for opportunity and need has perhaps no equal in our country. Amidst all
this change, a people, startled from their long separation, find
themselves suddenly called to face, to compete with, to become a part
of, our life, our intellectual advancement; to move with our energy, and
work with our skill. Realizing their weakness, suddenly roused by their
necessity, they are sending across their valleys and over their
mountains the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us!" Our duty to this
people, whether we look at it from the standpoint of the Christian or
the citizen, is beyond the measure of words.

Here, as everywhere in the South, I found that the American Missionary
Association, as representative of our Northern Christian sympathy, was
at work. Its normal schools, fitting teachers to go out and displace the
bare-footed, ignorant, snuff-stick-chewing school mistresses; its
churches, fitting mothers and fathers to enter upon their duties
conscious of their responsibility; and its missionaries, bringing
in an intelligent Christian life, and driving the curse of the
country--intemperance--out of the home, community and the county, are
thus meeting the need, and answering the cry, and fulfilling the
obligations. Below is a cut of one of the buildings of the Academy
at Williamsburg, Ky., recently erected among these people.

[Illustration: WILLIAMSBURG ACADEMY, KY.]

I found one worker where the field called for a dozen; one school where
we should have twenty; one church where we should have a hundred; one
scholar received into an over-crowded school house, when its doors
should open to scores. I found one missionary with nine organized
churches on his hands, and he the only pastor; the extremes of his
parish being seventy-five miles apart.