The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Sheet 57

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

59

“Our congregations have liberally supported this
mission, and the attendants at the mission also have
done their utmost for the support of the enterprise.
The mission-rooms are now newly decorated, and an
attractive altar has been built. New chairs have
been purchased, and the rooms present a very invit-
ing and churchly appearance.”

Concerning the financing of this missionary
enterprise, the organ of the Buffalo City Mission
has this to say: —

“This work has been placed under the super-
vision of the Executive Committee of the General
Boards, consisting of one member from each board
of the congregations in our circuit. Rev. Wind will
continue in direct charge. All who are familiar
with the details concerning the beginning are con-
vinced that it is clearly the will of God that we
should conduct a colored mission in Buffalo.

“The following plan to raise the necessary funds
to conduct the mission is recommended : —

“1, That all congregations be asked to contribute
on the basis of 2 cents a month for each com-
municant member.

“2. That all congregations be asked to send
their contributions monthly.

8. That the secretary be instructed to get in
touch with our young people’s societies, interest
them in this work, and ask them for donations.”
F.J.L.

Mount Zion, New Orleans.

In a month or two there will be put on the
market a history of our Colored Missions, written
by Director C.F. Drewes. The editor of the
Pioneer has read the manuscript and is in a posi-
tion to tell his readers that this history is very well
written and that it is an interesting piece of reading
from beginning to end. He does not want a single
one of his readers to have an excuse for not getting
a copy of this book; for example, he does not want
them to be able to say, “I read the articles on our
Negro Missions as they appear from month to
month in the Pronrrr, and so there will be no need
of my buying Director Drewes’s book.” And it is for
this reason that he will no’ longer continue his
articles on our Colored Missions in the strain in
which he wrote the two that appeared in February
and March numbers of this paper. From now on
he will bring a sort of potpourri of personal recol-
lections referring to those parts of our Negro Mis-
sion field in which he labored for about twenty
_ years.

S

‘Sailors’ Home.”

My remarks this month shall refer to Mount
Zion, our oldest station in New Orleans. Leaving
Canal St., the Crescent City’s beautiful and wide
main thoroughfare, behind and going “up-town”
along Tchoupitoulas St., a distance of about six
blocks, one comes to Erato St. Turning to the left
here, a walk of half a block will bring a person to
the former site of the old “Sailors’ Home,” the cradle
of Mount Zion. The site of the old “Home” was
occupied by a foundry when the writer left New
Orelans eighteen years ago. Diagonally across the
street the Brookly Cooperage Company had its
mammoth plant the last time we were in the
neighborhood, and a block nearer the river were
the freight office and great warehouses of the Illinois
Central Railroad.

Though bearing the name of one of the Muses,
Erato St. always was noted for its unsanitary con-
dition, being narrow, dirty, and ill paved. The
gutters in the days of our mission in “Sailors’
Home” were disease-breeding streams of filth. The
garbage was thrown out on the street. Decaying
bodies of cats and dogs were no uncommon sight on
the street. Sweepings from the houses were cast
on the sidewalk. On the vacant lot adjoining the
“Home” lay great quantities of all kinds of refuse
in great heaps. To have hauled away the dirt in the
building itself would have occupied a cart for a long
time. The housewives in the vicinity disposed of
their dish-water by emptying it out on the street,
and woe to the pedestrian that happened along just
when a dish-pan’s fluid contents were being dis-
posed of in this handy way. The gutters, let me
assure you, were a terrible sight. And the stench!
Unless you held your breath in passing by, it was
enough to knock down the strongest.

“Sailors? Home” had once upon a time been
a building of some pretensions. As the name im-
plies, it had afforded a home, while in port, to the
thousands of sailors who in the days of sailing
vessels came to New Orleans. But when used as
the headquarters of our first mission in the Metrop-
olis of the South, it was a sad-looking ruin. The
doors and windows were mostly demolished, and
the plastering lay crumbling in heaps on the floor.
In the whole building only two rooms were found
tenantable. But even these rooms were in a ter-
rible condition of disrepair. The halls leading to
those rooms were littered with filth and refuse
matter, and homeless cats and dogs, as well as per-
sons who shunned the light of day, found a welcome
shelter there.