ently the cheery schoolrooms
with their sweet associations faded; the vision of foreign missions also
vanished; and in their stead stood only a pitiful black woman with a
baby in her arms.

She reached Island No. 10 in November. The outlook was dismal enough.
The Sunday school at Belvidere had pledged four dollars a month toward
her support, and this was all the money in sight, though the Government
provided transportation and soldiers' rations. That was in 1863, sixty
years ago; but every year since then, until 1916, in summer and winter,
in sunshine and rain, in the home and the church, with teaching and
praying, feeding and clothing, nursing and hoping and loving, Joanna P.
Moore in one way or another ministered to the Negro people of the South.

In April, 1864, her whole colony was removed to Helena, Arkansas. The
Home Farm was three miles from Helena. Here was gathered a great crowd
of women and children and helpless old men, all under the guard of a
company of soldiers in a fort nearby. Thither went the missionary alone,
except for her faith in God. She made an arbor with some rude seats,
nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four groups,
and began to teach school. In the twilight every evening a great crowd
gathered around her cabin for prayers. A verse of the Bible was read and
explained, petitions were offered, one of the sorrow-songs was chanted,
and then the service was over.

Some Quaker workers were her friends in Helena, and in 1868 she went to
Lauderdale, Mississippi, to help the Friends in an orphan asylum. Six
weeks after her arrival the superintendent's daughter died, and the
parents left to take their child back to their Indiana home to rest. The
lone woman was left in charge of the asylum. Cholera broke out. Eleven
children died within one week. Still she stood by her post. Often, she
said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere daylight came
were in the grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. Night
after night she prayed to God in the dark, and at length the fury of the
plague was abated.

From time to time the failing health of her mother called her home, and
from 1870 to 1873 she once more taught school near Belvidere. The first
winter the school was in the country. "You can never have a Sunday
school in the winter," they told her. But she did; in spite of the snow,
the house was crowded every Sunday, whole families coming in sleighs.
Even at that th