It is not strange that these new ideas put into their lives new possibilities. It showed them that there was something to do at home, something which was more than a paying employment. For these out-of-door interests are more. They are health-giving, awakening pursuits. The girl that engages in such enterprises wins more than a few dollars; she cultivates the business faculty and arouses a dormant independence which makes a new creature out of her. This new interest in the lives of Mrs. Campbell’s girls gave them an interest, at first in purely money making enterprises, but it soon knit them into friends. Their friendship spread until they found themselves reading, studying, planning, as one body. The influence in the story energizes the community. It is, perhaps, quite possible that in a real club we might meet with more discouragements, but it is impossible that we fail entirely. Town and country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study practical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings of neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. It is one step toward disinfecting a neighborhood of the poisonous gossip which floats like a pestilence around localities which ought to furnish the most desirable homes in our country. [L] The What-to-do Club. A Story for Girls. By Helen Campbell. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1885. CRITICISMS. BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D. The “Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle,” with the general Chautauqua movement, has had its share of criticism. Its advantages have been pointed out, and sometimes magnified. Its managers have had their attention called to the dangers and defects of the system. Personally, I enjoy adverse criticism and the practical counsel which it has brought quite as much as words of praise, for praise may paralyze effort, while the goad of the critic is likely to stimulate both ingenuity and resolution. The members of the C. L. S. C. have from the beginning been encouraged to express freely to the Superintendent of Instruction their dissatisfaction with either text-books or methods. As a result of this freedom, vigilance has been promoted, and many improvements have been from time to time introduced.