“When you know the disadvantages under which the pupils labor, you will wonder, with us, at their constant attendance. More than half in my room sit in chairs in which their feet cannot touch the floor; and the other half are seated at old-fashioned wooden desks that are loose from the floor and often so nicely balanced that one child leaving his seat will cause the books, &c., of three others to come to grief. Think of ninety-three huddled together in a room twenty-five by twenty-five, with the only two windows on one side, the other three sides being dark, the only passage from this room to the street being through another, in which recitations are being heard through the entire day. This, of course, prevents any recess, so necessary in a primary or intermediate department. “Quite unexpectedly the severe weather has come upon us, in which, because of the unsuitable clothing of the children as well as lack of conveniences for heating the rooms, the children suffer with the cold. Last Friday the gentlemen teachers kept their winter overcoats on all day, and shivered at that. With the exception of severe colds, the teachers are well, and at their posts. The accession of new pupils each month somewhat retards school work. What to do with any more in my department is beyond my ability to answer at present. But if wishes could lay a brick or drive a nail, the new building would be well toward completion.” * * * * * CAMPAIGN IN MASSACHUSETTS. DIST. SEC’Y POWELL, OF CHICAGO. Thanksgiving week ended, we began our campaign in Massachusetts, at Sheffield, Monday afternoon, December 3d. Very unfavorable were the circumstances attending our first meeting. The brutal murder of an old man and woman on Thanksgiving-Day, had thrown the quiet town into an unusual state of excitement. Evidence pointed strongly to a negro as the murderer; and only the determined resistance of the sheriff at the time of arrest, had saved the town from the disgraceful presence of Judge Lynch. A murder committed by a white man would not, I think, have affected unfavorably a meeting in behalf of home missions; rather, such an event would have given it special point and interest; but a black man being the criminal, the result was different. The meeting was small, and yet I should not be surprised if that meeting at Sheffield should prove to be the most fruitful in results of any held. That murder ought to lead the “sober second thought” of the community to a very hearty endorsement of the American Missionary Association, and I believe it will.