“I am, therefore, free to do as I will with my money; and, naturally, I should like it to benefit my native land. I have looked at the different methods of doing good which others have adopted; but I do not quite like any of them. I could leave a large legacy to a hospital; but it seems to me better to nurse the poor in their own homes than in big places where all are strangers. I could buy a people’s park, and present it to some town which has none: but I have a hope that the future will bring the people back to the villages. I could give my money to some grand scheme for providing employment for the unemployed; but the worst of the unemployed do not want work, and would not do it if they might. So many benevolences commence at the wrong end of life. It is with the children that Hope dwells. Your own Young Crusaders are the great makers of the future, such as we wish it to be. But they are—most of them—working lads. In a few years they will be falling in love with pretty faces, and marrying them. And what then? Many girls are still in factories, as vain and frivolous as girls ever were. What sort of wives will they make for your Tri-colour Crusaders? How many years will it take for thriftless, soulless women to undo what you are trying to do? “I think if you had wanted money for your Crusade I would have given you some of mine. I am, however, greatly rejoiced that you do not flood the country with appeals and begging letters, but that this vast and most important organisation is, like the great Sunday-school system, carried on at small cost, which is met by local voluntary contributions. “But that which I desire to see accomplished cannot well be done by existing institutions, or without extra money. “My wish is to provide a Training Home for young women who are about to be married, where they may stay, free of cost, for six months, and be under the influence of Christian women at the same time that they are practising such household duties and economies as pertain to the wives of the poor; and for such only as have no mothers to teach them, or those flighty young girls who are not willing to be taught. Plenty of such cases must be known to city missionaries, district visitors, and all the other kindly souls who look after the poor and take an interest in girls.