REV.  C.J.  RYDER, DISTRICT SECRETARY.

A little swarm of “Busy Bees,” in Dover, N.H., have been making honey for the needy children in one of the missions of our Association.  Their gift, amounting to sixty-five dollars, has been used to furnish a Reference Library for the school at Wilmington, N.C.  Special rates were kindly given us on books by the Congregational Sunday-school and Publishing Society and other firms in Boston, so that this sixty-five dollars furnished a number of very useful books.  Have not these “Busy Bees” in New Hampshire set a good example to other children’s societies?

Speaking of the Sunday-school and Publishing Society reminds me of two things.  The first is the kindly interest and generous help of that society in the work being done by the Association in various fields.  Literature is abundantly supplied from their press, and in some instances they have sent colporteurs and missionaries into the various fields, who do a grand good work.

The other thing suggested by reference to this society is a queer contribution which was brought in to Mr. Hall, a missionary of the Association at Fort Berthold, Dakota.  I chanced to be there when it was brought in.  Mr. Hall had told the Indian boys and girls of the useful work done by the Sunday-school and Publishing Society in different parts of the land.  It has always been the policy of the Association, as our friends know, to present the other Congregational Societies in our missions, and distribute the small gifts which it is possible for these poor people to give, among the different societies and not absorb it all in the Association.  These Indian boys had not money to give to the Sunday-school Society, but they saw a premium offered for killing gophers.  They are a mischievous little animal, devouring a large amount of wheat, corn and other grain every year.  The farmers pay two cents for each dead gopher.  The proof that the gopher has been killed is his tail.  Now these little Indian boys had been so interested in the story told of the work being done by the Sunday-school Society, that they spent their Saturday afternoon holiday snaring gophers.  They brought the tails in the envelopes of the society, as their contribution.  I took some of the envelopes, paying two cents apiece for each tail and brought them East with me.  On one envelope I found the following:  “Richard Fox, one tail.”  What could be more appropriate!

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Another of our District Secretaries not long since took a cup of coffee at a lunch counter kept by a colored man in Northern Ohio.  After paying, he spoke of the work of the American Missionary Association.  The colored man’s face lit up at once.

“Are you in that work?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Take back that fifteen cents, sir.”

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FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL MEETING