Abington, Mass.: "You will perhaps remember that our Sunday school sent a contribution for Chapel Day, and afterward sent an additional ten cents contributed by two children the morning after the concert, and after the collection was forwarded. I have just learned a fact about that money which I wish you to know. We have in our Sunday school two sisters, about seven and nine years of age respectively. They sing nicely together, one singing alto and the other soprano. They sang a duet at our concert, and some one, to show his appreciation, gave them five cents each. Instead of spending it for themselves, they asked permission of their mother to come to the pastor's home the following day to leave the money for chapel building in the West. That ten cents, like the widow's mite, will be lost in the abundance of other gifts, but in God's sight it must be among the largest gifts. They were the children of a man who earns by his daily labor a support for his family. If we older children could only learn the lesson, how much more could be done for missions?" The "older children" can read and ponder the above.

-From Wausau, Wisconsin, comes the following note of gratitude and good tidings: "During the quarter our church building has been dedicated, and we are now in excellent condition, so far as material surroundings go, to do work for the Master. We desire to express our gratitude to the Home Mission Society for its timely aid, without which our people could never have been induced to undertake the task which has been so successfully completed. But we have more than material prosperity to report. The Lord has been in our midst with converting power. Several have given themselves to Christ in life-long consecration. Some have been baptized, and others will follow. the whole, we have great cause for rejoicing."

for a pulpit, so I can sympathize with those churches that are houseless. I was missionary when Jonathan Going was Corresponding Secretary, and I was taken under the patronage of the Young Men's Home Mission Society of New York, when Sunday schools, temperance societies, and Baptist colleges were as rare in that State as they are now in the West beyond the Rocky Mountains. I get no salary now, and have to work, economize, and sacrifice to support my family and get a few dollars to give to missions. I have a little grass lot, which I mowed last summer and cured the hay. I sold it the other day, and the dollar I send for the Chapel Fund is more than a tenth of what the hay brought." Let those who are blessed with this world's goods read what this old minister feels for this cause. He knows by experience what it is to be a missionary in the West, and have no house in which to preach.

-In sending in a contribution of $9.60 for Chapel Day from El Dorado Springs, Mo., the pastor says: "Our contribution may seem small, but remember we have no house ourselves. We hold our services in an Opera Hall, and in a few months have come up in rank from third or fourth to be the first church in town.

Our Sunday school numbers 115. We are trying to build but progress slowly for lack of money." We can but think of the hundreds of Sunday schools with nice places for meeting, that did not give a cent to this fund, while this houseless school in the West sent in a liberal contribution. No wonder the church has come There is a withholding that doth

up so rapidly. not enrich.

He was

-Rev. Geo. Matthews, now living in South Dartmouth, Mass., is eighty five years old, and has been in the ministry sixty years. missionary of this Society as early as 1834 in what was then the wild West, away out in Indiana. He sends a dollar for the Chapel Fund, and says: "I must have a nail in some chapel West or South. I know what it is to preach in log pens, windowless and seatless, except rails and logs, where when it rained you must raise

EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT.

JACKSON, MISS.—The Rev. C. Ayer writes: "We have enrolled 252 students. Of these 33 are preparing for the ministry and 120 for teaching; 15 have been converted."

SHAW UNIVERSITY: LEONARD MEDICAL SCHOOL.-Dr. Tupper sends this brief note: "Our Medical Commencement took place Thursday evening, March 29. Five young men were graduated. Dr. H. L. Wayland, of Philadelphia, delivered the address to the graduating class; subject, 'The Temptations of the Medical Profession.' It was inimitable, and greatly enjoyed by the audience, both white and colored.

Robert A. Reynolds, of the graduating class, delivered an oration and Valedictory address. The diplomas were presented by Colonel C. H. Banes, of Philadelphia, followed by afterspeeches from Hon. Elijah Shaw, of Wales, Mass., Colonel Banes, Dr. Skinner, and Dr. Wayland. During the season thirty-six medical students have been enrolled, and the term has closed most auspiciously.

"The $25,000 Christian philanthropist, for whom you have so kindly advertised in the BAPTIST HOME MISSION MONTHLY for the last six months, to endow the Leonard Medical School, has not as yet been heard from; but we are confident he will be found in due time, if a meritorious and noble work can interest and inspire him.”

WAYLAND SEMINARY.-President G. M. P. King writes:

"I think Wayland Seminary is having one of the best years in its history. There has never been so large a number of students. The improvements made in the buildings have been a great blessing. Our students have been engaged in mission work in all directions about us. Some of our young men go eight and ten miles into the country to conduct meetings and to work in the Sunday-schools. Every good cause finds earnest workers among our students. Meetings are held at the different churches to talk over the subjects of education, temperance, and mission work for Africa. We have not been without discouragements, but there has

been a healthful growth all the while, which is full of promise for the future.

The better things are before us, and toward these we must be moving. Our whole number

of students will be about 160.

THE ARKANSAS NORMAL AND THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE was originated solely by the colored Baptists of that State. They have taken hold of the enterprise with very commendable energy, and are sustaining as large a school they have room for. The pastor's class which has been under my instruction during the winter-thirtyfive in number-is made of as good material as any class of equal number that I have taught in the last fifteen years. The large colored population in this State, largely Baptist, has no other dependence for leaders, preachers, and teachers.

They occupy an ill-contrived building of two stories of two equal rooms with small room cut off from one for a printing office. Everything must be done at a disadvantage under these conditions. They must have a building of their own, and more teachers. I have been obliged to hear my class in the audience room of a large church across the street.

Besides the pastor's class, I have had a class of about eighty of the advanced students in Bible study every morning forty-five minutes.

The Board has bought a whole square for the school, and made one payment of $1,000, and have confidence that they shall raise $2,000 more this year. They are hopeful and energetic, and deserve success. They need and deserve help. I most earnestly hope some one of our able men will build an enduring monument to himself and family by a liberal sum to put this school among the sixteen or eighteen more, and give it his name and leave a durable agency to do good as long as the world shall stand. Little Rock is a growing city of 30,000 or more, a great railroad centre, and a very desirable place for this institution, which is the only one for Baptists in the State. M. STONE.

had a revival of God's grace in the hearts of professing Christians, and a manifestation of His convicting and converting power over sinners. Meetings were held at morning, noon, and night for over a week, and twenty-five or six professed a faith in Christ. A great deal of personal work was done, and it was a grand sight to see young men pleading with classmates and roommates to accept the Saviour. Last Sabbath seventeen put on Christ in baptismfour young women and thirteen young men. There are still quite a number of unconverted, but we pray none may return to their homes without having a well-grounded faith in Christ. "We all deeply regret the necessity of Miss Redmond's departure, but realize that her

health demands it."

INDIAN TERRITORY.-The Rev. D. Crosby, of Muscogee, writes: "I had the pleasure of baptizing three young men yesterday, one white and two Indians, one the son of Chief Jumper. This makes ten that I have baptized since I came. Others are expecting to follow. Our little church is growing. School work is prosperous."

THE SCANDINAVIANS IN THE UNITED STATES

—

BY ALBERT SHAW.

The number of Scandinavians in the United States to day, cannot be much less than 1,800,000. Of this

number upward of 900,000 were born in the three kindred Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; and the remainder-probably almost or quite as numerous-are their children, born in this country.

Constituting, as they do, nearly one thirtieth of our total population, the Scandinavians would be no in significant element, even if they were distributed pro rata throughout the country. But their presence is rendered much more conspicuous and significant, and they are much more potent and influential as a race factor, by reason of their concentration in certain regions. Thus they constitute more than one-third of the population of Minnesota and Dakota, and more than one-sixth of that of Wisconsin. Minneapolis alone has about 60,000 Scandinavian citizens; Chicago has perhaps as many; and St. Paul has 30,000.

But this Scandinavian population seems much less remarkable in point of numbers when compared with our magnificent total of 60,000,000 and more, than when compared with the sparse population of the Scandinavian home countries. Norway has only

of

in

1,900,000 inhabitants, and Denmark has only 2,000, 000; so that there are nearly as many people Scandinavian parentage in the United States as either Norway or Denmark. The population of Sweden is about 4,500,000. Estimates based upon care

ful and extensive data, lead me to conclude that the the present year, is fully 900,000, while the Norwegian aggregate Swedish population of the United States, in people number 650,000, and those of Danish origin, 250,000. Thus there is in America one Norwegian for every three in Norway; one Swede for every five in Sweden; and one Dane for every eight in Denmark.

It is also worthy of note that the Scandinavian population, of very considerable portions of the Northwest, is denser than the population of the Scandinavian peninsula itself, and that most of the American settlers are easily accessible to a larger number of their fellow-countrymen than they were in their native homes. Outside the three capitals, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Christiania, Minneapolis contains the largest Scandinavian community in the world, possibly excepting Goteberg, and Chicago ranks next. The Northwest has many very populous Scandinavian settlements.

United States official immigration records date back to 1820. For the sixty years, from 1820 to 1880, the Scandinavian countries sent us about 450,ooo people, as against a total European immigration of about 10,600,000 for that period. But observe the importance of fresh statistics. Since the census of 1880, which discovered 440,262 people, who had been born in the Scandinavian countries, the new arrivals have been only a little less than 500,000. More people have left Norway, Sweden, and Denmark during the last seven years, to make their homes in the United States, than during the entire previous existence of our country. With one-fortieth of the whole population of Europe, the Scandinavian countries furnished nearly one-twenty-fourth of the aggregate European emigration to the United States during the six decades, from 1820 to 1880. Since 1880 we have admitted, in round numbers, 4,000,000 European recruits to our shores, of whom about a half a million have been Scandinavians. That is to say, we are during the current decade drawing 12% per cent. of our new foreign population from a group of kindred nations which have only 21⁄2 per cent. of the popula tion of Europe. These figures suffice to show to what a remarkable degree the migratory instinct has lately been aroused in the kinsmen who were left behind upon the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers in the fifth and sixth centuries, and by the Norwegian and Danish marauders and colonizers of the ninth and tenth centuries.

To enter deeply into a consideration of the causes underlying this remarkable population movement would not be within the proper scope of my article. The circumstances under which such a movement be

gins and is accelerated may readily be described; but more fundamental than those obvious circumstances, is the mysterious migratory instinct that lies at the root of the development and noble history of Aryan peoples. Within the life-time, and even within the recollection of many men now in active life, more than 15,000,000 foreigners have come to the United States. Nearly all of them have come from western Europe. The swarming of the barbarian tribes that overflowed the western Roman empire, and formed the modern nations of Europe, was no such population movement as the present one, in point of numbers. The impulse of the two movements must be alike at bottom, although circumstances render their political effects totally different. Some race instinct, stronger than the desire of individuals to improve their material conditions, led the Anglo-Saxon tribes to England in the fifth century; led the Norsemen to France in the ninth; and led the Danes to the Scottish-Northumbrian shores in the tenth. It is now impelling their children to larger and freer life across the Atlantic.

Migration from the Scandinavian countries is following the same course as that from the rural dis tricts of New England to the Western States. At the outset, sturdy farmers went out with their families. After the settlements were established, it became the custom to send the young men out to their kinsmen and acquaintances, to begin life on a new ground. Consul Gade, of Christiania, in a recent report to the Department of State, says: "The wages are but small, and quite insufficient in the rural districts for a man with a family to support, and the prospects a young man has to become the proprietor of a farm, through his own labor, are so distant, if not quite unattainable, that he may well give them up altogether, to join his numerous friends and relations in America. These friends, who in many cases own farms in their new homes, and need more hands on them, write tempting descriptions of their property in America, and the ease with which a young man can improve his condition here, often inclosing pre. paid tickets for the passage. The annual emigra. tion statistics show that no less than about fifty per cent of the emigrants are provided with tickets sent them from America. For the year ending June 30, 1886, the Norwegian immigrants between the ages of fifteen and forty were 8,655, as against 2,590 children under fifteen, and 1,514 persons past the age of forty. The proportion of young adults was still larger in the immigration from Sweden and Denmark. Of the total number for that year, 67.8 per cent. of the Norwegians; 73.2 per cent. of the Danish; and 76.4 per cent. of the Swedish immigrants were between the ages of fifteen and forty.

But farming in the high latitudes of northwestern Europe is toilsome and unremunerative. Norway does not produce sufficient bread-stuffs for its own people, and imports millions of dollars worth of cereals every year. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Dakota

seem a paradise of fruitfulness to the hardy young farmer of Norway, and the stories of free land for all comers are marvelously inviting to the poorly-paid laborer. Even the lot of servant girls in Chicago and Minneapolis seems delightful, by way of contrast to the same class in the Swedish and Norwegian cities. Servants who receive from $20 to $40 a year in Norway, come to this country and are paid from $125 to $200, besides having lighter work and better living. Many hundreds of them arrive every year, and they eventually become the wives of the young laboring men who have come to seek their fortunes, and who make honest and frugal citizens.

The three nationalities are so closely allied and have so many common characteristics that few of their neighbors in the West attempt to distinguish them. The word "Scandinavian" is now gaining acceptance among the better educated people of the three races, although a few years ago there was little disposition to ignore the distinctions between Swede, Norwegian, and Dane on any occasion. The written language of Norwegians and Danes is essentially the same. The common vernaculars of the two countries have diverged somewhat, but only enough to constitute two dialects of the same tongue. The Swedish language is more nearly like the primitive Scandinavian tongue-the old Norse which is perpetuated in the language and literature of Iceland. A cultivated Scandinavian understands both Swedish and Norwegian, but a peasant from one country would find some difficulty in talking with a peasant from the other.

In this country the races are kept distinct by separate religious and social organizations, and by the further fact that they are generally located in separate neighborhoods, rapid colonization having naturally taken that course. A friend, who is an intelligent and highly versatile Scandinavian, has suggested to me that the Norwegians have the greatest individuality, and that generations of life in isolated valleys and in sea-faring pursuits have left an impress on them; that the Swedes have a more distinct genius for industry and mechanics; and that the Danes are superior in agriculture, and more highly gifted with the art instinct.

Probably three-fourths of the people of Scandinavian origin in this country are in the following States and Territories: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan, Kansas, and Utah. Minnesota has not less than 400,000 people of Scandinavian descent. Wisconsin has from 225,000 to 300,000. Dakota may be credited with fully 150,000, and perhaps more. lowa has a similar number, and it is possible that Illinois has more, rather than less. Michigan, Nebraska, and Kansas probably have from 40,000 to 75,000 each, and Utah has, unfortunately, 25,000 or more.

It should be remembered that these estimates are intended to include the descendants of Scandinavian immigrants in the United States. The enumeration