We would suggest to all ladles connected with the auxiliaries of State Missionary Unions, that funds for the American Missionary Association be sent to us through the treasurers of the Union.  Care, however, should be taken to designate the money as for the American Missionary Association, since undesignated funds will not reach us.

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THE MOUNTAIN GIRLS.

But why the girls?  Because the girls are immortal as well as the boys.  Because the girls in their education have been neglected far more than the boys.  Because the girls are to be the mothers of the next generation.

That they are immortal, and capable of becoming and doing much in this life would seem to be doubted even by their parents.  The neglect of the girls in their physical, mental, moral, and religious education, is enough to draw pity even from the most stupid Christian.

Hundreds are put into field work from spring till autumn.  They follow the mule and “bull tongue.”  They wield the heavy hoe, sprouting newly cleared land.  They look after cattle on the ranges and the mountain swine, and if these are needed for meat, kill and dress them as a man would do.  Said a woman the other day, “I wish I had as many dollars as I have alone killed and dressed hogs.”  With parents the boy means a “heap” more than the girl.  A boy can shoot deer and coon, fox and rabbit, can build cabins, can keep school, and “seems” be a doctor or go to Congress.  With this impression, if anybody is clothed and sent to school, it is the boy, while as a rule, the girl is poorly clad and stays at home to do the boy’s work, to make “craps,” and grow up in ignorance.  If in berry time they can get a few dimes to buy a calico dress and a pair of shoes, contentment settles over their faces.  Aspirations for anything better they have not, for an avenue leading to a more hopeful life they have never dreamed of.  To look into the future there is nothing sunny or bright.  Illiterate, they marry young some poor fellow, and with no money they begin life, build their cabin home in the timber land, girdle a few acres of the stately trees of oak and chestnut, and there raise a family to take the same dark and gloomy view of life the parents have had.

Must this condition of things continue, among a people, too, who are all native born Americans, who have fair native abilities to become a power for good if trained in Christian schools?

Is it not time a special effort be made for these girls?  They are growing older.  They will soon be the mothers of a new generation.  With illiterate mothers what will that generation be?  Just what the present generation now is.  What will it be if these girls now growing up are brought into a school like ours at Pleasant Hill?  Here, if there can be sufficient room and ample teaching