At first sight our sympathies are aroused by the lack of all ordinary comforts and conveniences of home life, but transplant the family into a neat cottage, suitably furnished for a home, explaining to them its advantages and uses, and let us see if thus we have met the need. What a disappointment! Their old habits still cling to them. They do not know the names or use of the kitchen utensils; they have no proper knowledge of cooking, no orderly habits; there is no family or personal reserve. There are books and newspapers, but they cannot read them, or cannot read intelligently because of their meagre vocabulary. Evidently the real degradation of these people does not lie wholly in the poor cabins or tents, the scant furniture, the ragged clothing, the shiftlessness and poverty. It is deep in the nature, and far harder to overcome than any outward conditions. We want to help them: we ought to help them. For what were we nurtured and shielded in Christian homes; why taught self-restraint, self-reliance, the law of God as applied to our duty to ourselves and our neighbors? Why have our hands been trained to skillful work, our minds opened to knowledge, if not to make these our talents ten more by their exercise in behalf of such needy ones? But how shall we convey to them the blessings of intelligent, Christian home life? I am sure every womanly heart gives the same response: through the children. That is our way--the foundation of the broad work of this Association. We cannot expect the mothers to teach their children what they do not know themselves, have never seen and cannot understand. So we bring the youth out of these homes, cut off as far as possible from their low surroundings, into our missionary schools, where they are lifted into a purer atmosphere and are brought into daily contact with refined Christian womanhood. Here mind and heart and hand are trained. Not only do they learn habits of fore-thought and industry, but by the blessing of the Holy Spirit very many of them learn the saving power there is in Jesus Christ. Ten thousand youth we have thus reached within the last year. Is it not a grand work, worthy your heartiest support? There is encouragement in all our fields, but especially now in what is accomplished for the girls of the colored race. Their perils are peculiar. Your hearts would ache could you know all the dangers that encompass them. They are beset on every hand. Not a girl in our schools is safe. They, of all others, are the ones that are tried, tempted, allured. Do they go out to teach, they are watched, written to, harassed, and only as strong in God's strength and deliverance can they escape. When you think of the snares set for these girls, and that no father or brother may even yet dare defend them, and when you know that there are those--yes, very many--who, guided by Christian teachers stand firm in the purity of their womanhood, clinging to the Everlasting Arm,