port-au-Prince will never be effaced from my recollections."*

* See "Jamaica in 1850." By John Bigelow.

It was, without doubt, the instant discernment of these fine and tender qualities which prompted the touching Sonnet of 001010Wordsworth, written in 1802, on the occasion of the cruel exile of Negroes from France by the French Government:"Driven from the soil of France, a female cameFrom Calais with us, brilliant in array,A Negro woman like a lady gay,Yet downcast as a woman fearing blame;Meek, destitute, as seemed, of hope or aimShe sat, from notice turning not away,But on all proffered intercourse did layA weight of languid speech--or at the sameWas silent, motionless in eyes and face.Meanwhile those eyes retained their tropic fire.Which burning independent of the mind,Joined with the luster of her rich attireTo mock the outcast--O ye heavens be kindfeel thou earth for this afflicted race"*

*Wordsworth. Sonnets dedicated to Liberty.

But I must remember that I am to speak not only of the neglects of the black woman, but also of her needs. And the consideration of her needs. suggests the remedy which should be used for the uplifting of this woman from a state of brutality and degradation.

I have two or three plans to offer which, I feel assured, if faithfully used, will introduce widespread and ameliorating influences amid this large population.

(a) The first of these is specially adapted to the adult female population of the South, and is designed for more immediate effect. I ask for the equipment and the mission of "sisterhoods" to the black women of the South. I wish to see large numbers of practical Christian women, women of intelligence and piety; women well trained in domestic economy; women who combine delicate sensibility and refinement with industrial acquaintance--scores of such women to go South; to enter every Southern State; to visit "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" to sit down with "Aunt Chloe" and her daughters; to show and teach them the ways and habits of thrift, economy, neatness, and order; to gather them into "Mothers' Meetings" and sewing schools; and by both lectures and "talks" guide these women and their daughters into the modes and habits of clean and orderly housekeeping.

There is no other way, it seems to me, to bring about this domestic revolution.--We can not postpone this reformation to another generation. Postponement is the reproduction of the 001111same evils in numberless daughters now coming up into life, imitators of the crude and untidy habits of their neglected mothers, and the perpetuation of plantation life to another generation. No, the effort must be made immediately, in this generation, with the rude, rough, neglected women of the times.

And it is be done at their own homes, in their own huts. In this work all theories are useless. This is a practical need, and personal as practical. It is emphatically a personal work. It is to be done by example. The "Sister of mercy," putting aside all fastidiousness, is to enter the humble and, perchance, repulsive cabin of her black sister, and gaining her confidence, is to lead her out of the crude, disordered, and miserable ways of her plantation life into neatness, cleanliness, thrift, and self-respect. In every community women could be found who would gladly welcome such gracious visitations and instructors, and seize with eagerness their lessons and teachings. Soon their neighbors would seek the visitations which had lifted up friends and kinsfolk from inferiority and wretchedness. And then, erelong, whole, whole communities would crave the benediction of these inspiring sisterhoods, and thousands and tens of thousands would hail the advent of these missionaries in their humble cabins. And then the seed of a new and orderly life planted in a few huts and localities, it would soon spread abroad, through the principle of imitation, and erelong, like the Banyan-tree, the beneficent work would spread far and wide through large populations. Doubtless they would be received, first of all, with surprise, for neither they nor their mothers, for two hundred years, have ever known the solicitudes of the great and cultivated for their domestic comfort. But surprise would soon give way to joy and exultation. Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, in her work, "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39," tells us of the amazement of the wretched slave women on her husband's plantation when she went among them, and tried to improve their quarters and to raise them above squalor; and then of their immediate joy and gratitude.

There is nothing original in the suggestion I make for the "Sisters of Mercy." It is no idealistic and impractical scheme I am proposing, no new-fangled notion that I put before you. The Roman Catholic Church has, for centuries, been employing the agency of women in the propagation of her faith and as dispensers of charity. The Protestants of Germany are noted for the effective 001212labors of holy women, not only in the Fatherland but in some of the most successful missions among the heathen in modern times. The Church of England, in that remarkable revival which has lifted her up as by a tidal wave, from the dead passivity of the last century, to an apostolic zeal and fervor never before known in her history, has shown, as one of her main characteristics, the wonderful power of "Sisterhoods," not only in the conversion of reprobates, but in the reformation of whole districts of abandoned men and women. The agency has been one of the most effective instrumentalities in the hands of that special school of devoted men called "Ritualists." Women of every class in that Church, many of humble birth, and as many more from the ranks of the noble, have left home and friends and the choicest circles of society, and given up their lives to the lowliest service of the poor and miserable. They have gone down into the very slums of her great cities, among thieves and murderers and harlots; amid filth and disease and pestilence; and for Christ's sake served and washed and nursed the most repulsive wretches; and then have willingly laid down and died, either exhausted by their labors or poisoned by infectious disease. Any one who will read the life of "Sister Dora" and of Charles Louder, will see the glorious illustrations of my suggestion. Why can not this be done for the black women of the South ?

(b) My second suggestion is as follows, and it reaches over to the future. I am anxious for a permanent and uplifting civilization to be engrafted on the Negro race in this land. And this can only be secured through the womanhood of a race. If you want the civilization of a people to reach the very best elements of their being, and then, having reached them, there to abide, as an indigenous principle, you must imbue the womanhood of that people with all its elements and qualities. Any movement which passes by the female sex is an ephemeral thing. Without them, no true nationality, patriotism, religion, cultivation, family life, or true social status is a possibility. In this matter it takes two to make one-mankind is a duality. The male may bring, as an exotic, a foreign graft, say of a civilization, to a new people. But what then? Can a graft live or thrive of itself? By no manner of means. It must get vitality from the stock into which it is put; and it is the women who give the sap to every human organization which thrives and flourishes on earth. 001313I plead, therefore, for the establishment of at least one large "Industrial School" in every Southern State for the black girls of the South. I ask for the establishment of schools which may serve especially the home life of the raising womanhood of my race. I am not soliciting for these girls scholastic institutions, seminaries for the cultivation of elegance, conservatories of music, and schools of classical and artistic training. I want such schools and seminaries for the women of my race as much as any other race; and I am glad that there are such schools and colleges, and that scores of colored women are students within their walls.

But this higher style of culture is not what I am aiming after for this great need. I am seeking something humbler, more home like and practical, in which the education of the hand and the use of the body shall be the specialties, and where the intellectual training will be the incident.

Let me state just here definitely what I want for the black girls of the South:

1. I want boarding-schools for the industrial training of one hundred and fifty or two hundred of the poorest girls, of the ages of twelve to eighteen years.

2. I wish the intellectual training to be limited to reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography.

3. I would have these girls taught to do accurately all domestic work, such as sweeping floors, dusting rooms, scrubbing, bed making, washing and ironing, sewing, mending, and knitting.

4. I would have the trades of dressmaking, millinery, strawplatting, tailoring for men, and such like, taught them.

5. The art of cooking should be made a specialty, and every girl should be instructed in it.

6. In connection with these schools garden plats should be cultivated, and every girl should be required, daily, to spend at least an hour in learning the cultivation of small fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

I am satisfied that the expense of establishing such schools would be insignificant. As to their maintenance, there can be no doubt that, rightly managed, they would in a brief time be self-supporting. Each school would soon become a hive of industry, and a source of income. But the good they would do is the main consideration. Suppose that the time of a girl's schooling 001414be limited to three, or perchance to two years. It is hardly possible to exaggerate either the personal family or society influence which would flow from these schools. Every class, yea, every girl in an outgoing class, would be a missionary of thrift, industry, common sense, and practicality. They would go forth, year by year, a leaving power into the houses, towns, and villages of the Southern black population; girls fit to be thrifty wives of the honest peasantry of the South, the worthy matrons of their numerous households.

I am looking after the domestic training of the MASSES; for the raising up women meet to be the helpers of poor men, the RANK AND FILE of black society, all through the rural districts of the South. The city people and the wealthy can seek more ambitious schools, and should pay for them.

Ladies and gentlemen, since the day of emancipation millions of dollars have been given by the generous Christian people of the North for the intellectual training of the black race in this land. Colleges and Universities have been built in the South, and hundreds of youth have been gathered within their walls. The work of your own Church in this regard has been magnificent and unrivaled, and the results which have been attained have been grand and elevating to the entire Negro race in America. The complement to all this generous and ennobling effort is the elevation of the black woman. Up to this day and time your noble philanthropy has touched, for the most part, the male population of the South given them superiority, and stimulated them to higher aspirations. But a true civilization can only then be attained when the life of woman is reached, her whole being permeated by noble ideas, her fine taste enriched by culture, her tendencies to the beautiful gratified and developed, her singular and delicate nature lifted up to its full capacity, and then, when all these qualities are fully matured, cultivated, and santified; all their sacred influences shall circle around ten thousand firesides, and the cabins of the humblest freedmen shall become the homes of Christian refinement and of domestic elegance through the influence and the charm of of the uplifted and cultivated black woman of the South! 0015

INDUSTRIAL HOME, LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS.

The above cut represents a Home erected and furnished by the liberal donations of Mrs. Philander Smith, of Oak Park, Illinois, and it illustrates well the thought of the projectors. These "Homes" are pretty cottages with convenient apartments-kitchen, dining-room, sewing-room, bed-rooms, and palor. They are tastefully and economically furnished, that they may serve as a model for the girls. A matron is placed in charge, who gives special instruction in cooking, sewing, and the varied duties of practical housekeeping. She also instructs the girls in the economical use of money in making purchases. They are taught the induistries of the needle, dress-making, millinery, and the employments in which women may profitably engage. The care of the sick and the laws of life and health are made a specialty, and thus a great amount of suffering which results from superstition and ignorance may be avoided.

The Woman's Home Missionary Society, being deeply impressed with the importance of industrial training for girls, desires to establish one of these model Homes in connection with the Schools of the Church all over the South.

General John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, says of the movement: "tAny system of education that leaves out of consideration the home will certainly prove a failure. Your plan of work has my hearty approval."

Rev. Dr. Haygood, Agent of the Slater Educational Fund, says: "Other denominations are introducing the industrial feature for boys, but no one seems to know what to do for girls. Your Society has solved the problem. I am delighted with your plans."

Contributions for erecting and endowing these "Homes" are earnestly solicited. Who will aid in the good work?MRS. R. S. RUST, Corresponding Secretary.

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WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETYof THEMETHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.PRESIDENT.MRS. RUTHERFORD B. HAYES.VICE-PRESIDENTS.Mrs. John Davis,323 Elm Street, Cincinnati, O.Mrs. F.S. Hoyt,155 York Street, Cincinnati, O.Mrs. E.J. Bugbee,Glendale, O.Mrs. Amos Shinkle,Covington, Ky.Mrs. Bishop Walden,Covington, Ky.CORRESPONDING SECRETARY,Mrs. R.S. Rust,339 West Fourth Street, Cincinnati, O.RECORDING SECRETARY,Mrs. F.A. Aiken205 Baymiller Street, Cincinnati,O.TREASURER,Mrs. A.R. Clark,169 York Street, Cincinnati, O.RESIDENT MANAGERS,Mrs. Bishop WileyFairmount, Cin.Mrs. John L. WhetstoneMt. Auburn,"Mrs. W.W. PeabodymadisonvilleMrs. J.H. Baylisswalnut Hills, Cin.Mrs. WM.F. Thorne508 W. Sixth St.,"Mrs. J.G. Forakerwalnut Hills, CinMrs. Richard Dymond506 W. 6th St., "Mrs W.K. BrownWesleyan College, CinMrs. A. Wesselwalnut Hill, Cin.Mrs. E. Housemt. Auburn, Cin.Mrs. Wm. M. Ampt474 Baymiller St. CinMrs. John Simpkinsonwalnut"

AIMS AND NEEDS OF THE WORK.The following suggestions are offered to those who may be able to aid in in sustaining the work of the Association:

The aim of this Society shall be to enlist and organize the efforts of Christian women in behalf of the needy and destitute women and children of all sections of our country without distinction of race, and to co-operate with the other societies and agencies of the Church in educational and missionary work.

To effectually aid these needy ones, experienced and devoted women will be enlisted to work in destitute localities, and to instruct the ignorant and unfortunate in the practice of industry and economy, and in the principles of morality and sanitary law, which are essential to the true home.

These missionary teachers will visit from house to house, and by sympathy, precept, and advice try to inspire the mothers with correct views of duty, and with the desire to reform their lives, elevate their homes, and educate their children. They will gather the women and children into industrial schools where instruction in sewing, mending, darning, and patching can be alternated with moral and religious instruction, suggestions of household economy, and such literary entertainment as will inspire and stimulate a desire for knowledge.

In conducting these industrial schools missionaries need all kinds of sewing materials, and simple garments for women and children, cut and ready to be made. Also second-hand clothing, arranged to be mended, gives a practical illustration of economy, while it furnishes the clothing which is often necessary to be provided before the people can attend Church, or day or Sunday-school.

The missionaries organize and carry on Sunday-schools, and they need all the material aids fodr this work, such as new or second-hand books, picture cards, papers, etc.

Auxiliary Societies, and the friends of this movement, are requested to collect material suitable for the different branches of the work, as above indicated, and send it to the Women's Home Missionary Society, care of Methodist Book Room, Cincinnati, O.