"The most natural desire in the world--the impulse to help my friends where I saw the need," she replied. "I did not set out resolved to have a career--to form and to reform. There is no story in my life. It has always been just one step at a time--one thing which I have tried to do as well as I could and which has led on to something else. It has all been in the day's work." Miss Fletcher has been much interested in the work of the Boy and Girl Scouts and in the Campfire Societies, because she feels that in this way many children are brought to an appreciation of the great out-of-doors and win health, power, and joy which the life of cities cannot give. For them she has made a collection of Indian games and dances. "Just as the spirit of Sir Walter Scott guides us through the Scottish lake country and as Dickens leads us about old London, so the spirit of the Indians should make us more at home in the forests of America," said Miss Fletcher. "In sharing the happy fancies of these first children of America we may win a new freedom in our possession of the playground of the great out-of-doors." THE "WHITE MOTHER" OF DARKEST AFRICA: MARY SLESSOR I am ready to go anywhere, provided it be forward. DAVID LIVINGSTONE. God can't give His best till we have given ours! MARY SLESSOR. THE "WHITE MOTHER" OF DARKEST AFRICA Among all the weavers in the great factory at Dundee there was no girl more deft and skilful than Mary Slessor. She was only eleven when she had to help shoulder the cares of the household and share with the frail mother the task of earning bread for the hungry children. For the little family was worse than fatherless. The man who had once been a thrifty, self-respecting shoemaker had become a slave to drink; and his life was a burden to himself and to those who were nearest and dearest to him. "Dinna cry, mither dear," Mary had said. "I can go to the mills in the morning and to school in the afternoon. It will be a glad day, earning and learning at the same time!" So Mary became a "half-timer" in the mills. At six o'clock every morning she was at work among the big whirling wheels. Even the walls and windows seemed to turn sometimes as the hot wind came in her face from the whizzing belts, and the roar of the giant wheels filled all her day with din and clamor.