Must this condition of things continue, among a people, too, who are all
native born Americans, who have fair native abilities to become a power
for good if trained in Christian schools?

_Is it not time a special_ effort be made for these _girls_? They are
growing older. They will soon be the mothers of a new generation. With
illiterate mothers what will that generation be? Just what the present
generation now is. What will it be if these girls now growing up are
brought into a school like ours at Pleasant Hill? Here, if there can be
sufficient room and ample teaching force, they will be taught and
trained in a practical knowledge of all the duties of life, especially
in those of the household. If we educate and save the _girls_ we are
using the very lever needed to lift these hopeless and neglected
thousands living at our very doors, out of their degraded life and bring
them into the light of the 19th century, and qualify them to take
positions among the best women of the land.

The work for which I plead 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