another took up the refrain, and by the time the second
line was reached the old hymn was sent forth on the air as a grand
chorus. The children came up on the porch, the girls came out of the
kitchen to listen. The customers in Sims' store and the loungers around
the blacksmith's shop stopped talking as the sound reached them.

When the last strains died away, and before talking could be resumed,
Ruth said,

"Marty, wont you say those verses you said at our last band meeting?"

"I'll say them if the ladies would like to hear them," said Marty, who
was not at all timid, and knew the verses very thoroughly, having
recited them at the anniversary of her own band.

The ladies desired very much to hear them, and, taking her stand at one
end of the room, she repeated very nicely those well-known lines
beginning,

"An aged woman, poor and weak,
She heard the mission teacher speak;
The slowly-rolling tears came down
Upon her withered features brown:
'What blessed news from yon far shore!
Would I had heard it long before!'"

"How touching that is!" said one of the hotel ladies, and Mrs. Sims was
seen to wipe her eyes with the pillow-slip she was seaming.

"Mrs. Thurston," said Miss Fanny, who saw that a good start on a foreign
missionary meeting had been made, and was not willing to let the
opportunity be lost, "when you were in India did you meet many persons
who were anxious to hear the gospel, or were they mainly indifferent?"

In replying to this question Mrs. Thurston told many interesting things
that had come under her observation, and this led to further questions
from others, so they had quite a long talk on missionary work both in
India and other countries. Finally one of the boarders asked,

"Well, do you think the world ever will be converted to Christianity?"

"I know it will," replied Mrs. Thurston; and she quoted, "All the ends
of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all kindreds of
the nations shall worship before thee."

FANNY. "For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall
bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God."

DORA. "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea."

RUTH. "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river
unto the ends of the earth."

"Dora, Dora," said Miss Fanny, with an imperative little gesture,
"'Jesus shall reign'"--

Miss Dora obediently began to sin