We were glad to greet the churches and brethren of Louisiana after an absence from them of two years.  The Spain Street Church at New Orleans held a series of Gospel meetings in which a number avowed their faith in the Saviour, and the church was strengthened.

Straight University is crowded with an earnest class of students.

This school is doing a great work for the people of Louisiana and surrounding States.  In spite of the hard times, which are very severe in the South (laborers in Louisiana and some other States receive only fifty cents a day and board themselves), the people are making great sacrifices for the education of their children, and our pastors and teachers are making heroic struggles that the work in school and church may go forward.

The need of the continuance of the work was never greater and the results of the service of our workers were never better.  To retrench further at this time would not only cripple the work among the needy peoples of our field, but shut the door of opportunity in many places, and injure the people in their efforts to rise, and discourage our self-sacrificing missionaries.  The people are grateful for these schools and churches and need more of them.  We appeal to our Northern friends to come to the rescue of the American Missionary Association at this time.

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A SCHOOLBOY’S COMPOSITION.

A little lad six years of age in the primary grade of Knox Institute, Athens, Ga., attended rhetoricals in which several pupils read compositions on the subject of America.  He was greatly impressed, went home, and wrote without supervision the composition below.  Although he has put the raccoon, lion and tiger among the birds, it is certainly a pretty good composition for the first one written by a child six years of age.  Could any of the children six years old to whom THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY may come do better than this little black boy?

AMERICA.

America is a large country, and it has many large rivers, and it has many animals, and has wild creatures.

America is a most important country.  And many a people like to go there.  And it has many wild birds—­mocking birds, nightingale, raccoon, and also the opossum and lion, tiger, elephant, and the rhinoceros.

And in America there are lakes, seas, and the bushes are so thick that you can hardly tell when a human is beside them.

The States in America are so large that ten hundred can get in these.  But if one of the animals was to seize you once you would never want to go there any more, for if one of them get hold of you you would hollow like anything.  It would settle your hash.  It would frighten you so much you never would want to see one of them.

HALL JOHNSON,
Age 6, December 16, 1894.

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WOMAN’S STATE ORGANIZATIONS.

MAINE.