It is with great regret that we call the attention of our readers to our diminishing receipts. We have been cherishing the hope that we would be spared this necessity. But the receipts in February are so much below the receipts of the corresponding month of the previous year, that unless the loss is quickly retrieved we shall be embarrassed all the rest of the year. In February, a year ago, we received $21,897.74. Last February we received only $12,389.79. This is a loss of $9,507.95. Until February we were well ahead of last year. But the drop is so great that our total receipts up to the first of March are $3,438.16 less than they were at the same time the preceding year. In church collections and individual donations, we are behind $5,389.31! We earnestly ask the attention of all the friends of the American Missionary Association to these facts. What is the reason for so heavy a falling off? Are we failing to keep the necessities of our work before the churches? In our thought that the Association was getting nicely out of the woods, have we relaxed our efforts and allowed other things to slip in and crowd the Association out? Something has happened. That during the month of February––which ought to be one of the best months in the year––only a little over $12,000 should find its way into our treasury, is occasion for anxiety. We have had our bills to pay and we have borrowed the money and _paid_ them. In so doing we have incurred a debt. We could not avoid it without leaving our missionaries unpaid. We must speedily be reimbursed, or else back again into the hated bondage and hindrance of financial embarrassment we inevitably fall. We appeal to our friends to spare us this humiliation and vexation. We ask this favor, namely: Will pastors and individual friends please take this question of our outlook upon their minds and hearts and make an earnest effort to increase contributions to our work from this time forward? Will they try, during this month and the months intervening before summer vacation, to secure so much to our treasury that during the summer months we shall be spared the agony of special appeals and special efforts? “A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself.” We are urged to be prudent now by the very unpleasant memories of what we have been obliged to do every summer, for several years past. Will you join us in foreseeing the evil and help us to avoid it? * * * * *