_The Barnes School._--Dea. and Mrs. Simeon Hackley, who have so long and so usefully conducted the Barnes Mission School, have found that other cares, that cannot be thrown off, make it impossible for them longer to continue in the work. Both of them have been engaged in it steadily for nearly six years. Dea. H., a graduate of Hamilton College, having been forced by a disease of the eyes to suspend study at the Union Theological Seminary, and thus to give up his hope of becoming a foreign missionary, carried into secular life the missionary spirit. What he hoped for thus in youth, he found at length in this work, and to him and his like-minded wife have many souls been given as seals of their service here. It is a real blessing that Mrs. C. A. Sheldon, who so successfully conducted the Bethany School for several years, has been restored to health, and, with the assistance of her daughter, is able to fill this vacant place. The school is growing in size and interest, and, we may hope, will be as useful in the future as it has been in the past. _Oroville Once More._--Miss Waterbury, from Oroville, gives an interesting account of some “great idol Masonic festival,” which occupied the last week of February in the Chinese quarter of that town. She says: “Crowds of people have come in from the country for miles around, dark and rough-looking, many of them. There were processions, day after day, in which I recognized some of our scholars walking. Some of the forms were tall and fine as you will ever see. They carried a huge monster, serpent or dragon of unearthly hideousness, designed to keep away the evil spirits. At their temple there was an unceasing din of cymbals and gongs, with the firing of crackers and bombs, and the outlandish shouts of a mob-like throng; and nearly opposite, across the narrow street, stands our humble mission-house, where on the three Sabbaths previous, Lee Haim had preached, at eleven o’clock, to a room-full of his countrymen. On the Saturday and Sunday evenings of this festival, the Chinese crowded in so that we dismissed school, and Lee Haim preached and sung to them in Chinese. Every seat and every standing-place was filled. They wanted to hear. I am sure some poor, dark minds got a little Gospel truth for the first time, and, with some of them, all they will ever hear until the revelations of the future world shall be made to their astonished vision. It was soul-inspiring to see the earnestness and energy with which he threw his whole soul into the work, and even more so, to see all the eyes, and ears, and mouths open to catch the new and strange things of which the preacher spoke. I could not understand a word, but I was refreshed in spirit and made stronger by it.” Of course, this crowd no longer hangs upon the word. In two or three days, most of them scattered to their little mining camps, and the school resumed its comparatively diminutive proportions. But God’s word will not return to Him void; and