ON JUNE the 14th, there passed from our midst one who throughout her life employed her personal influence and remarkable power of inspiring others in the promotion of the great ideal of purity of life. As a young woman Mary Elizabeth Townsend saw the need of some organization for women and girls that should pledge its members to this ideal, and she was only about twenty-four years old when the idea of the Girls’ Friendly Society took shape in her mind. At that time she was living with her husband in a village on a small but thickly populated heath in Hampshire, and it was in this village that she began her work amongst girls which eventually led to the foundation of the Society. Her experience gained from this work convinced her of the need of an organized association for the upholding of the purity of Christian maidenhood, based upon the foundation of the English Church. . . The secret of the success that attended her efforts is to be found in the fact that the religious aspect of the work was always first in her mind. As the Society grew and developed, it necessarily became responsible for many and varied activities, but its foundress and first president never allowed it to degenerate into an organization that thought only of the social well-being of its members. . .

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