edder he'm a good one or not." "Now," said
he, "when we gits cold and wicked follerin' our own ways, how does de
Lord brung us back again to our senses?" This question was put with
various modifications to each in turn until it came to me. "Now, what
does you say?" he said to me. I replied that my experience said
"Trouble." "Yah! Yah! dat's it, Trouble. You's answered it, shore;
dese yere ignorant niggers, dey don't know nuffin. Ise gwine up to
hear you preach next Sunday." And sure enough, there he was the next
Sunday and his wife with him. This is about the way we gather them in,
one by one.

A great many families are gathered in by getting their children
interested. A parent sends his little ones to our school and says: "I
never had no chance to git learnin', but I wants my children to have
it."

There, after all this rambling, I have reached the one idea which I
believe ought to stick in the mind of every A.M.A. worker and every
A.M.A. supporter--the children! If we can only teach them, save them,
the African in America and in Africa is saved. It seems to me this is
the solution of the problem. The longer one labors among the colored
people and learns them and their surroundings, the more difficult
seems the solution of the negro problem. Tourists in the South and
people at a distance are very prolific in suggestions as to the best
methods for elevating the negro. Why! visitors who have spent hardly
twenty-four hours in a Southern city can write home marvellous letters
as to the wonderful progress of the colored race, and prophesy a
speedy settlement of the matter of negro education and race prejudice.
It is a fact, however, that the longer one stays here the more
puzzled he grows about these matters. An old A.M.A. worker said
to me, "The first year of your work you will think you understand the
colored people pretty well; the second year you won't know quite so
much; the third year still less, and so on until by the tenth year you
will think you don't know anything about them." But we all come to one
conclusion, that all the trouble arising from race prejudice will pass
away as the negro rises. When he is able to intelligently exercise all
his rights, then the white man will have to acknowledge them. This
result is in the distance, and while due attention is given to the
older ones, yet the destiny of the colored race is wrapt up in the
rising generation. They are terribly endangered, but they must be
saved if t