of concerts, rhetoricals, and athletics, with Y.M.C.A. meetings and required chapel services, with church and Sunday School, thirty men voluntarily meet each week after the required Sunday evening service for the study of the lessons in Hope. This little paper, beginning with a circulation of five hundred, has now reached a monthly issue of more than eighteen thousand copies; and daily it brings its lesson of cheer to thousands of mothers and children in the South. In connection with it all has developed the Fireside School, than which few agencies have been more potent for the salvation [70]and uplift of the humble Negro home.

[70]

What wisdom has been gathered from the passing of fourscore years! On almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations that for proverbial pith may be equaled only by the words of Franklin or Lincoln or Booker Washington:—

The love of God gave me courage for myself and the rest of mankind; therefore I concluded to invest in human souls. They surely are worth more than anything else in the world.

Beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous. God cannot use discouraged people.

I am very thankful to-day that there has always been some one weaker than myself along some line, some one that I could really help and comfort.

The good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do, but by praising God for what had been done.

So much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for the Bible lesson. Do not misunderstand me. I do love music that impresses the meaning of words. But no one climbs to heaven on musical scales.

I thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it into your every thought and prayer.

You must love before you can comfort and help.

There is no place too lowly or dark for our feet to enter, and no place so high and bright but it needs the touch of the light that we carry from the Cross.

[71]How shall we measure such a life? Who can weigh love and hope and service, and the joy of answered prayer? "An annual report of what?" she once asked the secretary of her organization. "Report of tears shed, prayers offered, smiles scattered, lessons taught, steps taken, cheering words, warning words—tender, patient words 

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