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desire to present anew the claims of this Association upon our
great body of prosperous and thriving Friends in city and
country. It is but a poor recompense to the despised and
oppressed descendants of the African race, whose toil has so
long enriched our merchants and manufacturers, and furnished,
as it were, the life blood of American commerce, that we should
pave their way from slavery to freedom by supplying the neces-
saries of life to the helpless and infirm, who are suffering for
want of them, at the same time that we open to those from
whom knowledge has been so long shut out, the glorious light of
education, with all its vivifying and improving results.
. To pay our share of this debt should be the earnest resolve of
every member of our Society, and we rejoice to know that there
are those ready to be workers as far as the means are furnished.
First, and most important, money is needed; second, all kinds
of dried fruit and garden seeds, books, toys for the little ones,
and clothing for men, women and children,—in short, anything
that the bounty of friends can bestow toward the needs of these
objects of our care will benefit them, and at the same time bless
the giver, in the remembrance of the assurance, ‘‘ Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye
have done it unto me.”
