lems considered concretely are of value to

Crowds

This book is original in the extreme. The author looks at life as it is made up of its hundreds and hundreds of striving people, with a satiric and unique point of view. There is nothing at all pretentious or pedantic; yet this story that was related somewhere about it is true:

Two little boys stood at the source of a river which went tumbling into its outlet. The smallest one said to his brother, "Where does the river come from?"

"Oh, from away up there," came the reply, a chubby short finger pointing upstream. "Yes, I know, but how far up there!" persisted small brother.

Big brother looked portentously grave, and he wrinkled his baby brow and replied with all the wonderful truth and poetry of childhood:

"Away beyond to-morrow's morning, and to-morrow's morning, and to-morrow's morning!"

That is exactly true of this book. The author's mind has gone away back and back to the sources of things. And his ideas come tumbling out with an impetuosity and variety which causes the reader to prefer to pick it up now and again, rather than to sit and read it continuously through.

That is, in fact, another comfortable thing about it-that it is a "pick-up book," a book that can be read in snatches, and while it makes one think, yet does not necessarily involve close attention.

For an entertaining point of view on the industrial, political and some of the religious questions of the day, it is to be recommended.

Artificial Flower Makerst

This book describes the result of an investigation made by the committee on Women's Work of the Russell Sage Foundation, and is the second in a series of studies of the conditions of women's work in important trades in New York City. The facts discovered are, nevertheless, national in their significance, as New York produces three-fourths of all the artificial flowers made in the United States, and the development of the industry in any other section of the country depends on the labor standards maintained in New York. It involves, moreover, in common with other industrial problems, such questions as seasonal work, child labor, lack of skill, and the home-work system. And these prob

Crowds, by Gerald Stanly Lee. Doubleday, Page & Company. $1.35

† Artificial Flower Makers, by Mary Van Kleeck. Survey Associates, New York. $1.50.

other conditions. The illustrations are very enlightening and the tables are of value to any social worker.

The Church and the Young Man's Game*

When the millions of dollars of capital invested is represented by our church edifices, the idea of allowing them to stand vacant and useless six-sevenths of the time does not appeal to the business spirit of our age as a very wise investment.

The author is president and treasurer of the National Indoor Game Association, of which E. B. De Groot of the Playground Association of Chicago; Prof. John H. Gray, instructor in political economy in the University of Minnesota; Dr. Graham Taylor of the Chicago Commons, and Judge Harry Olson, are members. It is written in the belief that if pastors will co-operate with the Indoor Game Association they will be effectually assisting in forcing unscrupulous game-room keepers either out of business or into higher ideals of conducting it.

The book gives instances of churches where this co-operation has been successfully tried, both for girls and boys.

Cui Bonot

This is an intensely interesting small book which deals in an abbreviated fashion with the religions and philosophies of the world in comparison with Christianity. In epitomizing the other world beliefs the aim of the author is not destructive, but rather, taking the best each offers, he shows that Christianity has more to give as essentially a religion of hope, as opposed to stoicism, mysticism, or rationalism. In consequence of its hope and its innate power over the individual life it has therefore an ever-increasing influence for civilization, and an unmeasurable chance for growth, at the present unrealized.

*The Church and the Young Man's Game, by F. J. Milnes. George H. Doran. New York. 75 cents. † Cui Boni, by Harwood Huntington. Longmans, Green & Company, New York City. $1.00.

All life will flash into beauty, and tower into greatness, and be smoothed out to easiness, and the crooked things be made straight and the rough places plain, and the familiar and trite be invested with "the glory and the freshness of a dream." if in all we are consciously serving the Lord.Ian Maclaren.

Applied Conference Spirit

What are we going to do with our conference memories? Put them away just as memories wrapped in the scent of pine-needles? If the cover-picture this month has led us through its tree-portals into the essence of our own conference experience, what are we going to do about it, after thinking wistfully of those unbelievably perfect days?

It has been said of the headquarters building, "We must engender a community here, the like of which doesn't exist." That is exactly what was done in eleven out-door places this summer and we all came away wondering why such a community doesn't exist!

A secretary was overheard the other day answering the old-fashioned charge that a conference is not normal life. "But now really," she reasoned, "why not? Isn't it the wisest possible balance of normal hours, normal sleep, normal study, normal fun? Why shouldn't it after all be transplantable! For instance, if in a college community the Association girls, by genuinely letting in the spirit of freedom, democracy, and open-mindedness, produced one-tenth the results of a ten-day summer conference, think what they could mean to the college!" It is not a vague case of delegates in general, but of one and one. Such and such a person may be said to be a genius of the spirit-day in and day out seeing beyond the obvious, having "V. V.'s eyes" of faith in the souls people have not, but can have; sensitive to all spiritual values, so that the unseen things are truly more real than the seen; seeing "earth crammed with heaven and every common bush aflame with God." It is a quality often developed from conference experience. It was once said of such a person, "Going off for a week-end trip with her is more like going to a

summer conference than anything I know. You always come back rested by sheer good fun, but more than that, more conscious of the things that matter' than when you went."

The Highest Work

says

"In a time when men are explaining prayer away with boldness,' the Call to Prayer, issued by the Foreign Department to the Association world. But happily, as this call goes on to say, there is an opposing tendency, equally true. "We are at the precise moment when psychological and religious science have just joined hands to make the religious life their favorite study," says Sabatier in a book published a few months ago; and we turn from this to read in timely verification the even more recent minutes of that famous meeting of the British Scientists' Association, and to find its distinguished president bowing before divine mystery in "the assertion that life introduces something incalculable and purposeful amid the laws of physics, thus distinctly supplementing those laws and we are deaf and blind to the imminent grandeur around us unless we have insight to recognize in the woven fabric of existence the ever-growing garment of a transcendent God."

And so, in the infinite battle for truth, some may be explaining prayer away, but others are explaining it back again, as prayer will always have to be reinterpreted till we look no longer through a glass darkly. And back from the front of conflict, where men fearlessly and hard-headedly question the reasonableness of this tangible communion, comes the great reaffirmation-"we do more by praying than by working."

A familiar Association institution, the World's Week of Prayer, set apart annually by the World's Committee in

London in faith that it will actually achieve impetus for the world-wide Association, especially in the pioneer places, is once more as we enter it, in danger of sacrilege. Nor does this speak too strongly. Is not an indifferent and unintelligent observance of it worse than none at all? It were a superhumanly difficult thing to expect of our two hundred and eighty thousand members the sort of devotion to these seven days that they claim. But what a superhumanly wonderful thing were even half of these thou

sands to enter that week with a measure of Christ's own belief in the possibilities of prayer. "Beyond the Natural Order" it would perhaps be, but beyond the natural order we dare to reach, if we are to bring up the level in an everyday indifferent world. A little book of this title, by Nolan R. Best, which is being widely read among Association people, might serve as a handbook for those who want to approach November 9-15 in the great spirit which the week needs. Its chapters on The Dynamics and the Rationalities of Prayer are freshening the faith of those who for years have known prayer as energy actually released and at work, and are suggesting new and startlingly reasonable arguments for the questioning minds of others who are perhaps searching for the first time into an understanding of prayer and its use. Prayer "the highest work," another presentday writer calls it. In all ways but this we are impotent to work God's will for the girls of the world, but this way lies power unlimited.

For the last two or three years the summons to prayer has laid particular stress on the need of study into foreign conditions and needs: now it can be assumed that this is fully understood, and it is perhaps time for reemphasis of the deepest meaning of the week-the reality of prayer.

Conceive of what it could mean if in this spirit-hearts fired with belief in prayer's achieving force, minds

The Geneva Accident

It has seemed best to the department of conventions and conferences to make a statement in THE AssoCIATION MONTHLY of the accident at the Central Student Conference at Lake Geneva which caused the death of three girls by drowning, on August 28. The girls were members of the delegation from Central College, Pella, Iowa. Two of them, however, were not students in the college, one being a city librarian and the other a teacher. In order to have this report as accurate as possible the summary of the inquiry which was made by Judge J. F. Lyon of Williams Bay follows:

The young ladies, Miss Lucy King, Miss Cornelia DeGeus, Miss Della King and Miss Gertrude Gezel, had rowed from the camp to the dock at Williams Bay, about a mile and a half from the camp, through slightly rough water, without difficulty. They started to return in calm water without realizing that out in the lake the wind had increased and was blowing terrifically, and that an awful sea was rolling, in which no rowboat could live. Without thought of danger, they rowed into this heavy sea; the waves washed over the boat, swamping it, and throwing the young ladies into the water. None of them could swim; and only Miss Lucy King was able to

reach the boat; she was rescued an hour later.

The conference leaders had placed in the hands of each delegate a circular containing the following: "Warning: Do not go outside the bay unless you can swim," and at the first platform meeting the delegates were carefully warned to use the utmost care upon the water and carefully to observe all regulations imposed by the boatmen.

The camp management maintains a boat crew of five capable, experienced, alert men of sound judgment, a life squad during bathing hours, and a pulmotor.

Everything possible was done by the conference leaders and the camp management for the rescued girl; the parents and friends of the young ladies were promptly notified and given every assistance possible; every attempt was made to recover the lost bodies, and a careful investigation has been made of the whole matter.

In the light of all the care and precaution, it is difficult to see what more could have been done. The record of thirty

years without accident testifies to the carefulness of the management, including all its employes.

can

If further precautionary measures be devised, in the light of this sad accident, I am sure from a knowledge of the policy and spirit of the conference leaders and of the camp management, that such measures will be put into operation.

(Signed) JAY F. LYON.

The news of the accident reached the camp about 6 P.M., and as a result of a conference of the leaders held shortly afterward, it was decided to continue the program for the evening platform meeting practically as it had been planned. At the opening of the service Dr. Harris Franklin Rall, rep

resenting the leaders, in a sympathetic and marvelous way told of what had happened, promising that every bit of information would be shared with them and asking for their prayers and co-operation every step of the way. The response given was such as only a body of Christian young women with a common purpose could give, and is voiced in the following prayer, written spontaneously by a member of the University of Minnesota delegation:

Our hearts are glad before Thee, O Lord, to-day, glad with a gladness the more poignant since it is the blossom of the dark plant of yesterday!

Not as those who forget, dear Master, do we come before Thee, but in the consciousness of the perfect realization of Christ-control into which our attempted self-control has passed. Our hearts and our lips are quietly glad like the evening sunset on our own Geneva hilltops.

For deliverance from fevered questionings and imaginings, dear Lord, we thank Thee!

We are infinitely grateful that those to whom the experience of yesterday has come for the first time have met it with strength and quiet assurance.

To none of us will death ever be the same again, since we have viewed it through the eyes of Jesus Christ and have more fully comprehended the joy with which he proclaimed himself

the Resurrection and the Life!

In the name of our master, Christ, whose infinite peace we share in a quickened consciousness of his tender love, we pledge anew a tested faith, to Thee, our Lord and God. Amen.

A Morning Study Class

Those who found it possible to come together during the last Lenten. season for Miss Charlotte H. Adams' course in the early prophets have requested that this class be continued for another year.

This course of eight lessons was the first work undertaken by the Associates of the National Training School. As several of the members wished particularly for a better insight into the work for young women and girls which the National Board is furthering, the course for 19131914 will be more comprehensive. It is as follows: November 3, 11:00 A.M.-The National Board, Its Organization, Headquarters and Field. November 10, 17, and 24, December 1, 8, and 15-Bible Study, The Social Teachings of Jesus, Miss Adams. The Mondays of January and February up to Lent will be occupied with the presentation of various aspects of Asso