“Pure hearted Northern girls, with homes where every comfort and luxury abound, you cannot picture to yourselves the poverty and degradation of some of these homes where I go daily. Perhaps you read Dickens and Thackeray with moist eyes, and then, laying aside the book, comfort yourselves with the thought, ‘Well, after all there is no Nancy or Bill Sykes. There was never any one so miserable as ‘little Nell’ or ‘poor Jo;’ never any such frightful creature as one of these great hearts has wept over and the other has laughed over.’ But believe me, there _are_ just such; no novelist’s pen has ever colored too highly possible poverty and degradation. What would you say, or rather what would you _do_, were you to enter a cabin where I have been many times? The first time I ever saw —— she was standing in her door-way on a snowy, cold day, _her only article of clothing a calico wrapper_. Within, the one room was as cheerless as a place well could be. In one corner stood a bedstead with only a dirty husk bed on it, in another, a table; there were two chairs, neither boasting a seat; on the table were a few broken dishes, and this list enumerates all there was in the room, absolutely _all_. This woman lives with a man many years older than she; he is a brute, and in his drunken passions beats her; she with one paralyzed and utterly powerless arm can do nothing to defend herself. Perhaps it is no wonder if she too, drinks at times, to forget her misery, yet no amount of persuasion or entreaty will induce her to separate from this man. “How can other girls and women be saved? Certainly not by the efforts of one woman working single-handed among them, not by the efforts of many such, perhaps; yet possibly by the earnest prayers of pure hearts, that send help while they still pray.” Receipts of the Association from March 1 to March 28, 1881: From Auxiliaries $377.63 Donations 90.95 Life Members 245.00 Annual Members 33.00 ——————— $746.58 DONATIONS. Through Cong. Pub. Society, from Hoosac S. S., Hymn books, papers, &c., for Miss Julia A. Wilson, Baxter Springs, Kansas, $15.88. Bible Society, New York, 60 Bibles for Mrs. Amelia S. Steele, Almeda, S.C., $24. From Park St. S. S., Boston, for land for church, to Mrs. A. S. Steele, Almeda, $30. From friends, for Mrs. Steele, new clothing, etc., $25. Barrel valued at $37, sent to Mrs. Steele, from Ladies’ Benevolent Society, Piedmont Church, Worcester, Mass. Two cases, valued at $100 each, to Western Missionaries, from Shawmut Av. Church, Boston. * * * * * CHILDREN’S PAGE. * * * * * CLAUDIE’S COLOR LINE. MISS MARY L. SAWYER.