t. So the "cotton tails" served the community better by being
eaten themselves than they would if they had been left to eat the bark
from the young fruit trees on the surrounding farms.

4. Since the pursuit of athletics has so large a place in the minds of the
young people in these days, it has been thought worth while to do
something in this field. One of the assistant pastors having had some
training when in school organized Athletic Clubs among the boys and young
men in six or seven different neighborhoods. These clubs met from time to
time for practise. They were combined into an Athletic League for the
whole parish and occasionally held Field Days. They would come together on
the Academy campus at Benzonia and spend the day in sports and games and
contests in which a previously prepared schedule of events was carried on.
There were junior contests for the boys and the girls too had a part in
the last field-day sports. Occasionally they have a banquet with toasts
and an opportunity for social intercourse. These athletic clubs have not
only done much to encourage clean and healthful sports, but they have
given the assistant pastor large influence over the young people, and most
of them are noticeably regular in their attendance on the services he
conducts on the Sabbath.

Ladies' Aid Societies are organized in the various neighborhoods and they
bring together in a social way, not only the ladies, but also the men in
the winter season, who then find time to enjoy the good dinner that the
ladies provide and to spend part of the day in social intercourse. These
Aid Societies are ready to take hold in a helpful way of any enterprise
that is for the good of the community, and any enterprise to which they
devote themselves is bound to go.

5. One more way of working has proved to be valuable, and well worth
while. Like nearly all small towns, we have a weekly newspaper which finds
its way into most of the homes of the parish. The pastor and the editor
work together in the effort to make it an organ of helpful power in the
community life. For the past three years I have had each week a
column--usually a column and a half--in this paper. It is my regular
Monday forenoon work to write that column. I put into it whatever I think
will be useful to the people, bringing them many a message that would
hardly come appropriately into the pulpit, and reaching in that way many
whom I would not often come in touch with otherwise. The