In Raleigh, the State capital, the colored people form a little over half of the population. Our church work here for a number of years has been in the charge of Rev. A. W. Curtis, D.D., who is most highly esteemed everywhere. The convenient, comfortable, and tasteful church building was erected in 1891. It has a seating capacity of 250. In the political transformations of the State the race question keeps its prominence. It was a significant fact that the Legislature voted a few weeks ago to adjourn in respect to the memory of Fred. Douglass. About the same time the legislature also voted that the national standard should be raised on the State house; and, for the first time since the reconstruction days, our country’s flag streamed above the old granite capitol of North Carolina.
[Illustration: STATE CAPITOL AT RALEIGH.]
Our different religious services begin early in the day. At 7.30, soon after breakfast and prayers in the dining hall, the Young Men’s Christian Association holds its meeting for an hour. The Sunday-school, with a large attendance and many classes occupying different school rooms, convenes at 9.15, with the regular church service following at 10.30. We are never through with this without feeling keenly the need of a larger, better and better ventilated house of worship. A new chapel is longed for each Sabbath, often through the week, and especially at commencement season when our varied anniversary exercises are all crowded into one small inadequate and inappropriate room.
Soon after dinner more than a score of students, mainly young men, with a few of our teachers, go out to seven different mission Sunday-schools, two of which are in our own tasteful chapels, others in country churches, and one in a private house, where they meet about 300 different pupils of all sorts, garbs and ages, but for the most part attentive listeners eager for instruction, as well as for the papers which Northern benevolence, through sundry boxes and barrels, enable us to supply. This mission Sunday-school work began with the first year of the College Church and has accomplished a large and growing good. Through these schools the college multiplies itself, carrying the Gospel, with opposition to tobacco and intoxicants, into needy places. These mission schools are a cordon of outposts surrounding the citadel. The most remote is five and a half miles away, and incidentally a good share of pluck is developed by those who, through cold or heat, mud or dust, regularly make their Sabbath day rounds.