A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member. Correspondents are specially requested to place at the head of each letter the name of their Post Office, and the County and State in which it is located. THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY. * * * * * VOL. XXXIII. AUGUST, 1879. No. 8. * * * * * American Missionary Association. * * * * * Our readers will see, on the last page of the cover, that the next Annual Meeting of the Association is to be held the last week of October, in the city of Chicago. We suggest to our Eastern friends, or those from the far West, who have in their plans a visit to that city within the next three months, that, if possible, they delay their going until that time, that they may prove to our friends of the interior their interest in the work, and add to it the impulse of their presence. * * * * * THE PAINS OF RETRENCHMENT. We do not propose a treatment of this topic in the abstract, to tell of the internal pressure for retrenchment from the collapsed condition of our treasury, or of the outcries which accompany the red line made by the surgical knife. We simply lay before our readers the facts in regard to our latest efforts in this direction. We have had a school for fourteen years at Athens, Alabama. Miss M. F. Wells has been the principal from its beginning, and has been one of our most faithful and most successful teachers and missionaries. Miss Underwood has been her assistant for two years, and Rev. Horace Taylor has been pastor of the vigorous and enterprising church which has grown up by the side of, and indeed out of, the school. Some 150 scholars have been in attendance at the school, and its work has been more and more satisfactory year by year. We had a building there which was, however, in bad repair: its walls had been propped up these last months, and it was becoming really unsafe, so that it must be abandoned or replaced. But to erect a suitable and permanent building would cost $5,000, and we had no such sum to expend; and the question came to be, Shall we build, or close the school and transfer the teachers to some other field? Reluctantly this latter decision was made:--indeed, we did not make it; it was made for us. We could not build, and the decision was sent on to Athens. On the first of July, Miss Wells wrote from a sick bed, of the shock which this decision gave to her, though it had been intimated beforehand. She said: We thank you cordially for the delay in the announcement of your decision, for had it come in the midst of our closing exercises, students and teachers would have been unfitted for the work upon them. Our examinations continuing through four days were largely attended throughout, a crowded house greeting us every day.