A confidential word from the Editor to the members of the missionary and teaching force who occasionally write to the MISSIONARY.—Your communications are always read in the most kindly and interested spirit. Their contents are always noted, and if they contain any incident or item which even perhaps may be of general interest to our readers, we use it. Do not be too greatly disappointed or grieved at us if we do not always use them in the form in which they are sent. There are many things which must be weighed in the make-up of a magazine which no one but those who see it all can even know. The Editor’s basket is not a waste basket, even when it receives MSS., for they do not go into it unread, nor do we mean to let any wheat get lost among the chaff, although doubtless we occasionally do. Sometimes an article must be squeezed into an item or be squeezed out. Please keep writing, then, not for your local audience, but for all; or, if you please, as though it were meant for the Editor’s ear alone. Don’t be disappointed—much more, don’t be angry, if all you write does not get into print. And don’t promise anybody, that a certain thing you send will appear in the MISSIONARY; for, after all, the Editor who must decide is in the New York office. * * * * * Prof. A. K. Spence and wife arrived in August by steamer “Bolivia,” from an absence of a year in their native Scotland. They have been for ten years connected with Fisk University, and have resumed their work in that institution. By their visit they have been greatly refreshed in health. They have been constantly engaged in private and public effort to interest their Scottish people yet more in our work as related to the Christianization of Africa. With their territorial and commercial interest in that dark continent, British Christians are all the more disposed to care for the religious welfare of the inhabitants of that country. The many friends at the West who have heard the familiar talks of Mrs. Spence, will be prepared to believe that her recital of the Freedman’s story to the sisters of her motherland was greatly acceptable. Prof. Spence’s mother, who, at the age of eighty-five, recently contributed to the _Independent_ a poem on George McDonald, whom she had known from his childhood, sent on the fee for her article to the treasury of the A. M. A. * * * * *