M

Y first year in China passed quickly, happily, and I trust profitably. Certainly I feel much more at home with the people and in the language than I did a year ago. The study is hard, and there are times when one does get discouraged, but then there are always the people who have conquered in the struggle as our example, and so we go along day by day, learning a little. You perhaps know it is my nature to like to talk, and I find that it is a real help in learning Chinese. The Chinese women also like to talk, and sometimes I wonder if I can ever be

able to understand the words which come so easily and quickly. They understand my efforts at speaking sometimes, and yet so often, when I think I have spoken correctly, I can tell from the blank expression on their faces, or from the polite but meaningless "That is right," "Yes, yes," with which they reply, that they did not get my meaning at all.

The daily routine on the Wuchang compound is very regular, and we have a busy life. My day's work will serve as an example. At half-past six is the rising bell; at half-past seven Morning Prayer, at St. Hilda's oratory

this year, because the church is too small for the boys and girls, and the boys use the church. Breakfast is at eight. At nine I have an English class. At ten my Chinese teacher comes, and I study my advance lesson for the day until twelve. At twelve we have prayers for missions, in English, which only the missionaries attend. Then we have lunch. At one the afternoon work begins. I study by myself, writing my new characters in the syllabary, and translating the new lesson and reviewing, from one to two. Then my teacher comes again from two to three. From three to four I study alone. At four we have tea, and then we take our exercise. At a quarter to six is the girls' Evening Prayer in the church, and the boys have theirs at half-past six. Then we have dinner at seven. Miss Phelps goes to school for the compline service at eight. After that the little girls go to bed and the big girls study until nine. I have family prayers with our servants, and on Thursday evenings chaperon one of the girls who has a music lesson, Mr. Cooper being her teacher.

On Thursday afternoons I go to a woman's meeting at St. Saviour's Chapel. The women sew for an hour, and then the Bible-woman conducts a little service and explains the Gospel for the following Sunday. This is a very earnest set of women, faithful in attendance, and always ready to help in the work. Even if I become a regular teacher at St. Hilda's I still hope I may have charge of one woman's meeting. Another plan is a Sunday-school for outside children, and to have a normal class of big girls from St. Hilda's as teachers. That all depends on when I get my language examinations passed and can talk well enough to be easily understood.

The work at St. Hilda's is very interesting, and if I should be a teacher permanently Miss Phelps may give the younger pupils into my charge. I love the work among children, and that has always been my work. We are hoping for an enlargement of the school, but Dr.

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Lloyd and Bishop Roots have probably made our hopes known. When one sees the difference between the girls and the older women, those who have such a narrow horizon, their minds not being able to grasp a thought outside of their daily life, one realizes that the hope of China's women lies with the girls. The girls are very attentive and lovable. The regular life, the religious teaching, the clean houses, a healthful diet, a pleasant yard to play in, daily exercise, not to mention the intellectual training, show in a girl in a very short time, and when this becomes their daily life for a number of years, could they sink back into dirt and ignorance when they return home or go to homes of their own? The wives and families of some of the Chinese teachers at Boone are a pleasure to know, and one feels this is what Christian education may accomplish for the many who are waiting for the chance to come to school.

If the young women at home only knew what keen pleasure there is, as well as the discouraging times over the language, in feeling that some day one will be able to help these people, and that anyway now, while one is studying, one comes in contact with them and the foundation for future work is being laid, they might like to try coming to China to help. I am thankful and happy all the time that I could come.

THE AUXILIARY IN

HANKOW

"Our Bible-women use the missionary prayer daily. The members are encouraged to do so, and the printed prayer is given them, but I cannot say how many really use it. Of course the more earnest ones do the praying, and the next do the working, and all do some giving. The meetings of our parish branches are usually connected with the regular women's meetings for instruction, and these are always opened and closed with prayer, the clergyman often using the Auxiliary prayer even when no special emphasis is laid upon the meeting otherwise as an Auxiliary meeting."

SUPPOSE we all know that the Pan-Anglican Congress is a great ten days' meeting which is to take place this summer in England between June 15 and June 24 (St. John Baptist's Day), and is to consist of representatives, lay as well as clerical, women as well as men, from every diocese in the Anglican Communion.

Many people know nothing more than this of the Congress, and are somewhat in the dark as to its purpose. It has been thought by those who planned it that this meeting would be useful as an opportunity for the free expression of everybody's opinion on matters that are of vital importance to the Church as a whole, and that these expressions of opinion may be of service to the bishops at the very important Lambeth Conference which takes place in July.

While the Lambeth Conference is the fifth that has been held, this is the first Pan-Anglican Congress. It is therefore an experiment. It may be, and we earnestly hope it will be, extremely helpful. It certainly will be watched with keen interest by the Church as a whole. On the other hand, its immense size may render it unwieldy and therefore disappointing. Bishop Montgomery has more than once, during the last two months, expressed grave doubts as to the possibility of providing for the numbers who are sending for tickets. The standing capacity of St. Paul's Cathedral is limited to five thousand people, and it looks as if more than twice that number were coming as members of the Congress.

The programme is an interesting one. While not technically missionary, almost all the subjects have a certain relation to missionary work, and a good share of the time is to be given to direct conference on the Missions of the Church. I cannot do more than allude to the interest

ing papers, which may be had by sending to the S. P. C. K., Northumberland Avenue, London, or to the Rev. A. B. Mynors, Church House, Westminster, with money enclosed. But I should like to call your attention to a pamphlet, Preliminary, No. 7, by Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishop of London and President of the Women's Committee. It is called "Women's Work for the Church and for the State."

On St. John Baptist's Day, at the close of the great Thanksgiving Service, a Thank-offering is to be made "for all the blessings granted to our Church in its growth and spiritual development throughout the world." The money is to be given "for the strengthening and extension of Christ's Kingdom throughout the world." It is expected that at this service men and women will offer themselves for whatever work in the Mission field they may be needed. One of the suffragan bishops of England has already signified his intention of making one of this number. This offering of money and service is likely to come largely from the English Church and her colonial and missionary dioceses, since, owing to the short time since our Thank-offering at Richmond, the Church in the United States will hardly join to any important extent in this great thankoffering of money. Yet our loving gratitude to Almighty God for all we owe to our Mother, the Church of England, requires some expression. Surely, then, we should all unite, those who represent us in England, and those of us who remain at home, in praying earnestly during those ten days in June that God's blessing may rest upon all that is done at the Pan-Anglican Congress as well as at the Lambeth Conference, and upon each representative from every branch of the great Anglican Communion.

UR diocesan president has asked me to tell you about the work that dear Elizabeth Dickinson started among the young women of All Saints' Parish.

The idea of a Young Woman's Branch had been in the mind of our rector some time before Miss Dickinson came to Pasadena, but he had not been able to find a leader. Our Junior branch was composed of quite little children, and there was a wide gap between that and the Woman's Auxiliary.

Elizabeth Dickinson came to us from Rochester, Western New York, full of interest in all lines of Church activity, well equipped by long training in parish. work, and with a most devoted spirit. She had tact, sweetness, dignity, to a rare degree. She and the rector talked the situation over together, and then she won over, one by one, a small company of young ladies who are still the nucleus and stand-by of the organization. At first it was entirely a local parish missionary guild, not connected with the Auxiliary of the diocese, and not sure whether it wished to be. There was a good deal of youthful independence in some of the members.

Our rector has always the fine good sense to see the good in a movement rather than its faults, and to trust that the faults will gradually be eradicated if the growth is healthy. Some of the young women who are now our best workers were, at first, quite sceptical on the subject of "sending their money to China and Japan when it was so much needed at home."

The rector and the bishop said to the leaders: "Begin your work with something tangible, close at home, and then lead them to a gradual widening of the

The first widening of our horizon took us into the work of Deaconess Miller, the lace teacher for Bishop Johnson among the Indians of Mesa Grande, San Diego County. From that, it was only a step to Bishop Kendrick's Indians and the Good Shepherd Hospital at Fort Defiance.

By this time we were having regular study, once a month, using as our textbook "The Kingdom Growing." Bishop Kendrick's Indians took us to Bishop Hare's Indians, and then we went back to the work of Bishop Whipple and others who laid strong foundations. One or two more meetings made us familiar with the work of some of our Western bishops in mining camps and frontier towns. All this while, no word of "foreign" missions, that bugbear of the prejudiced! But the interest was deepening, and Elizabeth Dickinson's steady, serene faith could wait. I think it came in the natural course of the lessons in "The Kingdom Growing," that our steps

were led to Alaska. Once over that threshold, we were safe, for no one could resist the heroism of the workers there. We outgrew our little text-book, took up the "Six Lessons on Alaska," and found even those inadequate. We dug deep into THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS, made maps, scrap-books, wrote personal letters, met the bishop himself on his trip here after that first bad accident on the road to Valdez. Later we met Mr. Prevost on his way East from Tanana. After spending nearly a year in studying Alaska, we took a trip to Honolulu. Like Alaska, that was scarcely "foreign," for it was still under our flag, and Bishop Restarick had been our near neighbor in San Diego (100 miles means a neighbor in California). Besides, one of our school-teacher members had just made a trip there.

The next step was to the Philippines. Mr. Clapp's letters in THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS just then were irresistible. The doubting Thomases by this time were all thoroughly converted. So, after the Philippines, we led them boldly to Japan, and after eight months' study of that, we are now beginning upon China.

I think it was while we were studying Alaska that we allied ourselves with the Woman's Auxiliary. That would have been an impossibility at the first, but we naturally wanted to work for Alaska after studying about it, and as the Auxiliary were doing the same thing, we found that we "had all things in common."

So much for the evolution. Now for the present status. Our membership is about forty-three, one or two more or less. We have eight standing committees, which are elastic enough to take in every member, sooner or later. While we make our pledges and pay our dues as a society, there are no stated dues as a requisite for membership. We want to be able to invite every young woman of the parish to join us, and some of us are wage-earners, with money for little beyond bare necessities. Then how do we

raise our funds? In all sorts of ways. A birthday box is in a conspicuous place at every meeting. Members need not own up to birthdays unless they choose, but most of them do! That box is not opened until the annual meeting, when its contents are always voted for a special object. During Lent, each member has a self-denial box, and this also is voted to a special. We shall rise beyond the concrete and visible before long, I hope, and in fact I know that many are increasing their offerings at the time of the collections for the apportionment and for diocesan missions. As for the United Offering, we not only have our own boxes, but we distribute and collect the others in the parish, as Mrs. Willett has failed to find any one person willing to undertake the work for this large parish. Many of our gifts have not gone through Auxiliary channels, and so have not been credited, but we shall gradually mend our ways in that respect. All Saints' is supporting two missions here in Pasadena, and we have helped them both, giving a lectern and prayer desk to the North Mission, and an altar cross to the East Mission. We are also helping Miss Patterson's new mission to the Japanese in Los Angeles, by regular contributions to the teacher's salary, and special gifts. At present we are making outfits for little Alaskan girls, to be sent with the other things from Los Angeles diocese. We keep a missionary bulletin board in the church vestibule, drawing heavily in this upon the Educational Department at the Church Missions House. I recently "worked off" nearly fifty copies of "What the Postmaster Did Not Know"! We keep quite a large number of missionary books in circulation. among the members. But the best thing we have given is one of ourselves. A member of our branch, now at the Deaconess Training-school, New York, has offered herself for Japan, and I hope that others may follow her, though at present they all seem bound by home duties.