f persons ought we to be, in
all holy conversation and godliness."

My dear sisters, it now devolves upon me to resign the office
necessity rather than choice compelled me to accept, and I feel that
in so doing, I shall best promote the interests of the Association.
I thank you for your kind forbearance toward my short comings, which
have been many. I regret that I have served you so inefficiently, and
hope the better offices of the succeeding year may tend to the greater
promotion of the holy objects of your Association. And while we meet
together, and pray together, and together wait for the harvest, may we
be bound together in the love of Christ, and each succeeding year add
new supplies of grace.

Yours, affectionately, in Christ,

A. S. Hanna.

Improvement of Time

There is nothing more necessary for our future welfare than the
improvement of time. Our time is too valuable to be spent in idleness.
If we wish to be respected, we must be industrious; and to be
industrious we must know how to value our time. Every moment must
be spent as we should wish it had been when we come to years of
discretion. There are many things that we can busy ourselves in doing
that will fill up a few leisure moments, and perhaps it will do some
good. If we are poor, we can relieve our parents in trying to assist
them in the daily labors and toils of life, for hard must be the lot
of that toil-worn father, and care-worn mother, who have a numerous
family to maintain by their daily labor, all careless and indifferent
of their hardships and fatigues. If we are rich, we can make those
happy around us by the thousand nameless attentions which the hand of
industry alone can supply. Therefore, whatever our situation in life
may be, the good improvement of our time will not only tend to promote
our usefulness, but our happiness. Take for instance a man who has
indulged in habits of indolence from his childhood, and see what it
has brought him to. He has been in the habit of lounging about
the streets unemployed, or perhaps watching for opportunities for
mischief; step by step he descends in his moral degradation; vice
succeeds folly, till a dark catalogue of crimes brings him to a
drunkard's grave. State prison, or the gallows. While, on the other
hand, take a man who has been accustomed to labor and toil for
his daily food, and see how much more he is respected, and what a
difference there is in the lives of those two men. The on