NISCENCES

ELIZA HARTFORD.--PRISCILLA G. HAYMAKER.--ANNA E. CAMPBELL.--THE NIGHT
SCHOOL.--HARDSHIPS AT OAK HILL.

"Books are keys to wisdom's treasures;
Books are gates to lands of pleasure;
Books are paths that upward lead;
Books are friends. Come let us read."

The following reminiscences, gleaned from letters written by these three
heroic young lady teachers, will be read with interest. They discover in
their own language, their feelings of hopefulness and loyalty while
coping with unexpected embarrassments and unusual privations. Single
handed and alone they penetrated the wilds of Indian Territory to a
secluded spot, where they were a half day's ride from their nearest
white friends, and thirty-five miles from the railway.

Holding aloft the Bible, the true standard of the cross, they rallied
the ignorant and uncivilized natives appreciatingly around it, more
worthily and long before our famous explorers decorated the North Pole
with the American flag.

The mail was carried once a week from Clarksville to Wheelock, ten miles
east, the nearest post office.

TEACHING ELIZABETH WASHING

At the end of her first year, March 19, 1887, when she was still working
alone, having school, Sunday school, preaching and boarding house all
in the old log house, Miss Hartford wrote to a friend, as follows:

"This ought to be a resting day for me, but I am always tired on
Saturday. This has been my wash day and I will give you my experience
with a girl of fifteen, who is very ignorant about the simplest things
relating to work. It is useless to tell Elizabeth how to do any work,
unless one goes with her and shows her every change. Today I had her
wash her own clothes by my side, while I washed mine, to show her how,
and how speedily she ought to do her own work. The only way to succeed
in having them work is to work with them."

"These poor Freedmen have a just claim on the church. They are far below
their white brothers and sisters, but they are not to be blamed for it.
Slavery has made them so, and we must do something to lift them up. This
however, will not be done by sending them to expensive schools, to make
ladies and gentlemen of them, but where they will learn to work
thoughtfully and be taught the pure religion of the Bible. The worst
ones among them are very religious in their way."

A "FEELIN' MEETIN'"

"On last Sabbath we had an example of the way they like to do things.
Their old