en
liberated, soon after the surrender, I could not read a word and did
not know a letter. I do not remember that I had ever seen the inside
of a book of any kind. It was in 1867 that I learnt the alphabet upon
the plantation by the light of pine knots. During the years 1868 and
1869 I was a rag-picker in the streets of Mobile. God has led me on,
and now I am a student in Talladega College, and expect soon to have
finished a course of study which will enable me to go forth to lead
men to Christ and to teach them better methods of living. I speak of
this contrast not boastfully, but humbly and with deep gratitude to
God, who took me from the woes and degradation of slavery and has
given me a double freedom. I am so glad for the schools the A. M. A.
has in the South; I am so glad for what they have done for me.
Through one of these schools I was led to Christ. Soon after that I
felt called to the ministry; and in Talladega College I am permitted
to finish a course of study, and to some degree equip myself for the
work of life. All praise to an organization that seeks for poor,
ignorant and sinful men, leads them to Christ, instructs them, and
then sends them out to bless the world.

A STUDENT.

* * * * *

OBITUARY.

* * * * *

MRS. H. M. STEVENS.

Another veteran teacher of the A. M. A. has been called home to her
rest. On the morning of May 7, at her home in St. Albans, Vt., Mrs.
H. M. Stevens, known to A. M. A. workers as Miss E. M. Barnes, of
Bakersfield, Vt., fell asleep after a severe and painful sickness of
several mouths.

Miss Barnes entered the service of the Association in 1865 and left
it in 1882, to minister to her devoted friend and fellow laborer,
Miss Sarah A. G. Stevens, in her last sickness. When released from
this service of love her own health prevented her return to the
Southern work. Her first year was spent at Arlington, Va. She spent
six years in the Lewis High School, Macon, Ga., four years in the Le
Moyne Institute, Memphis, Tenn., and her last six in Fisk
University--seventeen years of devoted, earnest and fruitful labor in
behalf of the colored youth in the South.

Since leaving the South her life has been a pleasant and useful one
as Mrs. Stevens, the wife of a devoted husband and an earnest and
zealous Christian woman in the city and the church where her lot was
cast. The testimony to her nobility and earnestness of