The ready and hospitable welcome with which the speakers and attendants from abroad were uniformly received by the churches visited, the hearty and efficient co-operation of the several pastors and other church officers, and the kindly notices of the meetings given the public, from time to time, by the press of the States and of the localities in which the conventions were held, are reported as very cheering and indicative of a deep interest in our great work. * * * * * WE give in this number a cut of the church and parsonage at Anniston, Ala., Rev. H. W. Conley, pastor. This is the town of the Woodstock Iron Company, located ten years ago upon the bare red fields. Now it has two iron furnaces, a cotton factory, an immense machine shop, two railroads, a newspaper and a wonderful thrift. At the beginning the company gave the church lot, aided on the church and built the parsonage, helping also in the support of the pastor and teacher. The church and school have been a blessing to the families of the colored operatives of the place. This mission is a beautiful illustration of the work this Association is doing for the colored people South. * * * * * BENEFACTIONS. John Guy Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, has made a gift of $25,000 more to Vassar College. The Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College has recently received a bequest of $20,000. The will of the late David Gallup, of Hartford, Conn., gives $20,000 to aid the Woodward High School in Cincinnati. Edward Clark, of New York, has given $50,000 to Williams College. The widow of Senator Chandler, of Michigan, has given $1,000 to the Chicago Woman’s Medical College. The sum of $2,000,000 has been subscribed for the new Catholic University in Milwaukee. Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, N.H., receives $17,000 from the estate of the late James Boyd, of Antrim. Mr. William Blackwell has endowed eleven scholarships of $1000 in the Baptist Louisburg University of Pennsylvania. The University of Vermont is to have a new building for its medical department to cost $40,000, the gift of John P. Howard. This will make over $400,000 that Mr. Howard has given to the University and the city within ten years. Mr. De Pauw, of Indiana, has made a conditional pledge of a million dollars for the endowment of Asbury University. _It is hoped that the time is not far distant when endowment funds will flow into the treasuries of our educational institutions South as freely as they do into colleges in other parts of the country._ [Illustration: CHURCH AND PARSONAGE, ANNISTON, ALA.] * * * * * GENERAL NOTES. AFRICA. —The Niger Mission reports 4,000 souls as under regular Christian instruction. —Three of Arabi Pasha’s children are in the United Presbyterian Mission school at Cairo, Egypt. —Mr. Stanley has discovered a lake on one of the tributaries of the Congo which he has named Lake Leopold Second.