ing-bee is announced, a little cabin erected, a few pigs bought or given, a few trees girdled, some corn planted in so crude and shiftless a way that even an Indian in his first attempts at farming would be ashamed to own it, and home life is begun. Into this home of poverty and ignorance come the children. The families are large-eight, ten, twelve, and sometimes more. The mother is too ignorant herself to instruct, and had she the ability, neither time nor strength to

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teacher is strictly in keeping with all. Barefooted, hair unkempt, suuff-stick in her mouth, scarcely able to read herself, she is the example-the ideal toward which her pupils are to strive.

Religiously, I found that these people, almost without exception, were "professors," and "had j'ined," not a Christian church, but some one of these native mountain pastors. The following illustration gives a good idea of the mountain church; it is

accomplish it are at her command. Life to her is a struggle. At twenty she looks thirty-five, at thirty-five she is old. Always she has a tired, hopeless expression, which simply to look at almost starts the tears. The children have something of the same expression; the babies even seem to realize that it is a sober, sad world they have come into. I do not remember seeing a laughing, cooing baby in all the cabins I visited. . . .

Seventy per cent. of the whole two millions cannot read or write. The schools are the poorest. The school-houses are built of logs; a hole is cut for the window; the ground serves for a floor, slabs for seats, and the

built of logs and is without windows; the pulpit is an unpainted board; the seats slabs from the nearest saw-mill, turned flat side up, with pegs driven in for legs. The ministry is in strict keeping with the church, and intellectually little in advance of the people. They take pride in the fact that "These yer homespun jeans have never brushed no dust from off no college walls," and exultantly declare that "The Lord taught me how to preach: and when the Lord teaches a man how to preach, you may just reckon he don't make no mistakes."

On every hand I found indications that the day of isolation for this people is rapidly

passing away. Yankee inquisitiveness has discovered that these mountains are full of the best coal and iron-northern capital has already begun to strip them of their rich forests of black walnut, oak and pine. The rivers are carrying these logs by the thousands to the immense mills, which in turn are making the large towns toward which already the railroad is hastening.

Engineering skill is bridging streams, crossing valleys, climbing mountains or piercing them through. On every hand we see the change. From their long sleep of a century these valleys, these homes, this whole people are awakening. A new life is beginning, a new future opening.

And as a result of all this, I found a field of missionary work which for opportunity and need has perhaps no equal in our country. Amidst all this change, a people, startled from their long separation, find themselves suddenly called to face, to compete with, to become a part of, our life, our intellectual advancement; to move with our energy and work with our skill. Realizing their weakness, suddenly roused by their necessity, they are sending across their valleys and over their mountains the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us!" Our duty to this people, whether we look at it from the standpoint of the Christian or the citizen, is beyond the measure of words.

How impressively does all this illustrate the call for such work as our ladies are trying to do at Asheville! How encouraging to know that we are not working alone in that needy region, but have our brethren and sisters of other denominations as "true yoke-fellows"! How womanly wise was the insight and foresight of Mrs. Dodge, who sent out her plea for this work from her death-bed! Could there be a better invest

ment of money than that which her plea has induced and is inducing?

And all forms of home mission workChristian preaching, Christian colportage, Christian schools-where in all this wide land have we a more accessible, more needy, more inviting field for them? It is a very Macedonia, whose angel is waking us from our slumbers with the imploring cry, "Come and help us."

NEEDY AND PROMISING POINTS.-Puget Sound and Gray's Harbor Railroad is now completed and in operation, with the eastern terminus at Little Skukum, to Summit, a distance of fifteen miles. Kamilchie, which has been the terminus of operations upon the road, will be abandoned, and the real terminus will be five miles east, the road being already completed to that point, for the reason that deep-sea vessels cannot reach Kamilchie, but they can reach the actual terminus.

Another railroad is also partly built and in operation from Olympia, the capital of the state, to connect with the road above described at Elma, ten miles east of MonteThe road will be continued down the river ultimately to a point nearer the mouth of Gray's Harbor, so that there is a remarkable development or boom for the counties of Mason and Chehalis.

sano.

A new church was dedicated at Montesano in July. We must have another active itinerant missionary to preach along these railroad lines and at the villages of Elmer and Cosmopolis. The outlook in Chehalis and Mason counties, where we need this new man, is splendid. It is important that he should go upon the ground now.

Pev. Alexander C. Kay, of East Tawas, Mich., says, “I am trying to open two new fields, one twenty miles and the other fortyfive miles away. In the winter," he says, "I have made it my duty to visit the boys in the camps," that is, the lumber camps, we suppose. He says they are nearly for gotten by everybody. But he says, "I carry English, French, German, Swedish literature to distribute among them. If Christian friends have any literature to spare-books, magazines, papers and tracts, either relig ious or miscellaneous, I would gladly distribute them among these people." We hope our friends will help Mr. Kay in this way.

Recent items of news show that the year's work has thus far gone very prosperously with the churches in connection with the Board. Accessions of members are not the only token or the infallible measure of progress and success, but they are nevertheless trusty signs as far as they go. We subjoin some of the latest announcements of members received.

The Bloomington Avenue church, Minneapolis, had a cheering accession in September, and is just about to enter its new building.

Rev. Eneas McLean received nine members into the church at Medford, Oregon, and his brother Robert received fifteen at Grant's Pass. The latter church sustains two Sabbath-schools besides its own.

The church at Minden, Neb., received fifteen within the last nine months. The church at Columbus, Kan., has received twenty-five since April 1.

Seven have been received this summer by the church at Missouri Valley, Iowa, nine by the church at Crosswell, Mich., and sixteen by the church at Ligonier, Ind., which was organized only in July.

The churches of Columbia City, Pierceton and Troy, Ind., have received sixty members during the year, and are rapidly nearing separate self-support. Five were received at Seymour, Ind., and fourteen at Morris, Ill.

The North church, of Cleveland, Ohio, received eighteen in September, making one hundred and forty-five since January; and the Fifth Avenue church, of Columbus, Ohio, has received one hundred and sixty during the last eighteen months.

Our home missionary news needs to be read as a whole this month, and read in that way it is full of interest and encouragement. Perhaps no previous number has ever presented a more encouraging outlook

1889.]

have brought away stories told them there to the discredit of the missionaries and teachers and the belittlement of missions and schools. Thanks to Providence and the new administration, Alaska has at last a Christian governor, in the person of the Hon. L. W. Knapp, of Vermont, a man who astonishes the community by actually attending church regularly; and there are now other officials there who are at least not hostile, if not specially sympathetic. But when governor and judge and district attorney and United States collector and his subalterns were mostly, if not all, men who decidedly preferred that the natives should not be elevated and civilized or the women and girls rescued and protected, it was no wonder that travellers heard sinister stories about missionaries. The writer not long ago got a letter from a Presbyterian friend, which gave on the authority of a Presbyterian tourist some unkind reflections on some of our leading missionaries in Alaska. The answer sent was, in substance, that the specific allegations were incorrect and untrue, and that in general, if people must find fault and throw mud, it would be far more fitting to choose as a target some one or more of the thousand scoundrels in Alaska or elsewhere, who spend their time in illdoing, rather than select for bedragglement men who, whatever their mistakes and shortcomings, had at least devoted themselves to strenuous and unselfish service to Christ and their fellow men. And it seems to me that this answer meets the whole case and covers the whole ground. Dr. Sheldon Jackson and Principal Kelly and Pastor Austin and the good and noble women who share their unremitting and self-denying toil are, no doubt, as some of our missionaries in China possibly are, open to criticism, even of the fair and kindly sort; but they will leave a record behind them of worthy and useful service to their country and their kind which all their detractors of the Lieutenant Wood stripe may well envy. If a just and kind estimate of mission work in Alaska from a naval source is desired, Commander Newell, of the United States steamer Pinta, in those waters, and Lieutenant Emmons,

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residing at Sitka, and Captain Glass, in the same service there years ago, would testify in a tone and style very different from that of their brother officer about China.

W. I.

A FOREIGN HOME MISSIONARY.-September 25, 1889, Rev. J. L. Potter, of Teheran, Persia, started on the return trip to his field, having been visiting in this country about a year, after sixteen or seventeen years of labor in the foreign field. Previous to that time, for the best part of a year, Mr. Potter was a home missionary in Kansas, having served on the Board of Home Missions in the town of Hutchison, in that state, which was described at the last General Assembly as "200 miles wide, 400 miles long, 8000 miles deep, and reaching to the stars." At that time the church at Hutchison was a weak, struggling affair. Mr. Potter did good service there, and that is the very place where so much salt has been reached underneath the surface. Somebody added that it had salt enough for all creation. Hutchison has become a very thriving town, has now and for a long time has had a self-sustaining church and one of the finest church edifices in the whole state. Mr. Potter has the honor of having laid the foundations on the frontier at the beginning of his ministerial career on which a noble superstructure has grown. But he has spent the most of his ministerial life in the old and interesting work, laying new foundations in that most interesting foreign field.

LET THE CHILDREN KNOW.-The work next in importance to the organization of churches by our missionaries is the organization of Sabbath-schools. They reported last year the formation of 160 churches and 840 new Sabbath-schools; that is, for every church formed more than five Sabbath-schools have been formed.

Our missionaries and teachers had under their care, last year, more than 2400 schools and almost 150,000 Sabbath-school members. Besides this the Board of Publication and Sabbath-school Work has sent out into the