The Concordance and General Index to the new Christian Science Hymnal is to be ready shortly. Inasmuch as many new hymns have been added to the Hymnal the Concordance will be found to be of great assistance in choosing hymns to fit certain subjects or to meet a specific need.

Endeavor has been made to select such key words as will give the most appropriate context, in order that users of the Concordance may easily recall familiar passages and readily locate them. The Concordance to the Hymnal contains a General Index merging and supplementing all the Indexes in the Hymnal except that of Tempo Indications. This leaves room in the Hymnal itself for indexes easier of consultation by the average user.

The Concordance has 192 pages and is to be supplied in bindings similar to the regular cloth and de luxe editions of the Hymnal.

In the August 9 issue of The Christian Science Monitor there appeared an article reprinted from the Kingsport Times, Tennessee, with reference to our Hymnal. This article gave interesting statistics regarding the material used in the make-up of the book, and we are repeating these for the benefit of those who may not have read the reprint in the Monitor.

The music plates for the 640 pages of the Hymnal were prepared in Boston and all of the type for the plates was set by hand. The Hymnal was printed in Tennessee at Kingsport, and the order for 410,000 books is the largest known single order of hymnals ever placed with a single firm. The printing commenced June 15 with the operation of five large perfecting presses running twenty hours a day, and was completed approximately two months later.

A total of 325 tons of paper, 40,240 yards of book cloth, 39,000 yards of headbands, 7 tons of end paper material, 50 tons of cover board, 210,000 yards of muslin reënforcement for the backs of the books, and 2,280,000 yards of thread were used. Probably the most outstanding part of the manufacturing process was the use of more than 500,000 sheets of the 22-carat gold for the stamping on the clothbound edition and for gilding the edges and stamping the deluxe edition.

A full-page article with illustrations dealing with the contents of the Hymnal is to appear in the Monitor August 29.

On Wednesday evening, September 7, after the service in The Mother Church, those of the congregation who desire to remain to participate in the singing of hymns from the new Hymnal will be invited to do so. The presiding Reader will announce at the meeting that a brief interval will elapse following the service before the singing begins. On succeeding Wednesday evenings for a time similar opportunities will be afforded the congregation to familiarize themselves with the new hymns.

The builders of the new Publishing House were happy to obtain a commodious section of the Boston & Albany railroad yards, a few hundred feet from the building site, in which they could receive lumber, steel, et cetera, and also build their wooden forms for the concrete work. In this congested district of Boston there is little vacant land. At the railroad yard one observes a long shed in which are piles of lumber; also various machinery, et cetera, protected by canvas. Adjacent on a railroad track a derrick on a moving platform picks up discriminatingly from the excelsior in which they are packed the blocks of limestone in one of the long line of box cars near by, and deposits them on a waiting truck. On the truck they are securely tied with rope to prevent their moving while being conveyed the short distance to the building site. The larger blocks of limestone are conveyed from the box cars to the truck, and form the truck again on to a wooden platform which swings form four ropes fastened by a noose to the derrick. The smaller blocks can be attached directly to the derrick cable.

Adjacent to a rolling Boston & Albany gantry crane are long lines of box cars on the sidings; on the one side are cars containing limestone, and on the other are those containing the structural steel beams. Men are sorting out the limestone blocks which are required first by the stone setters; and a heavy truck backs in one hundred feet beyond the crane, ready to pick up the steel beams already selected as the next to be used. Easily the crane slides along in order that the aid of pulleys may be had in picking up and loading the steel.

At the building itself the scene of activity is accompanied by the hum of hammering, the whistles of the derrick bosses, the riveting of the structural steel in Section "A," the setting of the stone, and the moving of brick in Section "B." It is music to the worker, and music to those who have contributed; music too to the Publishing Society employees who in less than a year's time will be comfortably settled in their new home and able to do their work under right conditions. The wooden staging or platform surrounding three sides of Section "B" used by the stone setters is now at the first floor ceiling. It is moved upward by hand-operated windlasses placed at intervals on the interior and outside of the platform. At the second story level angle irons are placed against the concrete walls to carry the larger part of the weight of the stone on the surface of the second story, and angle irons will again be used at the third story.

Section "A," unlike Section "B," is of structural steel, for the reason that it rises eleven stories in height, the eleventh story being the penthouse or room for elevator machinery and so on; and the framework is to transmit the load received from floors and walls down to the foundation through a system of floor beams, girders, and columns. The entire steel structure will be concealed within the walls and floors of the finished building. Twenty-three hundred tons of steel is estimated as the requirement. The steel shapes to be used are rolled from ingots in a rolling mill at Homestead, Pennsylvania, and shipped down the river on barges to the fabricating plant where drawings prepared from the architect's plans are used as guides for finishing these steel beams. Here the holes are punched, ends planed if need be, connections prepared, and the whole made ready for erection on the building site. All beams are marked as a guide to the builders. At the time this contract was released the rolling mill and the fabricating shop had very little work, most of the force being unemployed and at home. Thus the happiness felt by contractors and others directly interested in the new building is spread beyond the immediate bounds of the project into many homes.