Through 
 the Southland 
 
 Alice M. Guernsey 
 
 This "Journey" ivill be much more interesting 
 if used in connection ivith a map showing our 
 Homes and Schools (50c). If used as apart 
 of a program, the reader should pause at each 
 blank for the name of the Home or school to be 
 given by the audience. 
 
 While comfortably seated at home we 
 are to take — not exactly an imaginary 
 journey, but one in which we shall be 
 spared the dust and other annoyances of 
 railroad travel. At the same time it will 
 be a journey of great interest to Home 
 Missionary women. Our starting point is 
 Washington, D. C, where we find — {Lucy 
 Webb Hayes Training School for Mission- 
 aries and Deaconesses) which includes — 
 (Sibley Hospital). 
 
 Our first stopping place is Greensboro, 
 N. C., at— (Kent Home). This Home for 
 Negro girls is connected with one of the 
 colleges maintained by the Freedmen's Aid 
 Society. Its girls are older than in many 
 of our Homes. 
 
 A two hours' ride from Greensboro 
 brings us to Salisbury, N. C. From this 
 place we take a branch road running out 
 into the country, and showing us the kind 
 of homes that are occupied by the country 
 people, both white and colored, all through 
 the South. The desolate little hamlets, 
 with unpaired cabins, rarely of more than 
 two rooms, with little indication of school 
 or church, make the traveler realize the 
 comparative poverty of the South, and 
 long to establish settlement work every- 
 where. At Misenheimer, seventeen miles 
 from Salisbury, are a roofed platform 
 
which serves as a railroad station, less than 
 a score of houses, a church, and — (Mitchell 
 Home) for mountain whites. Boys and 
 young men, as well as girls and young 
 women, are found here, many of the chil- 
 dren walking several miles daily for the 
 chance to go to school. The earnest, intel- 
 ligent faces of these young people are ample 
 assurance of the value of the work. 
 
 Returning to Salisbury, a beautiful rail- 
 road ride up the valley of the French 
 Broad River to "the Land of the Sky" 
 brings us to Asheville, N. C, where we 
 find — (Allen Home). Here, as at Misenhei- 
 mer, both Home and school are under the 
 charge of the Woman's Home Missionary 
 Society, and we have all grades in the 
 school, from the Negro children in the pri- 
 mary classes to young women who go out 
 on graduation well trained in books, sew- 
 ing, housewifery and home-making, to be 
 teachers and leaders of their race. Here, 
 as in all our Homes, the girls "learn by 
 doing," for the work of the well-kept insti- 
 tution is done by them, under the super- 
 vision of the teachers. 
 
 If you were equal to riding over moun- 
 tain roads — and what that means you can- 
 not know till you have really tried it — we 
 would turn aside to visit the "community 
 schools"^ in this Blue Ridge section. But 
 some things must be left for another trip, 
 so I'll simply say that in several places 
 our Society gives help to supplement the 
 meager public school allowance, making 
 possible school for eight months in the 
 year instead of two. 
 
 At Morristown Tenn., is — (New Jersey 
 Home), also for Negro girls, and affiliated 
 with a Freedmen's Aid school. In cases 
 like these our girls have their "book les- 
 sons" in the school, and the other girls of 
 the school have lessons in sewing and do- 
 mestic science in our Home. 
 
Going down into South Carolina, we 
 reach Camden and — {Browning Home). 
 This is one of our largest homes and schools 
 for Negroes, and its day school receives 
 boys as well as girls. It rejoices in the 
 finest school building that we own, a build- 
 ing costing over $25,000, the gift of an 
 anonymous donor. 
 
 Passing southward, into Georgia, we 
 reach beautiful Savannah, the location of 
 one of our oldest Industrial Homes. For 
 twenty-seven years Haven Home stood as 
 a veritable lighthouse for warning and 
 guidance to young Negro women in the 
 Home and the Negro boys and girls in its 
 day school. Then it was sold to the city 
 of Savannah, as the location for a school- 
 building for Negro children. Pending the 
 erection of our own new Home, the activi- 
 ties of the work are carried on, to a lim- 
 ited extent, in Speedwell Home, just out of 
 Savannah, itself an outgrowth of Haven. 
 
 In Jacksonville, one of the principal cities 
 of Florida, is — (Boylan Home), likewise 
 one of our oldest institutions, though now 
 housed in a beautiful brick building, on a 
 different site, and the evidence of exten- 
 sive growth since the time of the pioneer 
 workers who here, as elsewhere, heroically 
 wrought for a downtrodden race. A large 
 day-school is carried on in the Home build- 
 ing, and the school work extends through 
 the eighth grade. 
 
 Are you getting tired visiting schools? 
 Then we will take a little "time off" here, 
 and run down to St. Augustine, to see its 
 beautiful sea views from the top of old 
 Fort Marion (what tales of old Spanish 
 days the walls could tell if they could only 
 speak!), its old slave-market (though the 
 identity of this is somewhat doubtful), its 
 bit of the old wall carefully preserved to 
 show it was once a walled city, its queer, 
 narrow streets as well as its elegant hotels 
 
and fine modern residences. And its flow- 
 ers ! There's no doubt by this time that 
 Florida is "the land of flowers," and the 
 conviction grows as we move on, still 
 southward, on the way to Palm Beach. But 
 such luxuries as are found there are be- 
 yond the reach of most Home Missionary 
 women, so we stop on the way, at Ocala, 
 to see — {Emerson Home). This stands in 
 the miidst of a Negro settlement, and fur- 
 nishes practically the only chance for train- 
 ing into Christian womanhood for the 
 Negro girls of a wide area. 
 
 Retracing our path to Jacksonville, a 
 night's ride brings us to Atlanta, the Gate 
 City of the South, and to our first Indus- 
 trial Home — {Thayer Home) — a "Model 
 Home," we called it then, and it has been 
 the constant purpose, all through the years, 
 to make our Homes models indeed for those 
 who so much need the inspiration and sug- 
 gestion of a sweet, clean, pure home. 
 
 Thayer Home is connected with a Freed- 
 men's Aid school, like Kent and New Jer- 
 sey Homes. On the same campus is Gam- 
 mon Theological School, the chief school 
 of our church for training Negro minis- 
 ters. From these schools and our Home, 
 many a pastor and wife, and many a mis- 
 sionary to Africa, with his no less devoted 
 wife, have gone out for service. 
 
 A few hours' ride from Atlanta is 
 Cedartown, and here we have our — (Cedar- 
 tozvn Settlement) doing just the kind of 
 work that should be, multiplied many fold 
 in the Southland. Girls from our Home at 
 Boaz, Ala., girls with hearts filled with 
 the missionary spirit, arei:here giving new 
 ideals of life, and new heart of hope to 
 the white children of a factory community, 
 who otherwise would be largely cut off 
 from the chance of an education. 
 
 From Atlanta, also, we visit two more 
 of our Homes for white students — (Ritter 
 
a 
 
 Home) at Athens, Term., and — (Rebecca 
 McCleskey Home) in Boaz, Ala. Each is 
 connected with a school under the auspices 
 of the Southern Education Society of our 
 Church. Each is for the earnest, eager 
 young people who are to be makers and 
 sharers of the new South that is rapidly 
 being evolved. At Athens the girls are all 
 of high school of college grade. 
 
 At Clarkson, Miss., are — (Bennett Home 
 and Academy) , the goal of many a young 
 man and woman of as pure Anglo-Saxon 
 blood as can be found in the country, the 
 kind of students that well deserve our help, 
 and will amply repay all that is done for 
 them in the manhood and womanhood there 
 evolved and strengthened. 
 
 Still farther north, in Holly Springs, 
 Miss., is another college of the Freedmen's 
 Aid Society, and with it is connected our 
 
 — (E. L. Rust Home). Our Society may 
 well be proud of the neat, self-possessed, 
 womanly girls trained here. 
 
 A_ night's ride from Holly Springs brings 
 us into the summer-land again, at New 
 Orleans. Here we find— (Peck Home) and 
 a large Italian work carried on by our 
 Society, with work at the new Immigrant 
 Station. Peck Home is connected with one 
 of the Freedmen's Aid Colleges, and is one 
 of the handsomest of our Homes. Better 
 still, in the words of the old proverb, it is 
 "Handsome is as handsome does." With 
 the opening of the Panama Canal, the work 
 in New Orleans is becoming of increas- 
 ing importance. 
 
 Across the Mississippi, as we turn home- 
 ward, are two Homes, in Texas — at Austin, 
 
 — (Eliza Dee Home), and Marshall— (King 
 Home). These are for Negro girls, as is 
 that at Little Rock, Ark.— (Adeline Smith 
 Home). They need, as do all our Homes, 
 the loving, faithful mother-care of the 
 whole Society. 
 
A side trip into Kentucky shows us — 
 (Erie Home), at Harlan, and the work at 
 — (Olive Hill), both for white children and 
 at strategic points. 
 
 There's an old story of a poor family, 
 and a friend who offered to adopt one of 
 their children, leaving the choice to the 
 father and mother. Then came difficulty. 
 
 "Which shall it be, which shall it be? 
 I looked at John, John looked at me." 
 
 Child after child was considered, with 
 the firm conclusion that neither the first- 
 born, nor the baby, nor one of those be- 
 tween could by any possibility be spared. 
 And so, out of their poverty, they decided 
 to pinch a little more, and work still harder, 
 and keep within the loving shelter of their 
 hearts and home all whom God had given 
 them . 
 
 But if to these, type of every true father 
 and mother, had come the question, "Will 
 you add to your cares a motherless child 
 who lives at the foot of the hill, or a child 
 of alien race from around the corner?" 
 with the added information, "To be sure, 
 there are other people of nearer kin, who 
 ought to do it, but— well, you just take 
 him'— -what, think you, they would have 
 said? To care for the stranger one of 
 their own must suffer, "Which should it 
 be?" 
 
 So with the Woman's Home Missionary 
 Society. If she extends her fostering care 
 to cover all the needs of this great needy 
 country, which of her God-given children 
 shall be made to suffer? And what of the 
 blessing thus withheld from those who 
 ought to care for these others? Which 
 thing is a parable. 
 
 Woman's Home Missionary Society 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church 
 ISO Fifth Avenue, New York City 
 
 50 or less, 6c; 50 to 100, 10c.