cola and snuff, sleeping with open windows and taking more exercise. A mother came to one of the Guardians to say "I want to buy some of them pretty beads to give my girl, so she will keep the house nice like the other girls;" and another, "That Indian band sho' has helped Mary, she can even beat me making bread."

So active have been some of the women and girls for making their homes and yards more attractive that Mrs. L. writes, "They can't nobody look at my flower yard now without smiling." Clean-up campaigns, the distribution of flower seed, garden contests and stereopticon lectures have done much toward making "two flowers grow where one only grew."

Christmas was a glad time in this part of the world. Three hundred beautifully dressed baby dolls, coming from college Association girls, produced enough sunshine to last until "Santa" comes this way again. Even the mothers begged for "a baby," while the little boys offered their horns, drums and even firecrackers "fer jest one baby doll." There is something pathetically sweet about their love for a doll. "Are you the lady what paints?" says a dear little four-year-old, hold

ing up her wrinkled, dirty rag doll to one of the secretaries. "Well, pease put a new face on my baby, I'se kissed dis face off."

Some of the clubs have helped to furnish their own club rooms, equip play grounds and establish "loan closets," (sheets, towels, hotwater bottles, ice-caps, to be used for the sick where there are no trained nurses), but at present the absorbing interest is the hemming of towels, napkins and bags for use at Sunny Slope Camp, Tryon, N. C., and Blue Ridge. So the interests of our club members widen.

Many Tomato Clubs are being organized, which will be followed in the fall by canning demonstrations and public exhibits.

A father in one of our villages said, "That club has been just the thing for A-, it's making her want better things. She wants a better house, a better yard, and she won't let none of us rest until she gets it." If our clubs everywhere can mean just that,-a desire for better things, so strong that "she won't be satisfied until she gets it," then will the true Association spirit manifest itself, as our girls shall demonstrate that growth means service.

“I

THOUGHT God lived in this place and that if I came I might find him here," the answer given by a Slav student in a Swiss university on being asked what had first made her come to the "foyer," gives us at once a picture of a great need and how it is being met.

In five university centers in Switzerland, Zürich, Berne, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, Geneva, there exists in close proximity to the university a "foyer' or club house for students. These foyers are under the auspices of the World's Student Christian Federation and the Swiss Student Christian Movement, and in charge of each is a secretary who devotes all her time to the activities which gather round it. Do not be misled at the mention of a "club house" into thinking that these foyers correspond in any way in size and luxuriance to some of the sorority houses to be found in the life of American colleges. They consist usually of one or two, or more, simple rooms made attractive and comfortable, where the girls may go between lectures at the university and rest or read or write, and where they may find friends. Students may become members on payment of a small fee.

The situation in these cosmopolitan

non-residential universities of Switzerland creates the need for some such place as a foyer. The large majority of the students in these cities are foreigners-mostly from southeastern Europe, some from America or England. In Geneva the percentage of foreign students is no less than eightytwo; in Zürich it is eighty; in other cities the numbers, though smaller, are very considerable. Most of these girls are living in lodgings, often in great poverty. One is surprised to see

* Miss Carswell was formerly one of the traveling secretaries for the British Student Movement.

the way in which many of these Russian and other Slav students, having left their own countries for one reason or another, and come to Switzerland, live during their student days in the direst poverty. Often four or five of them will live in one room, sharing their fire, their food (which often consists of but one meal a day), their beds, their books and even their clothes. The universities, although they have opened their doors to women students, do not as a rule provide much accommodation for them in the university building in the way of rest ur reading rooms.

Merely from the point of view of their physical well-being the foyer in these centers is meeting a real need in the lives of the women students. They come from far, without a knowledge of the city, sometimes without a knowledge of the language, and often with no preparations made beforehand. Where are they to live? The foyer secretary is in possession of a list of lodgings suitable in price and location with which she is personally acquainted and from which she can help them to choose their home.

Living under such conditions, and in many cases without the background of a training and a discipline which leads to regular habits and regular times for eating, sleeping and working, is not conducive to the maintenance of very high standards of mental and physical health. Some lectures are given at the foyer on hygiene and health subjects; expeditions are planned in the summer to the country or to the mountains to encourage the girls to take exercise and recreation; and in cases of sickness the foyer friends are always ready to do all in their power to help a girl and to see her through. It makes a real difference to them, too, to know that

every afternoon they will find at the foyer a welcome and a cup of tea; and that if their own income that week forbids the luxury of a fire at home, they can count on a share of the foyer fire along with pleasant company.

Another bit of real help that the Student Christian Association is able to give these girls is in providing them with the means of learning languages other than their own. Many a day Many a day you may walk through the foyer looking in vain for a quiet corner-every one will be occupied by two students, one giving the other a lesson in English or French or German or Italian. No educational work is done directly by the Association, but in this way a meeting place and a means of interchange are provided-thus helping students on the one hand to get their language lessons more easily and cheaply than elsewhere, and on the other, helping those who need to increase their income by teaching while they study.

There is, however, a deeper need to be met in the lives of these women students. That girl came because in

her heart she was seeking God. Amongst them are those who, having lost faith in their own church, have discovered no other foundation on which to build; those who are avowed atheists, those who throw religion aside altogether, denying the possibility for modern up-to-date twentieth century students of a belief in God and Jesus Christ, and those, too, who are eagerly seeking satisfaction for their soul's hunger, but who yet cannot acknowledge Christ. Their spiritual needs are immense. The rows of Bibles for use in Bible study circles and of other books in the foyer book shelves, the syllabus of meetings and lectures on the foyer notice board, the collection of periodicals scattered through the foyer rooms, all these in four or five different languages, are some of the outward and visible signs of the spiritual activities of the foyer.

Students whose revolt from their church has landed them without faith in God can find there at work an organization which is connected with no church and which admits members of any or of none, and they are forced to revise their ideas; those who have

doubted the power of Jesus Christ in the life of the student to-day find in that place a spirit of love and of power and of friendship which they themselves say could never come from any human source; and some even hear there for the first time the name of the Saviour of the world.

It is a spiritual aim which pervades every bit of this work. All that is done there through friendship with the girls and helping them in the hundreds of ways a friend can is done with the desire to bring these students to understand Christ's word, "Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you friends," and to lead them on into friendship with him who alone can satisfy all their longing and all their need.

The foyer work is playing a large part in realizing the aims of the World's Student Christian Federation. In a small way it is the beginning of the breaking down of national differences. Students of different nations meet in friendly intercourse and come to understand each other in a way that cannot fail to bring forth fruit in future days.

Again, through the student life of Switzerland, there is given the opportunity of influencing the life of the nations of southeastern Europe. To these lands some students have returned after studying abroad to tell the tale that religion is worn out and Christianity is out-of-date and without power. They have seen only the worst side of life in

the foreign cities they have visited. Now when they come into contact with these groups of people gathered round the life of the foyer they have a different tale to tell, and even if they do not go home to their own lands convinced Christians they have at least something to say about the student life of the lands they visit which reflects no longer dishonor on the name of Christ. And those who have been won have the splendid opportunity of carrying the message back to their own nation.

The influence is even more farreaching than that. A considerable percentage of the immigrants entering the United States in any year comes from the lands of southeaster Europe; they are pouring in in their