There is no more exceptional educational institution in America
than the Berry School for mountain whites, near Rome, Ga., and
yet the whole work grew out of a little Sunday-school that Miss
Martha Berry established in the mountains near Possum Trot, Ga.,
less than ten years ago. At that time Miss Berry was residing
on an estate which was all that was left of the fortune of the
Southern family to which she belonged. In taking her walks she
was imprest by the desolate condition of the mountain children.
Their parents were too poor to supply them with anything more
than the barest necessities of life, and they were growing up
in utter indifference to everything pertaining to education. To
remedy this to a small degree, she invited a number of them to
meet her every Sunday at a little cabin she owned, and there
undertook to teach them a few of the things they most needed to
know. At the time Miss Berry had no thought of establishing a
permanent school. Instead of being a temporary affair, however,
the school soon made itself an institution, practically without
any effort on her part. So far as the children of the “poor
whites” were concerned, they not only crowded her cabin to more
than its full capacity every Sunday, but they finally came to
her with the request that a day-school be added. For a time
it looked as if the movement had come to a point beyond which
it could not go, but finally Miss Berry screwed up sufficient
courage to make a trip to the North that she might tell some of
the rich philanthropists about her “poor white” boys and her
mountain school. It was an interesting story that she had to
tell, and she told it so well that she went back to her pupils
with funds sufficient not only to maintain the school, but to
enlarge it. To-day the school has one thousand acres of land,
much of it under cultivation, and several fine buildings, in
which fifteen teachers are kept busy instructing the one hundred
and fifty pupils, not only in the studies of the ordinary
school, but in the useful trades as well.--_Human Life._
(2172)