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[Murilla <map...@rh...>]

 is full of encouragement and hope. It is not in Africa. It is within
one or two days' ride of the largest and most wealthy churches of our
country, those who love the Kingdom of Christ and have sent, and are
still sending, their thousands of dollars to the ends of the earth,
while these bright American girls are, by some strange oversight,
neglected at our very doors. The American Missionary Association has
undertaken a noble work among them, and something has been accomplished,
yet this good work has but just begun. The grey dawn has only cast a few
signs of daylight over the mountains. To carry this work forward
successfully in behalf of the neglected girls, there should be, in a
great natural center of operations like Pleasant Hill, a spacious
boarding hall with an industrial department and home, for those girls.
It should not be stinted in size, but large, well-arranged, and
well-equipped in all its departments from the primary upwards, where
they can be taught everything a girl ought to learn, not only in books
and in a Christian life, but taught to sew, knit, darn stockings, to
make good bread, and keep house with order and neatness, and do
everything needed to be done in a Christian home. If the _native girls_
can come from their cabin homes into such an institution and be thus
thoroughly trained, the axe is then laid at the very root of the tree of
a squalid life of illiteracy, and a life of Christian culture and hope
comes in its place, where Christian mothers throw angelic brightness
over their households, and families of children are trained to act well
their part in this great and growing nation. The institution I suggest,
and for which I must plead, should not only be large enough to
accommodate girls near at hand, but from other neighboring States who
stand in need of such a home and training. It should be a Bethel for
these immortal waifs, a house of bread, so well provided for as to take
the poorest who cannot pay a cent of their