nd one day brought some of her pupils to
the school at the Baptist Church, saying to the teachers there that she
could carry them no farther. They could read their letters and words of
one syllable. Hettie had belonged to a planter on Wadmelaw Island, a
kind old gentleman, a native of Rhode Island, and about the only citizen
of Charleston who, when Samuel Hoar went on his mission to South
Carolina, stood up boldly for his official and personal protection.
Hettie had been taught to read by his daughter; and let this be
remembered to the honor of the young woman.

Such are the general features of the schools as they met my eye. The
most advanced classes, and these are but little ahead of the rest, can
read simple stories and the plainer passages of Scripture; and they
could even pursue self-instruction, if the schools were to be suspended.
The knowledge they have thus gained can never be extirpated. They could
read with much profit a newspaper specially prepared for them and
adapted to their condition. They are learning that the world is not
bounded north by Charleston, south by Savannah, west by Columbia, and
east by the sea, with dim visions of New York on this planet or some
other,--about their conception of geography when we found them. They are
acquiring the knowledge of figures with which to do the business of
life. They are singing the songs of freemen. Visit their schools;
remember that a little more than a twelve-month ago they knew not a
letter, and that for generations it has been a crime to teach their
race; then contemplate what is now transpiring, and you have a scene
which prophets and sages would have delighted to witness. It will be
difficult to find equal progress in an equal period since the morning
rays of Christian truth first lighted the hill-sides of Judea. I have
never looked on St. Peter's, or beheld the glories of art which Michel
Angelo has wrought or traced; but to my mind the spectacle of those poor
souls struggling in darkness and bewilderment to catch the gleams of the
upper and better light transcends in moral grandeur anything that has
ever come from mortal hands.

* * * * *

Next as to _industry_. The laborers, during their first year under the
new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of
wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are not the same
thing. The notion that they were to raise no more cotton has passed
away,