Sir Bartle Frere has observed that he had rarely seen or heard of a missionary institution in South Africa which did not by its measure of success fully justify the means employed to carry it on; and that the worst managed and least efficient missionary institutions he had seen appeared to him far superior as civilizing agencies to anything which could be devised by the unassisted secular power of the government. CALIFORNIA. By FRANCES E. WILLARD, President National W. C. T. U. No. II.—SAN FRANCISCO SILHOUETTES. This city is the whispering gallery of all nations. In Constantinople the clamor of tongues is bewildering, while here it is more harmonious, more representative. Here you have a polyglot at the Golden Gate, a universal language. In the east there is no fusion; in the west one better understands Tennyson’s vision of all earth’s banners furled “In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.” Of all places on the globe, go to the California metropolis if you would feel the strong pulse of internationalism. Few have caught its rhythm, as yet, but we must do so if we would be strong enough to keep step with that matchless, electric twentieth century soon to go swinging past. You can almost hear his resonant step on San Francisco pavements; his voice whispers in the lengthening telephone, saying, “Yesterday was good, to-day is better, but to-morrow shall be the red-letter day of all life’s magic calendar.” I have always been impatient of our planet’s name—“the earth.” What other, among the shining orbs has a designation so insignificant? That we have put up with it so long is a proof of the awful inertia of the aggregate mind, almost as surprising as our endurance of the traffic in alcoholic poison. With Jupiter and Venus, Orion and the Pleiades smiling down upon us in their patronizing fashion, we have been contented to inscribe on our visiting cards: “At Home: _The Earth!_” Out upon such paucity of language. “The dust o’ the ground” forsooth! That answered well enough perhaps for a dark-minded people who never even dreamed they were living on a star. Even now an army of good folks afraid of the next thing, just because it is the next, and not the last, will doubtless raise holy hands of horror against the proposition I shall proceed to launch forth for the first time, though it is harmless as the Pope’s bull against the comet. They will probably oppose me, too, on theologic grounds, for, as Coleridge hath it, “Time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion.” Nevertheless, since we do inhabit a star, I solemnly propose we cease to call it a dirt heap, and being determined to “live up to my light,” I hereby bring forward and clap a patent upon the name CONCORDIA.