“Friends of Africa, if you could realize as I do the urgent need of this steamer to save life and to advance the mission cause, you would speedily pour in the money for it. It ought to be in service, doing its greatly needed work this coming autumn. If you will go to Africa and make one trip (as I have made many) to the Mendi Mission, in a ‘dug out’—a canoe dug out of a log—the distance of more than 100 miles, most of the way on the ocean—you will then see and feel the need of this proposed steamer. O, why does not every Sunday-school send in $50, $20, $10 or $5? Why do not individuals, who have in hand a great abundance, send $50, $100 or $1,000, and so have this noble work accomplished at once? Come, friends of Africa, supply the means and send forth this new messenger of mercy, to cause a great shout of joy to go up from the weary missionaries and from a long-suffering people!” Who will heed this plea from one who has known the field and suffered much for it? * * * * * OUR OPPORTUNITY. We find it in Kentucky. Our Executive Committee recently sent their Field Superintendent to that State for a bit of inspection. As a sample of opportunity we refer to the deeply interesting article in this number from President E. H. Fairchild. The A. M. A. has taken up that school and has assumed the support for six months of Miss M. R. Barton, a student of Berea, from Illinois. That school-house, which is the only one in Jackson County that has windows in it, will give out a good deal of light among those mountain people. At Cabin Creek, our old ante-bellum battleground, in the foot-hill country, the people are building an “Academy,” with the money subscribed on the condition that there shall be no respect of color. The A. M. A. has been asked to lend there a helping hand. At Williamsburg, the county seat of Whitley County, a town sixty years old, where a church has never yet been finished, _though three have rotted down during the process of building_, Rev. A. A. Myers has returned to his old A. M. A. work, and has inspired the people to build a church edifice 40×60. He works with his own hands by the side of the citizens. He gets the base-ball club to give an hour a day to the digging and rolling of stone for the foundation. The First Congregational Church has been organized, and now the same people are bent upon getting up a high school, having turned to this Association for help, which will be gladly rendered, negotiation being already on foot to secure the teachers, who the citizens say must come from north of Mason and Dixon’s line. This town, with fine water power and rafting facilities on the Cumberland, has already attracted several mills and wood-work factories, one of which is to make _oars_ for the market in Europe. The railway that is to cross the mountains to Knoxville will soon reach this place. Out of the mountain country still further back of this, it is said, went Dick Yates to be the War Governor of