9

Our indefatigable teacher at Mount Pleasant, S. C., accom- —
panies her last report with a letter which contains so much of

interest that we give it entire:
**MountT PLEASANT, SoUTH CAROLINA, \
4th Month, 18th, 1871.

“Dear Frrenps:—Your school here has been continued this
year with more noticeable success than heretofore. It has not increas-
ed in numbers, but in quality that goes to make a good school. Those
determined to become educated now constitute the school.

**The State has done nothing for the education of its poor, ex-
cept, in some districts, to employ teachers who have taught 6 months
without a cent of compensation.

‘“*Such injustice can hardly result in good. This school could
not have been continued this year except through the aid given by
Friends, and to perfect the good commenced, the support will have to
be continued to keep up the elevating influences over these children.

‘*They have become almost, as you may say, wards of the Asso-
ciation, that to leave now would not be right. They are the same
children that were taken up by you five years ago, unclothed in body
and mind, and raised to the enjoyment of ideas, and in every way a
better condition. It has not been a school with changing scholars.

‘*These people are wedded to the spot in which they were born ;
and this is a good thing fora school. I could have hardly worked
for changing children as I have felt to do for these. The new teacher
here this year has been zealous in establishing a First-day School,
and her efforts have beeen successful ; I think it numbers over seven-
ty scholars, and they all look so happy when they assemble, it is a
pleasing sight. A night school has been open most of the year, about
20 scholars in attendance; the grown people, of course, have many
home cares, and it is impossible for them to give that strict attention
that we enjoin upon the day scholars; but the progress, for the time
they have been able to give, is encouraging. Four little boys, forced
to leave the day school to earn their living, deserve especial mention.

‘* They have scarcely missed a night this winter, and have learned
division in arithmetic. I know it is their own will to come, for they
are all either motherless or fatherless, and are their own directors.
They always bring life into the school with their presence. They
are very poor ; the things that grow upon the beach and are washed
upon the shore from wrecked ships being their principal dependence.
I always look for them on the beach after a storm, and many are the
treasures they find, and their knowledge of the water is very enter-
taining. Speaking of the poverty, it is really little we know of how
very much hunger and real destitution there is in the South. ©