"We need your prayers while dealing with this class for another month. Strong hearts quail at the sight of these hopeless looking men. Our evening-school three times a week, taught by ladies, we find to be the most successful plan of dealing with them. The being called by their _own names_, man by man, wakes up an interest, and causes the public-house life to go into the shade. "The friends of the match box-makers (our oldest love in this vineyard) will rejoice to hear that we gathered 300 of them straight from their boxes to a New Year's tea, when a kind friend helped to make the evening a pleasant one by exhibiting dissolving views. After this the gifts of clothing, &c., with which we had been supplied by many contributors, were distributed among them. "Last week we had a very happy evening with our Christian band, many of whom were the matchbox-makers of former days, now grown, into young women, and fellow-workers for Christ in their own homes, and in the courts and alleys where they dwell. Deeply interesting were their testimonies of answers to prayer, the power of the Word, and delivering grace in time of trial in the factories where they labour. Dear helpers by prayer, you now behold what great things the Lord hath wrought for us in giving us this band of young women to go forth on the Sunday afternoons in couples with their tracts, and reach many whom perhaps we might not find. Some of these are also teachers in our Sunday-school, sympathising with us in our East-end trials, teaching to others what they have learned of Jesus through their own experience of His great love. "The 'elder girls' of the East-end are a continual heavy burden on our heart; much thought and care are being bestowed in devising and perfecting plans for winning their young lives to the Saviour, and fitting them for honourable service for God and man. This great preventive work among those young bread-winners can only be successfully accomplished by those who, through studying their habits, temptations, and surroundings, by constant loving contact with them, and by special training, are able to win their confidence and affection." In this year a new and most important work was begun, one which has eminently received the blessing of "Him who is the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of those who are afar off upon the sea."