In regard to healthfulness of our mountain home, we have felt somewhat disappointed. Up so high, with nice springs and spring streams, one would expect a healthy climate. On the contrary, almost every one is ailing. Coughs and colds are universal. It is no wonder the natives are unhealthy; their habits of living would seem to prohibit health. They eat corn bread or hoe cake and bacon; some have flour, but it is always made up into hot biscuit, shortened with lard. They have this, with little variation, three times a day, 365 days in a year. In summer, green beans cooked with bacon is added to the bill of fare. Of course the blood becomes impoverished, and almost every one has scrofula. Calomel and pills are the great panacea for all their bodily ills. Pills are brought on by the quart, and sold by the merchants like any other commodity. Cleanliness of the person is an unheard of luxury; I doubt whether they ever bathe. Children come to the table with unwashed faces. They are put to bed with the same clothes they wear during the day. Then add to all this the fact that tobacco is used almost from the cradle, and whiskies and toddies from the time the poor child opens its eyes to this world, and it's no great marvel that gray-haired men are exceedingly rare, and it's the "_old man_" and the "_old woman_" when one has reached the age of twenty-five. Now comes the question, What are we doing for the people? We have been with them nearly two years, and this has been our effort from the first, to get them to see that religion is a life rather than a sectarian belief. We have sought to impress upon them that joining a church is not Christianity. We have succeeded in getting a few to take part in our prayer meetings, and we have the assurance that _all_ the people are awaking to the fact that God has some demands upon them. We have from the first kept up regular Thursday night prayer meetings; have had good attendance, but often only Mr. Myers and myself to take part in them except as others read Scripture verses. On the Sabbath we have Sunday-school at 9:30. Average attendance, 100; preaching at 11. I hasten home, saddle my horse, and ride six miles to the next railroad station (Pleasant View). Here I have met 100 or more young people. I have been surprised that in a land where a woman isn't expected to _know_ anything, or _be_ anything but a doll or a drudge that there has been so little prejudice against my school. Some, of course, have thought a woman entirely out of her sphere to undertake such work and have taken occasion to remark to my friends: "Why, Mrs. Myers opens the school by prayer, just as Mr. Myers would. I don't know but it's all right, but it don't seem just the proper thing for a woman to do."