dejected look, as if this world were a "dreary wilderness of woe," and
they grieve they were ever born. Poor little ones in the Southland! how
many are gathered home ere a twelve months' stay on earth. Besides this
weary, aged look of the children, we frequently find those who look like
walking corpses. A little inquiry reveals the fact that they are clay
eaters. We have them in our schools. In our Jellico school, we have
children whose elder sisters had to sprinkle pepper around the
hearthstones to keep them from digging out the clay and eating it. The
habit once formed, it seems to last them during life; where it ever
originated I don't know, but have no doubt it was from lack of proper
nourishment.

Our women! how shall I describe them? I wish I might picture them before
you as they ride into town with their babies in their arms and a child or
two on their horses with them, or as they walk in with heavy, dragging
gait, loaded with some produce for sale, or as they stand for hours
open-eyed and open-mouthed around the counters of some country store. I
wish you could see them in their cabin homes, as bare of comfort as a wild
desert waste, or at work in the field with the family, but always and
everywhere with a chew of tobacco or a snuff stick in their mouths. They
never express a desire for what they have not, nor a murmur at what they
have, but their very movements are a complaint--a wail. On their face is
ever seen that weary, resigned, passionless look. They never lighten with
joy or surprise. If you could manage to fire a Vesuvius before their eyes
you would never know by any outward expression but that they had seen
volcanoes every day of their lives. There is no imagery, no ideality. The
world to them is a humdrum routine, a common-place affair. They have no
heroes, and they look upon all men, not as protectors, but seducers, not
as beings formed in the image of a pure and holy God, but in the image of
a God of lust and debauchery.