tter as soon as he reached his cabin,
asking that another teacher, a colored man if possible, should be sent
down to take his place.

"I fear I am not fitted for the work," he wrote. "I take shame to myself
that this is so; yet, being so, I must not hinder by any disappointed
strivings the progress of the great mission. I will go back among my own
kind; it may be that some whom I shall teach may yet succeed where I
have failed." The letter could not go until the next morning. He went
out and walked up and down in the forest. A sudden impulse came to him;
he crossed over to the schoolhouse and rang the little tinkling
belfry-bell. His evening class had disbanded some time before; the poor
old aunties and uncles crept off to bed very early now, in order to be
safely out of the way when their disorderly sons and grandsons came
home. But something moved the master to see them all together once more.
They came across the green, wondering, and entered the schoolroom; some
of the younger wives came too, and the children. The master waited,
letter in hand. When they were all seated--

"Friends," he said, "I have called you together to speak to you of a
matter which lies very near my own heart. Things are not going on well
at Jubilee. The men drink; the children go in rags. Is this true?"

Groans and slow assenting nods answered him. One old woman shrieked out
shrilly, "It is de Lord's will," and rocked her body to and fro.

"No, it is not the Lord's will," answered the schoolmaster gently; "you
must not think so. You must strive to reclaim those who have gone
astray; you must endeavor to inspire them with renewed aspirations
toward a higher plane of life; you must--I mean," he said, correcting
himself, "you must try to keep the men from going over to the Corners
and getting drunk."

"But dey will do it, sah; what can we do?" said Uncle Scipio, who sat
leaning his chin upon his crutch and peering at the teacher with sharp
intelligence in his old eyes. "If dey won't stay fo' you, sah, will dey
stay fo' us?"

"That is what I was coming to," said the master. (They had opened the
subject even before he could get to it! They saw it too, then--his utter
lack of influence.) "I have not succeeded here as I hoped to succeed,
friends; I have not the influence I ought to have." Then he paused.
"Perhaps the best thing I can do will be to go away," he added, looking
quickly from face to face to catch the expression. But there was nothi