Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/268

Rh seen as many as sixty or seventy, or even more together, and their guardians were a couple of old negro-witches, who with a rod of reeds kept rule over these poor little black lambs, who with an unmistakeable expression of fear and horror, shrunk back in crowds whenever the threatening witches came forth, nourishing their rods. On smaller plantations, where the number of children is smaller, and the female guardians gentle, the scene of course is not so repulsive; nevertheless, it always reminded me of a flock of sheep or swine, which were fed merely to make them ready for eating. And yet these were human beings, capable of the noblest human development as regards sentiment and virtue; human beings with immortal souls!

Here are the subjects of Sunday-schools ready to hand. But where are the teachers, men—and women? The children are driven hither in the morning, are called over morning, noon, and night, and receive in the meantime threats and castigation, and then are driven back to their cottages in the evening; and thus it continues till they are old enough for labour, and can be brought under the law of the whip.

Would it be too much to demand from the wives, daughters, and sisters of the planters, too much to demand from Christian women, that they should once or twice in the week go down to this neglected crowd of children, and talk to them of their Father in heaven, and teach them to pray to “Our Father in heaven.”

How right and how beautiful it is to see a young, white girl, an angel of light she appears, and really is in such cases, standing amid the black little ones teaching them to utter with knowledge this holy, universal prayer, “Our Father which art in heaven.”

First let this prayer be common to black and white, then will all the rest come in its time, and as the good and great Father wills it!

Good and beautiful would it also be if the young white woman would exercise the black children in singing and