Benzonia, the village that they founded, never became the populous center that they hoped it would be. There are now but about four hundred people living on the hilltop, and nearly as many more in the village of Beulah, which, at the bottom of the hill nestles around the head of the Lake, half a mile away. The two villages of Benzonia and Beulah form one corporation, and contain together about seven hundred inhabitants. The school which they established is still doing business, though not exactly in the way that they anticipated. They thought to repeat the history of Oberlin by planting in the woods of northern Michigan an institution of learning such as the fathers planted in northern Ohio. But the conditions were very dissimilar. Oberlin was in the zone of quick settlement. Cities and towns soon sprang up all about it, and it became in a few years the center of a large population. But the northern Michigan region developed very slowly and it was a long time before there were enough people to maintain a college or to justify its presence. But from the first there was in operation a school of high order, and it performed a splendid service in those early years, doing the educational work for all that region, and supplying teachers for the public schools throughout a wide territory. It is now conducted as an Academy and is doing an excellent work, sending forth each year large classes of young people well prepared to enter any college or university in the country. The Academy has been maintained very largely by the gifts and sacrifices of the people of the community, and is an important factor of the work that is being wrought out in "The Larger Parish." The people of this community are unusually homogeneous. There are no Roman Catholics, few foreigners, and no colored people. They are hardworking and industrious, none of them possessing large wealth, and none of them being very poor. All are compelled to toil for their daily bread. There, if anywhere, it is possible to live "the simple life," and in such healthful conditions the community life has developed. Though the presence of the Academy has been a means of culture and the center and inspirations of literary life, it is by no means true that all the people in the wide parish are well educated. A few miles from the village primitive and pioneer conditions are found, and there is no lack of genuine missionary ground.