It is not wholly a misfortune for me that you stand in little need of information. If it were a thing essential, the limitations of the occasion would require that it be given either in the form of incidents or statistics, or both. There would be no poverty of material. Perhaps no other of the Christian crusades of the century could furnish so many occurrences which are a mixture of the tragic, the dramatic and the pathetic. The condition of the people among whom the work has been done, the methods of the work and the character of the workers have made the history of the enterprise anything but a common-place story. A panoramic view of it would show us the dingy hovels where men herded like beasts, forms and depths of degradation that shame a Christian land, scenes of outrage and terror, examples of wonderful courage and self-sacrifice, and show us also sudden and almost incredible transformations, the swift transition from mere animalism to manhood and womanhood; the rise among the most unlikely surroundings of well-equipped industrial and educational institutions; the kindled or quickened fever for knowledge in a race that had hardly an ambition higher than physical or emotional gratification, and the first swelling of a tide of regenerating influences, at whose bright flood an untold and immeasurable mass of want and woe and wickedness is to be buried forever out of sight. But incidents, while significant, are not conclusive, for, obliged to omit many, the advocate is likely to select for use those which have the most flame and color and so give the impression of over-statement, and prejudice the cause in whose interest he pleads. Of statistics also there is no lack, statistics that set forth millions of souls crying for light and knowledge, millions of dollars spent in their interest, and other millions needing to be spent. But an array of figures makes little impression upon anybody but professional accountants. Numerals are for the most part bloodless and powerless to arouse emotion and carry conviction, and the table of statistics that lumbers the page of the Annual Report, to any but the accustomed eye, is like old chaos, "without form and void, and darkness on the face of the deep," and so while incidents and items and sum totals are at our disposal in abundance, it is a matter of congratulation that we need to make only scant use of them to-day.