I am sure, however, that you will do all
in your power to secure that result, and most earnestly pray for
your success. Could I leave my house I should do myself the pleasure
to visit your school and express my gratitude in person. As it is,
I can only send the good wishes of a weak old woman, who, though
once a slave-mistress, was most sincerely rejoiced at the down-fall
of a system she had always regarded with regret, despite the
humiliation it brought to her countrymen.
"HESTER LE MOYNE."
This was the first word of commendation which had been received
from any Southern white woman, and the two lonely teachers were
greatly cheered by it. When we come to analyze its sentences there
seems to be a sort of patronizing coolness in it, hardly calculated
to awaken enthusiasm. The young girls who had given themselves
to what they deemed a missionary work of peculiar urgency and
sacredness, did not stop to read between the lines, however, but
perused with tears of joy this first epistle from one of their own
sex in that strange country where they had been treated as leprous
outcasts by all the families who belonged to the race of which
they were unconscious ornaments. They jumped to the conclusion that
a new day was dawning, and that henceforth they would have that
companionship and sympathy which they felt that they deserved from
the Christian women by whom they were surrounded.
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