cach week, this little girl lives alone and goes to school. She takes her meals with a neighbor while her father and mother are making it possible for religious services to be held in two other camps. The dog can usually be depended upon to stay with her, and he always does unless there is a big fight down town. Then he can not resist the temptation to investigate, and he returns too late to be a real comfort. In this way the - little girl never misses school. She never locks the doors at night, for in case of fire she wants to be able to get out quickly. I wondered if she was never afraid, and I was interested when she said, "I am never afraid when the dog is with me, but when he goes off and the mine burns very bright, I sometimes get up and say 'Now I lay me,' and then go back to bed again.'

The Girl Who Gave

This little girl was visiting at Ellis Island. It was a busy day. People were pouring up the stairway, and finally one little foreign girl, whose mother had a wee baby and lots of bundles in her arms, as well as an ex-baby pinned to her skirt, became frightened. She could not see her mother in the crowd, and she stopped walking and began to scream. It was a scream that penetrated every inch of the big room, and the next thing we knew a big yellow teddy bear came floating down from the gallery. One of the doctors caught it, and in another second it was in the hands of the little girl who was just arriving. Her cries stopped immediately. She did not seem to care whether she ever again saw her mother. She had never dreamed that anything so wonderful as that bear could ever be hers. The little American girl in the gallery will never see her bear again. She

did not lend him; she gave him away. But because she was willing to give what she had, and give immediately, she made a frightened little foreign girl happy, and helped the

over here because I am going to have the wishbone. Elizabeth is going to sit beside you. Horace has on a really, really clean shirt, and you are going to have the embroidered towels that came Christmas. After that we are all going to use them common. When I am five years old I am going to have a birthday party. I can invite anybody choose. I am going to invite Jesus, and I do hope He will wear his little crown of light. My brother shot a turkey and a rabbit with a gun, and the turkey was not cooked when he shot him either

I

tian. It can dispose with much that is necessary at other mission centers. For instance, there is no day nursery except the morning kindergarten, because its nearest neighbor is Mary Crane, conceded to be the best day nursery in the world. Just around the corner are the headquarters of the Juvenile Protective. Association, where expert help is given, or cases of delinquent, defective, or criminal children

are handled. The Visiting Nurses and the Associated Charity work of all departments have headquarters at Mary Crane,

congruous in ending a party with a short word of prayer any more than in saying good night to one's hostess, for have we not been guests in the Father's house?

Sunday is a busy day, although the services do not begin until 2 o'clock. A number of the workers are usually sent elsewhere for the

morning service -the pastor to preach, the musical director to sing, while the Sunday school superi n t e ndent conducts another mission school every Sunday. At 2 o'clock there is an Intermediate Christian Endeavor, after which comes the Sundayschool. The enrollment numbers more than 300, with an average attendance of two hundred and ten. One day last summer it went down to ninety-eight, but the day was so hot a suburban church would have been entirely empty. The international lesson is taught and much Scripture is memorized and repeat

and next to it is Hull House, noted among all nationalities for its equipment for work for foreigners.

The life at Firman House centers around the church and the Sundayschool. There are clubs in gymnastics, in sewing, story telling, and music; there are Boy Scouts and an Abraham Lincoln Club, a Mothers' Club, and lots of parties, but the big

ed. Teachers, outside of the regular staff, come in from other churches, especially from the Second Church of Oak Park, which is responsible for the salaries of all the workers.

Sunday-school is followed by a preaching service, and then there is a social hour for the young folks, at which a lunch is served in the dining

room at a cost of ten cents for each person. The Senior Christian Endeavor Society meets at 7 o'clock. Mention has been made of the Daily Vacation Bible School, but it deserves more than passing mention. More than 400 children were en

rolled, and there was an average attendance of half that number. One day it was my privilege to take fifteen of the boys to visit Marshall Field's big store. It was the first view these hatless, coatless little fellows had had of the great metropolis of which they were a part. One of them caught sight of a tall building which had just been scrubbed, and in consequence looked very white for Chicago. I shall never forget his look of patriotic pride as he pointed to it, swallowed hard, and asked if "it wuz the White House."

T

HE supreme value of Home Missions lies not in the number of churches, not in the number of communicants, not even in the number of its receipts. It is possible to pay too much attention to these minor values of mere dimension and to miss the larger truth, that the real significance of Home Missions is to be looked for not in the Book of Numbers but in the Book of Acts.

We plant trees for various reasons. One tree is for its value in timber, another for its shade, another for its grace, and yet another for its fruits. The home missionary tree is a fruit tree, and fruits are the true measure of value -human fruits men and women, new born, inspired and ripened. through the ministry of the church. to serve and bless the times in which they may be called to live; and little men and women, as yet only fruit buds, to be gathered closely into the sheltering arms of the church, until by simple care and simple teaching, the divine lessons of faith, hope, and love have been woven into character that shall some day inspire them to noble deeds for their broth

er men.

Here are the crowned values of all home missionary planting and nurture, and lacking these what else really counts? A certain fruit tree, so called, that could show nothing but leaves was cursed by the Master as a cumberer of the ground.

"Show us your fruits" is the demand of the world, and it is a fair challenge, though not an easy one to meet. For these new-born men and women wear no distinguishing uniform, no badge or button to identify them as home missionary products. They are leaven, and like all leaven, must be hidden in the meal, making its presence known in the sweetened loaf. But certain admitted facts there are of wonderful suggestive value.

What does it mean that for a hundred years our Congregational and Presbyterian ministry in the homeland and in the foreign field has been recruited chiefly not from prosperous and suburban churches, but from rural districts and country churches depleted by continuous removals and kept alive by home missionary grants. Bearing in mind the admitted fact that about nine-tenths of all our churches are of home missionary origin, what other conclusion is possi

ble than that home that home missionary churches are paying back to their stronger brethren in these priceless dividends of human fruitage, the debt they owe for their support?

Nor is this ministerial fruitage a thing of the past only. The study of college and seminary catalogues will afford a surprise to discover how large a proportion of young men and women in courses of higher education hail from the little country towns of New England, decadent in wealth, decadent in numbers, but showing no decadence in mental vigor or noble ambitions.

A while ago the names of 1,571 ministers were secured, and by extensive correspondence and the help of catalogues, 1,087, fully two-thirds of the total number, were found to have been born in the smaller towns and hamlets of New England. Four hill towns in Massachusetts, with an aggregate population of 3,800, have contributed ninety ministers to the home and foreign service; also a goodly number of highly educated. teachers.

In one of these towns, more than a hundred years ago was born a girl whose name may be read to-day inscribed in the Temple of Fame on University Heights. Her Her parents gave her the hallowed name of Mary. One of her earliest memories was of climbing the hill every Sunday with her mother to attend the missionary church. Her first great passion of service was kindled by a sermon on foreign missions, and she might have spent her life in foreign lands had not another passion completely absorbed her mind. As a teacher in a district school, she saw her brightest boys drifting away to college and seminary and larger opportunities, while her girls, fully as bright, and often brighter, after getting a smattering

of knowledge were called back to the kitchen and the farm. Her soul took fire with sympathy for these girls, and in her thoughts began to dawn the beautiful vision of a college, many colleges,

for girls. After years of battling with prejudice, she saw her dream visualized at last in Mt. Holyoke Seminary, afterward to be Mt. Holyoke College, where her spirit still reigns. Her pupils, catching her ideals, have gone forth to found like colleges in Spain, Africa, and Japan; also in several of the United States. The soul of Mary Lyon, awakened in the humble hill town, is marching on, and no limit can be set to the broad river of influence that took its rise in a little New England spring.

The late Secretary Moore of Connecticut tells the story of sixty-four churches in that state, slowly drained of their best blood by cities East and West until they were forced to depend upon missionary help. Their aggregate church membership was reduced to sixty-four hundred. But in their better days, these churches contributed four hundred and one ministers to the world, and raised two hundred and eighty thousand. dollars for the missionary societiesa hundred thousand more than they had ever received in missionary aid. Who will say they have not paid liberally for their keep?

Vermont has the distinction of being the first state to enter the Union under the federal constitution. Early settlement was slow by reason of clouded land titles. But the early settlers were not slow, and their title to be honored as stalwart men and women, mostly of Puritan stock, has never been questioned. The state is largely rural, being almost devoid of cities, and as a consequence the churches are smaller and grow less rapidly than in other states where the population is more concentrated. But slow growth has not denoted weakness in anything but number.

Under these rather forbidding conditions what may we expect of human fruits in a state so pre-eminently home missionary in its history? Mr. John M. Comstock, of Chelsea, has, with infinite pains, gathered and published a list of nearly a thousand ministers born in