Now the story for you to work out is begun, and I will give you just a few more facts, and then jump to the end of it—that is so far as I know it—leaving you to fill up the blank space. It was a stony, hilly, desolate country side, where the people were very poor, and were cursed with more rum saloons than with any other form of business; where the nearest church was five miles away; where there was no Sunday-school, and no day-school except for three months in the winter. And Nancy, being questioned, showed that she not only did not know what Fourth of July meant, but she did not know what Sunday meant in the true sense of the word; nor did she know about Jesus Christ, save as she had heard “Pap swear his name sometimes!” Did ever girl need helping more? Now for the end, so far as it can be said to be ended, for the people are still living. Nancy is a young woman who wears the neatest of dresses and hats, and the nicest fitting boots and gloves. She is herself a teacher in the day-school in that part of the country where her home has always been. The school is in session nine months of the year. She is a teacher in the Sunday-school, which has a room of its own, opening from the pretty church where every Sabbath day the people gather to hear of Jesus Christ. And Nancy’s father is the superintendent of the Sunday-school! And there is not a saloon left within two miles of the neighborhood; and the change began that Fourth of July afternoon, when Clara, reading from her new book, caught an idea which grew. You will perhaps be glad to hear that Wallace, although he professed to be only amused, was much more than that, and helped to form Clara’s “circle” so effectually that he preaches in the little church whenever he comes to this part of the world for a few weeks of vacation. “You haven’t reached around the world yet,” he said to Clara not long ago; “but I am not sure but you will. Do you know that boy Billy wants to be a missionary and go to China?” Billy is Nancy’s youngest brother. Now see if you can plan ways by which Clara may have helped to bring about such changes. No, better than that; look about you and see what you can do to make a circle of good that shall reach—as far as it can. PANSY. [Illustration: THREE YOUNG MISSIONARIES.] TEACHING THE CHINESE. AND so you thought the Chinese do not know anything? Look into this school; see wise Mr. Ah Lee sitting before his thirteen youngsters. See how bright they look. And surely they know how to get as much fun out of a cat’s tail and get rapped over the knuckles as hard as any American boy. Yes, they sit upon the floor, and they don’t seem to have blackboards and maps and many other nice school contrivances, but they manage somehow to learn one of the most difficult languages in the world. [Illustration: A CHINESE SCHOOL.]