VOL. XIII.

The Society needs an increase of at least ten per cent, in contributions from the churches the coming year. There is no use in asking for twenty-five or fifty per cent. increase (though it could be well used), for experience shows that so large an increase is impracticable. Hence, the moderate and reasonable amount named.

It is gratifying to record that the note in the last MONTHLY concerning the education of the children of the late Dr. W. J. Simmons touched a responsive chord in a generous Christian woman's heart, who gives $100 a year toward the education of the oldest daughter. Also, a local society in Brooklyn, N. Y., is preparing to aid in the education of the oldest boy, a lad of about fourteen years of age. All of this will be very cheering to Mrs. Simmons, whose solicitude for these dependent children has been very great.

At the May meeting of the Board resolutions were adopted favoring the establishment of missionary training schools in the South for colored young men and women, who shall devote themselves to specific and well directed work among their own people under wise supervision as to fields and methods. To this subject Dr. MacVicar has given much thought and has elaborated a plan which receives the approval of the Board

No. 6.

and of many who have been long identified with the educational work for the colored people, including the most thoughtful and intelligent of our colored brethren. It is believed that the Women's Home Mission Societies will heartily co-operate in making this plan a success. In due time more will be said on the subject. In his visit to the Virginia Baptist State Convention at Charlottesville in May, Dr. MacVicar presented the plan together with other plans for the unification and more efficient prosecution of our missionary and educational work in the State, and the Convention, after due consideration, heartily adopted them and voted to co-operate with the Increased exSociety in carrying them out. penses will be incurred in this effort; but the increased life, power and results that are reasonably expected will be far greater relatively than the additional outlay. But taxed as the Society already is, to the utmost of its resources, the generous offerings of all friends of this work will be required to put the plan on an effective working basis.

The article on Pueblo, Mexico, has special interest just now from the fact that it is one of the Society's mission stations, and distant southeast from the City of Mexico about one hundred miles. Rev. W. T. Green and his wife, both of whom are devoted to the work of evangelizing Mexico, have charge of the work in this city.

66 'Subordination."

The Western Recorder in its report of the Southern Baptist Convention at Birmingham, Ala., quotes the following from the report of the Home Mission Board. The report says: "Nothing is plainer to any one who knows this race than its perfect willingness to accept a subordinate place provided there be confidence that in that position of subordinate it will receive justice and kindness. The assurance of the kindness and justice which such a condition of subordination always demands and should always receive, the Christian men and women of this Southern land ought to give."

The italics are ours. We would like to hear from some of our intelligent and aspiring colored brethren about their "perfect willingness to accept a subordinate place etc. We have had a notion that the brightest and best among them desired to be reguarded by others according to their worth of character and attainments, not according to their color as members of "this race."

After this quotation from the report, The Recorder says: "The time ought to come very soon now, in the increased prosperity of the South, when Southern Christians shall do all that is needed in missionary work among the negroes, leaving Northern missionary bodies who have so generously helped, during the days of our poverty, to turn their entire attention and all their funds to the Northwestern States and their own great cities."

This is cheering. "Very soon now" may the time come when Southern Baptists shall have a larger share in this work. The American Baptist Home Mission Society expends every year for the work among the colored people of the South more than the white Baptists of the Southern States contribute directly to their Home Mission Board for all purposes. If now our brethren of the Southern States will come to the rescue with even one quarter of this sum-say $20,000 or $25,000-it will be highly appreciated. For it is true that the Society's work not only in the Northwestern States but in the Southwestern States and Territories is pressing heavily upon us and relief will be most wel

come. But when it is undertaken, it must be not on a theory of the "subordination" of our colored brethern, but on the theory of participation by them and with them in this great work.

Benevolence.

Miss Margaret Fleming, of Wellsburg, W. Va., left a $5,000 bequest to the New York Tribune Fresh Air Fund.

Yale College, according to President Dwight's annual report, has received gifts during the year of $1,151,272.

The late Mrs. M. A. Hopkins, of St. Clair, Ind., left $5,000 to the American Home Mis

sionary Society and $5,000 to Olivet College.

The gymnasium at Brown University will be completed this summer. It will cost $50,000. The trustees appropriated the bequest of Daniel W. Lyman for this purpose.

The will of William Bowles Willard, of Harvard, Mass., leaves $2,000 to the Baptist church in the village of Still River, Mass., and $3,000 to the American Baptist Home Mission Society.

It is reported that Mrs. Mercy Maria Gray, wife of Rev. E. H. Gray, D.D., of Oakland, Cal., has, during the past forty years, given various religious and educational corporations property worth $182,000.

Mrs. J. B. Lippincott, of Philadelphia, has given $10,000 to found an alcove of recent American and English literature in the library of the University of Pennsylvania. The gift is to be a memorial of her husband.

An annex to the University of Pennsyl vania, to be used solely for hygienic instruction and to cost $50,000; has been provided for by the generosity of Henry C. Lea, of Philadelphia, who contributes the entire

amount needed.

General Booth has lately received substantial proof of interest and confidence in his plans and methods in the form of a legacy,

which is really a good sized fortune, of £70.000 ($350,000) left to him for the Salvation Army by a benevolent woman of Glasgow, whose name is not made public.

In the will of John H. Krause, recently probated in Philadelphia, there was a bequest of $20,000 to the King's Daughters of Pottstown, for a hospital to be conducted under the management of the society, provided the society shall make up a like amount. The King's Daughters have accepted the challenge with alacrity, and have no doubt about their ability to fulfill their share of the contract.

Now!

If you have a friend worth loving,
Love him. Yes and let him know
That you love him, ere life's evening

Tinge his brow with sunset glow.
Why should good words ne'er be said
Of a friend-till he is dead?

If you hear a song that thrills you,
Sung by any child of song,
Praise it. Do not let the singer

Wait deserved praises long.

Why should one who thrills your heart
Lack the joy you may impart?

If you hear a prayer that moves you
By its humble pleading tone,
Join it. Do not let the seeker
Bow before his God alone.

Why should not your brother share
The strength of two or three" in prayer.

If you see the hot tears falling

From a brother's weeping eyes,
Stop them, and by kindly sharing,
Own your kinship with the skies.
Why should any one be glad
When a brother's heart is sad?

If a silvery laugh goes rippling

Through the sunshine on his face,
Share it. 'Tis the wise man's saying-
For both grief and joy a place.
There's health and goodness in the mirth
In which an honest laugh has birth.

If your work is made more easy
By a friendly, helping hand,
Say so.
Speak out brave and truly,
Ere the darkness veils the land.
Should a brother workman dear
Falter for a word of cheer?

Scatter thus your seeds of kindness,
All enriching as you go.

Leave them. Trust the Harvest Giver,
He will make each seed to grow.

So, until its happy end,

Your life shall never lack a friend.

-Anonymous.

Puebla and Cholula.

A MODERN CITY AND AN ANCIENT PYRAMID MOUND.

There is a Mexican version of the Hebrew story of Jacob's ladder. The good Bishop of Tlascalla, who came out under the second Spanish Viceroy, desired to build a city between the coast and the Capital which

would remind him of his native Castile. Uncertain where he would choose a site, he was favored one night with a vision of a heavenly host measuring out the foundations of a city on a hillside overlooking a broad and verdant plain trenched with running streams and bounded by the slopes of two magnificent volcanoes. Not long afterward, he rode over the site of Puebla, and recognizing it as the scene of the angelic surveying party, founded Puebla de los Angeles. There are other myths connected with the establishment of this beautiful city, but this is the most intelligible one. Angelic intimations were hardly needed, if the Bishop had an appreciative eye for a magnificent prospect. No grander view can be had in Mexico than the vista of the snow-capped Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl looming up in the west, with Orizaba's splendid white cone in the east, and grim, melancholy Malinche in the north. The mound-builders of Cholula, eight miles away, had founded their city and temple where this wonderful panorama passed before their eyes morning and evening. Their hideous-visaged god crowning that mysterious pile surveyed a prospect which to-day fires the blood of the most sluggish traveller. It was probably in order to establish a Spanish center of civilization near the native city which had been ruthlessly destroyed by Cortes that the site of Pueblo de los Angeles was chosen. Then the angelic visitation was invented as a convenient expedient for diverting the religious fanaticism of the natives and substituting for it a species of Christian mysticism.

Whoever founded Puebla had the instinct of a modern sanitary engineer. The city stands on the easy slope of a hillside, and unlike other Mexican towns of the first rank, is thoroughly drained. While the death-rate of the National Capital is raised by drainage conducted under impossible conditions, the lakes being higher than the city, Puebla has all the advantages of a healthful site. It is one of the cleanest of cities. There are

gangs of prisoners constantly employed in the roadways, and police inspection is most thorough. The visitor who drives out to the fortifications on the crests of Guadalupe and Loreto is in raptures over the view of the city, with its undulating levels, its yellow, blue, pink and white domes; its avenues of fir trees, in the old Paseo, the brown, gray and red façades of the churches, the fine lines of the tower of San Francisco, and the magnificent cathedral pile. Puebla, however, is not only a handsome town when seen from a distance under favorable conditions of light, but also when closely inspected in detail. It is largely built of granite, and has many massive structures on its broad thoroughfares. It is a city of churches, hospitals, charitable institutions, colleges and theatres. Glazed tiles are used not only in the church domes, to produce the effect of mosaics in the strong sunlight, but also in the business blocks and public hospitals, to break the cold uniformity of stone façades. Wrought ironwork is also employed for ornamental effects, and there are signs of originality in the street architecture. The central square is one of the handsomest in Mexico, and every afternoon and evening it is filled with promenaders while the band is playing. Even more attractive is the old Paseo, with the Church of San Francisco and Dolores Chapel at its entrance, facing a monastery which has been converted into the headquarters for the military. There is a newer Alameda, but the old one retains its hold upon popular affection. Here is the stone bridge over the Atoyac commanding the approaches to the battlefields of the 5th of May and the defeat of the French by Diaz; and there are clusters of historic churches close at hand. Opposite the bandstand is the Monte Carlo of Puebla, where every form of gambling is conducted day and night.

Puebla is a manufacturing center of growing importance, and promises to rival Leon when the Inter-oceanic R. R. is in operation to the coast, as it will be in a few weeks. This is a competing line of the old railway to Vera Cruz, and will double the transportation facilities of the city, which was side-tracked by the English engineers. There are factories here for producing cotton cloth, potteries of various kinds, glassware, matches, soap and many other articles. It is also the center of the Mexican onyx quarries, and tiles are

made here with a fair degree of taste and efficiency. Baskets and mats of the most delicate workmanship are also seen in the Indian stalls of the market. If the American traveller who enters Mexico with the preconception that he is visiting a country without aptitude for industrial progress will halt here for a few days he will go away with a feeling of increased respect for the people and a new idea of the importance of arranging unrestricted arranging unrestricted intercourse with them. At Puebla Mexico is seen at its best. It is a modern city permeated with advanced ideas of industrial progress.

Built

The Cathedral of Pueblo is undoubtedly the finest church in Spanish-America. The Cathedral in Mexico City is larger, but the proportions are less symmetrical and the lines are inferior to those of this really beautiful pile; and as an interior it is not to be compared with the Puebla Cathedral in richness of workmanship and simplicity of treatment. Occupying the site of two previous structures, the Puebla Cathedral was consecrated in 1649, and has since been enlarged and thoroughly renovated. Two high towers surmount an impressive façade of stone, with basso-relievos in white marble. upon a stone terrace, it is of massive construction, over 300 feet long and 100 wide, with a nave 80 feet high, crowned with a spacious dome. Other Spanish cathedrals are marred with meretricious ornamentation and tawdry decorations. Here, every interior effect is rich and shapely. The pavement, instead of being floored as in the Cathedral of Mexico, is of colored marbles. The entrance doors are magnificent samples of wood carving. The high altar is the costliest and incomparably the finest in Catholic America, being fashioned of onyx and many other Mexican marbles, and ornamented with bronzes and inlaid pictures. A great bronze figure crowns the tabernacle, and beneath the altar in an onyx crypt is the burial place of the bishops. Superb carving is seen in the organ-cases of the choir, and a unique pulpit and soundingboard of onyx is one of the many artistic treasures of this noble interior. The sacristy walls are lined with paintings framed with marquetry and fine carving, and the chapels flanking the aisles are richly decorated. The wrought iron gratings closing the choir toward the altar are among the most artistic effects of the cathedral.