* * * * *

The meeting of the officers of the Home Missionary Unions of the Congregational Churches held at Saratoga, June 4th, was well attended.  Twelve States were there represented, and the occasion was one of great interest and of encouragement to the cause of missions.  The suggestive and forceful papers presented, indicate that our ladies are in earnest for the evangelization of our country, and that they will give their best effort toward extending the influence of our National Societies by the financial help which they will endeavor to render.

The next meeting of these State organizations will be held in Chicago, Ill., at the time of the annual meeting of the American Missionary Association the latter part of next October.

* * * * *

MERIDIAN, MISS.

A little of our industrial work of this first year I would like to present to you.  Our girls, on the closing day, exhibited fourteen pieced quilts all completed, and twenty were well along toward completion.  Twenty garments have been finished and disposed of.  All of the material has been sent from Northern friends and homes, and some of the girls have learned the first things of needlework, having learned to use needle, thread and thimble.  One little girl when first given a needle said, “O see! there is a hole in one end of it.”  One old lady learned to knit.

We feel happy in the thought of the spiritual growth in our school.  Several young men and some of our girls have openly expressed themselves as desirous of being Christians, and have started, I am sure, to follow Jesus.  Another hopeful thing is the zeal with which they attend to the duties of the Band of Hope.  Our young people who are to teach in the country are quite determined to organize bands and to fight for “God and home and native land,” on the line of temperance.  We have given all the instruction and illustrations we could, and the little ones are becoming leaders of the older members in the families.  One little boy urged his old grandmother to stop using snuff, and she has given it up after using it more than twoscore years.  She said he used to say, “Don’t chew, grandma; the teachers say it is poison.”  Some mothers who have been in the habit of using ruinous alcohol medicines for their children, assured me they would stop it, after seeing the amount of alcohol contained, as was shown by our little experiments in evaporating and burning.  One young man of twenty years old passed an examination in the country, and obtained a second grade certificate, and at sixteen years of age he did not know his letters.  Are there many boys at the North who can show a better record in four years?

H.I.  MILLER.

* * * * *

MACON, GA.