During our last year I had to undertake the editorship of the Malagasy monthly, _Good Words_. This was done to save it from extinction, and as no one else would do it. During that year I was able to do the magazine some service, if in no other, from a commercial point of view. I persuaded our own people connected with the mother-church and country district of A-kànga to take 650 copies a month; the Paris Missionary Society missionaries to take 500, and others to push the circulation among theirs, and thus the circulation rose from a thousand to nearly four thousand monthly. All these books, and also the magazines, were printed on paper granted by the Religious Tract Society of London. During the last thirty years that Society has made liberal annual grants of printing paper, and occasional grants of electrotypes to the missionary press in Madagascar. This timely aid has greatly assisted the important work of building up a Christian literature for the Malagasy. It was of great encouragement to note the progress of our people during the time we had known them. They had grown in grace and in the knowledge of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and had been building themselves up in their most holy faith, by adding to their faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge the graces that go to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour, and by a life and conversation becoming the Gospel. There had been some sad changes in these later days--by the rising some 500 village churches had been more or less destroyed. A large number of villages had been burned, many pastors, evangelists, and church members had lost their little all, and some their lives. A large number of the people were carried off captive to the rebel camp, where they were kept prisoners, some of them for nearly two years. Some few escaped, some were shot for attempting to escape, while others were ransomed by their relatives. [Illustration: THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY PRINTING-OFFICE. THE NORMAL SCHOOL.] When the rising had been put down, the captives returned to their homes, and the first thing they did was to re-thatch or rebuild their own huts and then their village churches. They recommenced their Sabbath services. Many had met for worship within the roofless walls of their old buildings for months. The children were gathered into the day-schools again. They sent on to me for Bibles and hymn-books, to replace what the rebels had torn up, or burned, and during three months I sold to the people of one section of our country district 300 Bibles and 500 hymn-books.