The following correspondence is given in warning to parents and their girls growing up to womanhood; many of whom go out needlessly into the world where the devil's snares abound, and in which inexperienced, unsuspecting young people are, alas, but too easily caught, unless well-armed with the armor of God.-[Ed.

The Home School for Girls

… The dear girls sheltered in Christian homes, with godly influences surrounding them, cannot realize what it means to be brought up in Christless homes, where the name of our Lord is blasphemed and the Bible scoffed at. "The dark places of the earth" are truly "the habitations of cruelty," and such are many of the homes these poor girls have come from-many of them thrown upon the world in childhood; some coming from orphanages; others with divorced parents; some with mothers whose mouths are "full of cursing and bitterness."

A few have left good homes in the country for the city's allurements; worked a short time, then becoming discouraged, and envious of the fine apparel of their companions already in the paths of sin, have followed in the steps that "take hold on hell" (Prov. 5:5).

All the girls sent here have broken the State laws, and are sentenced for indefinite periods, according to their offence and their conduct while in the School. When their training is finished, which is completed in eighteen months, they are returned to their parents or sent to different homes in the State, where their employers are required to keep strict watch over them, and pay the State the wages they earn-for they are wards of the State until twenty-one.

New cottages are erected every year, and there are girls to fill them before they are ready for occupancy. The heads of the Institution are beginning to wonder what will be the end of these things, as the expense is enormous.

In talking to these poor girls, it soon comes out that the company they have been keeping has been their ruin. The dance halls also, and "movies," where brute force masquerades as bravery, and the seventh commandment (given by God as the foundation of the home and the nation) is held up to ridicule as a theme for mirth.

How often our own young people chafe at the restraints imposed upon them by prudent parents. If they could behold the misery and bodily sufferings here in this Home, and read some of the heart-rending letters written by the poor girls, how they would thank the blessed Lord for His care over them, and the teaching of His precious Word where the narrow, but good way is so plainly marked out. He who knows the end from the beginning has not failed to warn us repeatedly that bitter sorrow will come to those who leave the path of virtue-leave the safe influence and protection of their home, like Dinah, who "went out to see the daughters of the land," with its fearful consequences. How bitterly even professed Christians have suffered from these ungodly associations!

One of the supervisors asked what we thought was the cause of so many girls "going wrong." We replied, "If the Bible is rejected as the rule of life, hell laughed at as a bogey, what standard of purity remains?"

Oh, let parents keep a godly control over their children, watch over them, and pray fervently that they may be kept safely through these perilous times.

One evening I read "The California Miner" to some of the girls; some wept, and asked if I had any more like that. Remember these poor girls in your prayers, that some, like the poor woman at the well of Sychar, may find Him who, while leading them to see the error of their ways, will give them to drink of the water of life.