On another page will be found a review of two books by the well-known author, Edmund Kirke (J.R. Gilmore), who has made a special study of the white people of the Mountain regions of the South. Mr. Kirke has at our invitation prepared a paper to be read at our Annual Meeting, in connection with the Report on our Mountain Work. We have been permitted to read it. It is replete with racy incidents and delineations of quaint yet noble characters. If the tears and smiles which the reading of the paper drew from us are any test, then we can promise a treat to those who may hear it at the meeting in Providence. * * * * * QUALIFICATIONS OF CANDIDATES FOR MISSION WORK. Many of our missionaries who are engaged in their devoted and self-denying labors in the South, have been compelled by the nature of our work to take their summer vacations. The educational work of the American Missionary Association is through and through a missionary work. It is begun with a missionary purpose and is carried on in the name of Christ to disciple the people, that they may know Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. All of our teachers are sent to be missionaries. Many are returning now to their fields of service with which they are well acquainted, and some are going for the first time. Among these, questions are raised as to the requirements needed in those who are to go. We have thought that a few suggestions given to the candidates for the China Inland Mission by Hudson Taylor, might be properly repeated here for those who are to take upon themselves these responsible Christian duties. He says: First of all, it is absolutely essential that those desiring to be missionaries should have a deep love for Christ, a full grasp of His plan of salvation, and be wholly consecrated, in their inward lives, to Him. Mission work is not preaching grand sermons, or witnessing marvellous baptisms; it is a patient Christ-like life, day by day, far from external help, far from those we love; a quiet sowing of tiny seeds, which may take long years to show above the ground, combined with a steady bearing of loneliness, discomfort and petty persecution. The work demands of every worker very real and manifest self-sacrifice and acts of faith. It aims at, and ought to be satisfied with, nothing less than the conversion of the people to God. Not witness-bearing merely, but fruit-bearing is the end in view. Anything short of the salvation of souls is failure.