At a place where I became pastor I found two sisters who were living in dark seclusion, brooding in melancholia as the effect of a great sorrow. They attended church, but took no part in our work, and none at all in society. I did my best to comfort those young women and bring them out of their monasticism. But it was all in vain. Their broken spirits revolted from a religion of happiness. A few years after my pastorate was ended there, and I was preaching elsewhere, I visited the town and was surprised to find both those women among the most active women in the church, happy, gifted, and universally esteemed. What had wrought the change? They chanced to hear of the Chautauqua Reading Course and sent for the books and magazines. They pursued the course, graduated, and visited Chautauqua. It awakened their entire being and brought them into a new world. They were literally born anew. I have witnessed wonderful changes in people, but never any that was more thorough, real, and permanent than in those young women. Let us name also some of the leading events of the Assembly of 1884. As the organ of the C. Y. F. R. U. Dr. Flood established _The Youth's C. L. S. C. Paper_ for boys and girls. It was an illustrated magazine, but only twelve numbers were published, as the field for periodical literature for young people was already well covered. "The Chautauqua Foreign Tour," a series of illustrated lectures on the British Isles, was conducted this year by Rev. Jesse Bowman Young, Professor H. H. Ragan, and Mr. George Makepeace Towle. Music was abundant and varied this season, the choir being led by Professors Sherwin and Case in turn; concerts by a remarkable quartet, the Meigs Sisters; the delightful singers of southern plantation and revival songs, the Tennesseans; the Yale College Glee Club; Miss Belle McClintock, Mrs. J. C. Hull, Mr. E. O. Excell, and Miss Tuthill, soloists. Dr. Charles J. Little gave a course of lectures on English literature; Dr. Henson, Miss Susan Hayes Ward, Dr. J. W. Butler of Mexico, and Dr. S. S. Smith of Minnesota were among the lecturers. We heard Ram Chandra Bose and Dennis Osborne of India, and Sau Aubrah of Burmah, a most interesting speaker on the customs of his country and his impressions of ours. Principal Fairbairn of Oxford made the history of philosophy interesting, and the Rev. A. J. Palmer of New York won instant fame by his great war lecture, "Company D, the Die-no-more's," given on Grand Army Day to a great concourse of old soldiers.