tion field,
and an extended work must be organized. Already in August, 1855, the
importance of the work made conference necessary, and thirty-five
delegates met at Paris, of whom seven were from the United States, and
the same number from Great Britain.

In 1858, a second conference was held at Geneva, with one hundred and
fifty-eight delegates. In 1862, at London, were present ninety-seven
delegates; in 1865, at Elberfeld, one hundred and forty; in 1867, at
Paris, ninety-one; in 1872, at Amsterdam, one hundred and eighteen; in
1875, at Hamburg, one hundred and twenty-five; in 1878, at Geneva, two
hundred and seven,--forty-one from the United States; in 1881, in
London, three hundred and thirty-eight,--seventy-five from the United
States.

At the conference of 1878, in Geneva, a man in the prime of life, and
partner in a leading banking-house of that city, was chosen president.
He spoke with almost equal ease the three languages of the
conference--English, French, and German. Shortly after that convention
Mr. Fermand gave up his business and became the general secretary of the
world's committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations. He traveled
over the whole continent of Europe, visiting the associations, and then
came to America to make acquaintance with our plans of work. Now
stationed at Geneva, with some resident members of the convention, he
keeps up the intercourse of the associations through nine members
representing the principal nations. I have spoken of the three languages
of the conference. It is a wonderful inspiration to find one's self in a
gathering of all nations, brought together by the love of one person,
each speaking in his own tongue, praising the one name, so similar in
each,--that name alone in each address needing no interpretation.

[Illustration: BUILDING OF THE Y.M.C.A. IN NEW YORK.]

The conference meets this year, in August, at Berlin, when probably as
many as one hundred delegates will be present from the United States.

But inter-association organization has gone much further in this country
than elsewhere, and communication is exceedingly close between the nine
hundred associations of America.

The first conception of uniting associations came to the Reverend
William Chauncey Langdon, then a layman, and a member of the Washington
Association, now rector of the Episcopal Church at Bedford,
Pennsylvania. Mr. McBurney, in his fine Historical Sketch of
Associations, says: "Many of