By District-Secretary C.W. Hiatt.

Sylvan, terraced, lacustrine; cottages by the score, gay in color, unique
of design; people everywhere, chatty, erudite, artistic, processional;
"round tables," "leagues," "societies" and "circles;" lectures, sermons,
concerts and conferences--a school, a church, a university--all this, and
throughout it all a steady pulse of religious heart and heartiness--such
is the Chautauquan Assembly of Bay View, Michigan. One of the important
features of this assembly is its annual missionary conference. All
denominations participate and the field of the world is brought vividly
before the mind by the laborers from here and there.

An interesting testimony by a missionary from Singapore was to the effect
that many of the most cultured and generous people he had ever met were
Chinese. By the aid of influential Mongolians--though they were
heathen--he was once enabled to start a school which grew rapidly till
hundreds were enrolled and a permanent religious center of great
importance was established. The whole account was thrilling.

Specially kind was the hearing given the representative of the American
Missionary Association work, and the eager quest for literature which
followed showed that all words had not been lost. Denominational lines
were not conspicuous. The black cat of statistics scampered across the
rostrum only once or twice. A fitting rebuke to this audacious creature
was couched in the story told by a missionary of a visit he had received
from another worker on the field, and their mutually forgetting to inquire
into each other's church connections, so great was their interest in the
tasks in hand. Afterwards, the Methodist brother learned that he had
entertained a Baptist unawares--Selah.

An interesting disclosure was recently made, when the organ of Vine St.
Congregational Church in Cincinnati was removed from the rear to the front
of the auditorium. Midway between ceiling and floor, on either side of the
recess, were two doors in the wall. These could only be reached by
ladders. What were they for? Ah, they have a history. They open into rooms
which, in ante-bellum days, were used as stations of the "underground
railway." Here fugitives from across the Ohio were secreted until they
could be spirited on, by night, towards the waters of Erie. These doors on
the wall speak volumes for the history of the church. I wonder not that
even now, though in the very commercial c