who maintains that this conference is the "best yet." She was wholly right this time from the point of view of numbers. This conference enrolling 470 persons was the largest of the nineteen which have been held in the South under the Young Women's Christian Association. The first one was held in 1895 in Rogersville, Tennessee. The seventeen following were in Asheville, North Carolina, while the conference met in 1912 and 1913 on the new grounds at Black Mountain, North Carolina. But it was not merely the numbers, it was the magnificent spirit of the conference that not only accepted without the murmur the hardships of two pairs of blankets instead of three, of two roommates instead of the expected one, but showed itself in many ways.

It is a fresh marvel each year to see hundreds of people from many localities and conditions thus brought into close contact and, within a few hours, welded together in a living organism moving to the sound of bells, attending classes, going on drives and tramps, moved by common impulses, acting and re-acting upon each other, lifted together through the power of consecrated leadership, so that high resolves are kindled and unformed purposes are shaped toward lasting results making for the world sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

The sense of oneness in Association membership reached its high water mark on Association Evening when, with many-hued banners and pennants marking the different groups, the delegations massed themselves in the lobby of Robert Lee Hall to listen to the simple facts and incidents about the successes, the struggles, the needs, of the other girl in the country, the office, the factory, the college, or the home in this or other lands. The girls clapped and laughed and grew serious together, pledging their love, loyalty and support to the Association. national and world-wide. The world vision was painted most vividly

through the presence and words of Pastor Le Seur of Germany and Miss Spencer, the World's secretary, as well as other secretaries coming directly from the mountain-top inspiration of Lake Mohonk.

No one can think of the Blue Ridge Conference without having flashed bemountains in their framing of this fore the mind the sublimity of the place consecrated to worship and service. But the mind comes back to the high pillared porch of the beautiful hall and the interior with the great glowing fire place, the irregular tent houses along the brook, set in grounds wrested from the forest dominion. And then comes the thought that the tremendous cost that has made such a place possible must be and will be repaid ten thousand fold in the influence upon young lives in the southland, in the conferences that will be held in the years to come.

The First Western

City Conference

The former Monte Ne and Cascade conferences were this year amalgamated, then divided, then located in an entirely new place! On the conference grounds built at Estes Park by the Young Men's Christian Association both a city and student conference were conducted in August by the National Board.

STES PARK! A memory of

E rugged gray mountains, lifting

jagged, ever-varying outlines

into the vivid blue! A vision of white

cloud masses tumbling over those same mountain peaks, reflecting with growing splendor the opal and rose of the sunset! A dream of quiet nights, when the full moon lazily lifted herself between two sloping mountain ridges, and changed the blues and pinks and greens and yellows into a study of silver and shadows! Those wonderful, grim old Colorado mountains were now stern, now smiling, always changing, but always lovable; always seeming to encircle with protecting tenderness our little camp, and always bringing to one's thought and lips the involuntary exclamation, "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about them that fear him." With such a setting, is it any wonder that the first Western City Conference will hold a unique place in the hearts of all who were so fortunate as to attend it?

It is early morning. Out from the little red tentcottages fringing the campus the girls are hurrying by twos and threes towards the dining hall. To right and left sounds a musical tinkle gently sug

gestive of a wandering herd, but one looks all around and sees nothing to account for such a signal. "Oh, that's only the Texas delegation!" laughs your neighbor. "They all have little cow bells fastened to their wrists." But there is more than one way of being in evidence, as you realize when you see looming in the distance those big badges marked "K. C." That Kansas City crowd leads in numbers, and aren't they proud of it!

But to-day everyone is absorbed in plans for the afternoon. Was there ever a better spot for Association Day? Here is space enough for the evolutions of a whole army, and no more beautiful background could be found in the country than the encir

MOUNTAIN DAY AT ESTES PARK

cling mountain ridges. "We'll cheer, we'll cheer, we'll cheer Estes Park!" the girls sing with a will as the procession winds around the side of Administration Building and distributes itself around the big circle in front of the steps. The Omaha "pageant" is the most elaborate affair of the day. The Wichita girls are much in evidence. And that New Mexico delegation makes up in courage, invention and enthusiasm what is lacking in numbers. Moreover, she now belongs to those triplet States to be adopted by Miss Stafford in the new Southwestern Territory. But we must not linger over this most exciting day in the conference life. Can we ever forget Long's Peak Inn and the picnic supper around the bonfire? To the energetic, the climbs and tramps seemed even more worth while. How that little Utah girl, "used to mountains at home," could climb. To be sure "hard" and "easy" seem to be rather elastic terms. But suppose some of the conference leaders did ignominiously accept the hospitality of a stray hay wagon towards the end of a seven-mile tramp: their good example only gave us courage to do the same!

Again, as we think of the campus, we see the huge bonfire, of unimaginable proportions to most of us, "looking like a whole barn afire." We see the whole family grouped around it for the Saturday night song service. With what beauty and tenderness the old hymns came home to our hearts! What an ideal preparation for the wonderful Sunday, which struck the spiritual high water mark for us all. Bishop McConnell's practical sermon on "The Right Placing of the Light" meant a heart-searching to many of us. The beautiful vesper service touched the very deeps of the spirit. Another of Dr. Merrill's scholarly talks on "Our Religion in the Terms of Modern Thought" brought conceptions of our faith down to rock foundation in a way satisfying to mind and soul. And in between these public services came that most precious of con

ference privileges, the chance for quiet self-communing and for talks with friends.

Perhaps we can best express our practhought of the conference and its tical bearing on our lives in the words of one of the girls, who exclaimed as she entered the auditorium, "Oh, dear, only four more days to get better in!" How soon those days slipped away from us! Before we realized it we were listening to Dr. Knight's closing message. As he urged us to guard the inspiration of the mountains as the motive power of the winter's activity, did not our hearts burn within us! Was there one who did not breathe the prayer that the joys, the enlightenment and the deeper experiences of these happy days might contribute in a most vital way to the upbuilding of every Association represented!

A

LUCIANA BUSHEE LOVE.

A New

Western Conference CROSS the plains scorching under the August sun, came students from Texas, South Dakota, Kansas and the States that lie between. Up, up, up through the canyons they came, 352 of them, into Estes Park, the most beautiful spot in the Colorado Rockies. Many a heart beat faster at 7,500 feet above sea level, not alone because of the altitude, but because of the magnitude of the scene, as the sun artfully pointed out away across the moraine peak after peak streaked with snow, and revealed the greatness of God's work in nature. "What art man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?" sprang to the lips of one delegate after another. "One cannot be mean here; all pettiness must vanish."

And so it was, even on the first day that the girls from the eighty-nine

schools and colleges from the North Central, West Central, South Central Field and Texas, lived together as a united family. Distances were great, and in consequence promptness became one of the great virtues of the One of the prettiest

conference.

sights of the day was in the early

morning when, at the call to breakfast, the campus, previously deserted, suddenly became alive, as out from each tent door came girl after girl, turning to catch the morning lights and shadows as she hurried on gaily to the dining hall. One always had to stop and look up. "I did not know one could be so uplifted anywhere," said one girl rather shyly, and another, "Why can some people live in a place like this when I have to live in the plains?"

It was not all scenery by any means, for the Bible and Mission study. classes followed one another just as in all the other conferences. The fifty members of the "Out-of-Doors in the Bible" class sat under the pine trees and when, in full view of the mountains, they heard a story of how a woman who was an ambitious mountain climber had insisted upon starting up Long's Peak despite the objections of the guide, and in consequence had lost her life, trying to gain one's ideal in life depending on one's strength

alone seemed more futile than ever before.

Dr. Merrill's course on the "Problems of Faith," and Dr. Knight's wonderful sermon on "Prayer" changed and illumined the life of many a girl. The practical applications of Christian living were freely discussed by the delegation leaders and their conclusions were passed on by them to every girl in the conference.

The needs of the whole round world were felt many times, as when the story of the Mohonk Conference was presented by those who had actually been there and who enlivened their reports with many an anecdote and personal experience. One evening the commission service for Miss Jane

Ward took place, and she told of the new work awaiting her in China.

The camp fire was found to be the place of all others around which to sing and cheer, and after a long tramp to the Beaver Dams it was the pleasantest and most restful way of spending an evening.

After such a ten days together, when the meaning of membership in the Association had come to mean nothing less than Christ's purpose for us ruling our lives, one and all resolved not to be guilty of the "Sin of Indifference" against which Bishop Thomas of Wyoming warned us at the closing session, and when the monotony of daily living again tries to lay hold upon us, we will all turn our eyes once again to the mountains and say, "I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, where cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord."

E

The Central
City Conference

VEN, happy, sane, profitable— these are some of the descriptive words frequently heard during the days the conference was in progress, and readily returning to mind as we view it in retrospect.

To any who have ever been there the very name Lake Geneva seems charmed, so charged with cherished impressions have our memories thereof become. We go back, some of us annually, or nearly so, wondering, perhaps, "Shall I still feel it, that haunting charm which I felt so keenly years ago when I came here first?" And then the little steamer, touching at two or three landing-places first. rounds the remembered point, and presently Yerkes Observatory comes into view, the sight to be followed soon by the rows of orderly tents making the abodes of the busy little community of which we become a part for ten days.

If we missed attendance at Geneva last year, we enjoyed this year for the first time the doubled capacity of the dining-hall, the splendidly efficient way in which we-nearly 650 strongwere fed, and the greatly increased facility in carrying on the program, since double serving of meals is no longer necessary.

This year showed us other changes, notably in the list of speakers and class and council leaders. But though we missed some of our former friends, we enjoyed the enlargement of acquaintance which this bringing in of new people affords. And we always feel a sense of great confidence that we may trust the conference department to furnish us men and women who have something valuable in both head and heart to impart to us.

It was gratifying to see the seriousness with which the girls took the conference as a whole. Not only were the enrollments in both Bible and mission study classes excellent, but the attendance was found to be well sustained throughout; while the attentiveness displayed on receptive faces at the platform meetings, addressed by Dr. Ganfield of Carroll College, and Dr. Adams of Champaign, Ill., was no less noteworthy. The two evening rallies, one when our national work was presented by Miss Geary at a full meeting, which the delegations themselves had opened with songs and calls, and the other in the interest of the foreign work, demonstrated that the movement as a whole has a very real grip upon our membership.

We must not omit to mention the recreational features of the conference. Perhaps the point that elicited most commendation was that too much had not been planned beforehand. A somewhat freer afternoon schedule was a genuine rest to many. And the unusual rather than usual Association Day program was a delight to all. "Dignified, attractive, short, and Christian! The best Association Day I ever attended," was the comment of one who has attended

many of these occasions, both at Geneva and elsewhere. The presentation by North Central Field of a miniature pageant, representing the spirit of womanhood and the Association's contribution to her expression, was a fitting and beautiful climax to the day.

The music of the entire time deserves special mention, so acceptably was it directed by Miss Fuller of Indianapolis. Though the song festival did not materialize exactly as originally planned, Miss Fuller succeeded in assembling some very talented young people, and the evening's program was thoroughly enjoyed.

But most of all must we rejoice in the fact that it was the import of the Sunday gatherings, the two sermons. by Dr. Gardner, and the simultaneous afternoon meetings, with the intimate, searching talks by Miss Simms and Miss Wilson, which made the deepest impression. With such experiences to recall, there can be no hesitation in the assent we give when asked of the ultimate profitableness of this bit of time. when we heard and accepted the invitation to "come apart awhile, and rest," in God's out of doors.

A

ALICE REBECCA MARSH.

The Central
Student Conference

CLEAR, quiet lake in an unbroken circle of wooded hills, a pier where row-boats, sailboats and canoes are endlessly rocking, a slope bearing in large white stones the letters Y. W. C. A., and just above this a large, low building from which earlier comers rush to greet you this is the first impression of Geneva. of Geneva. Then the hurry and excitement begins-then come the bewildered inquiries of those visiting the camp for the first time, the quick, staccato cries of reunited friends, the bumping of trunks on the pier, and the crowds about the Administration Building.