are friendly relations between our church and the other colored
churches near at hand. The pastor is often invited to preach in the other
churches. The pastors of two of the Baptist churches are graduates of our
school here, and the pastor of one of the Methodist churches is now taking
lessons in our seminary.

The present membership of the church is 219. Many of them are poor
students who have to be helped through school. The resident members have
but very little money. With one or two exceptions they receive small pay
for what they do. Those who have trades find but little here to do and
have to go away to get employment. Among the male members of the church
are farmers, mechanics, etc., and among the females those who do laundry
work, sewing, etc. Several of these women take the washing of families
home and work very hard for a very little money with which to subsist
their families, buy books, and pay tuition for their children in Talladega
College.

There are about thirty-five members of the church who own their homes, and
about eleven who rent the places where they live. Several of the homes
owned by the members of the church are fairly comfortable for Southern
homes, having from two to seven rooms. None of them are costly. I do not
suppose that one of them cost $1,000. Neither is the furniture in them
costly. Scarcely any of them have carpets on their floors. They look upon
carpets as a luxury which they cannot afford. Plaster on the walls is
almost as rare as carpets on the floors. In some cases there is not a
rocking-chair in the house. The furniture they have is of a very ordinary
kind.

The people have but very little money and are obliged to struggle long and
hard to get a little place to call home, in many cases buying the lumber
and hiring the carpenter on credit. This being the case, it takes them
years and years to pay for the little homes. The homes vary from the
fairly comfortable to the wretched. It is noticeable that those who have
had the advantages of an education have better homes than those who have
no education.

There comes to mind as I write one very miserable home in which both the
parents are ignorant. There are three rooms to the house not nearly so
comfortable as the places where Northern farmers keep their horses and
cattle. There is neither stove nor grate in the house, but simply some
rocks on each side of the open fireplace on which they lay the green wood,
by which they sit and sh