“Oh, I knows.  Miss Kit,” she interrupted, “Lemme spell, Ise-self.  Must be cat wid de tail cut off.  C—­A—­Kitty.”

* * * * *

After awhile as Lila progressed and read stories to Nan, the little rogue “wisht” she could read too.  “Couldn’t see no use in dat yaller gal gittin’ so fur ahead.”  When she found she could only read by learning those little things that “bobbed so spry into a body’s head and hopped out a heap quicker,” then she reckoned she’d have to come to it.  She tried once more.  It was a long time before she could call the letters and spell out words, and it was many months before she could read at all without spelling.  It was hard work for Nan and harder for her teacher.  Before she had half looked at a word she would hear a blackbird or see a hawk after a chicken, or she thought “sure, Miss Lizzy called.”  I tried to have patience and in the end I conquered.  Nan was “mighty proud” when she read the last page of her primer.

“Don’t think much of that ole book, no how,” she said.  “Got it all in here now.  Spect I’d better be spry an’ git inter nex’ book fore I disremember this ere.”

I begin to hope that both Lila and Nan are beginning a Christian life.  But oh! it takes so long for seed to grow in soil that has been trampled on for years.  But I hear Nan now singing the chorus of an old war song, still sung by the colored folks: 

    “We’re coming, Father Abraham,
    Three hundred thousand more.”

And I will believe it.  There are more than three hundred thousand just such ignorant girls and boys.  They “will come” if we go after them.

Do “pray and pay” for us.  Yours,

KITTY.

Ralph enjoyed the letter so much that he forgot for once to ask a question until his aunt took up a blue card and handed it to him.

“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed.  “Now tell me about the cards.”

“Read it,” said his aunt.

Ralph read as follows:  “The A.M.A.  True Blue Card.”

“Oh, I know,” said Ralph.  “A.M.A. (ama) means love those.  I had it in my Latin lesson this week.”

“Love those, is it?” questioned Miss Hill.  “Pretty good meaning that for our abbreviations.  A.M.A.—­the Love Them Society; it means just that.  Love your neighbors, love your brothers.”

“What brothers?” inquired Ralph.  “I haven’t any; wish I had.”

“Yes, you have, my boy,” answered Miss Hill.  “You have red, white, black, and yellow brothers, and this ‘A.M.A.’ is to help them to read, to work on the farm and in the house, to learn trades, and to know the best things.  Your black brothers are the negroes who live in all the South, the yellow are the Chinese in California, the red are the Indians in the Territories, in the schools of Hampton, and the whites are in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee.  All these little books that I will show you tell about these brothers and sisters.  Now read the card.  Read it all.