l."

[Sidenote: How the Work Grows]

Wherever earnest effort has been put forth, the progress of the work has
been most encouraging. As an illustration of this, when Dr. H. A.
Schauffler some twenty years ago began his pioneer missionary work among
the 25,000 Bohemians of Cleveland, he could not learn of any
fellow-laborers in the Slavic field except a Bohemian theological
student in New York, a Bohemian Reformed Church pastor in Iowa,
and another in Texas. But in 1905 there met in Chicago an
Interdenominational Conference of Slavic missionaries and pastors, and
that gathering comprised no less than 103 Slavic workers, of whom
sixty-four were pastors and preachers, fourteen women missionaries, and
twenty-five missionary students; while the conference represented
forty-nine churches in thirteen states, and five evangelical
denominations. Mr. Ives says truly: "It has been forever established
that foreigners are as convertible as our own people, that in many
instances their faith is more pure and evangelical than the American
type, that their lives are transformed by its power to an extent that
sometimes puts the American Christian to shame, that their children are
easily gathered into Sunday-schools, their young people into Endeavor
Societies, and their men and women into prayer-meetings, where in many
different tongues they yet speak and pray in the language of Canaan. The
immigration problem is not the same menace that it was. A mighty solvent
has been found."

[Sidenote: Inspiring Difficulties]

There is no escaping the fact that a prodigious amount of difficult
lifting must be done in order to elevate the aliens to the American
social and religious level. But the very vastness of the home mission
task is inspiring rather than discouraging to heroic souls. As someone
says, "The American loves a tough job." Difficulties will not hinder him
a moment when once he is moved with the divine impulse, sees the thing
to be done, and sets himself with God's help to do it. Present
conditions call to mind that passage in "Alice in Wonderland," where by
the seashore

The walrus and the carpenter were walking hand in hand,
And wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.
"If seven maids with seven mops, swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the walrus said, "that they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.

[Sidenote: A Hopeful, not Hopeless Task]

It must be con