We spent the first week at T'ang-feng, where we have eight church members and some probationers. I had fifteen children who found their way to me every day, and they used their time so well that they learned the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, a little prayer, and a form of grace. When the assistant told me that in one family the mother did not buy the gods according to custom at this time, because when the peddler came around, her little boy of ten repeated the first Commandment and my explanation, I felt that the time had been well spent. "Of course," she said to the teacher, "I didn't want them if they were false." Other parents were also pleased with the teachings, and I was very happy in the cordial love of the children.

We have one interesting old member here. She is eighty-one, but her unimpaired faculties and bright, clear ways make her seem but about sixty. The old women say so often, "It is a good doctrine; what you say is true, but it is so hard to change when you are old." We had a good many inquirers, and also have the joy of knowing that some who had fallen away were brought back by our teachings.

Some of our English friends very kindly lent us their magic lantern. We found it a great help, and used it here three times. In the Old Testament they were specially impressed with the spirit Joseph manifested toward his brethren. One old lady said, "We Chinese don't forgive like that." The scenes in the life of Christ were followed with the closest interest.

We began the second week by going to my cook's village. He is the only Christian there, so I felt we had much to do. His family have never opposed him, but, from what he tells me, have cared but little before for the truth. I had let him go before us three or four days; so when the family bought the gate and kitchen gods, which the heathen all paste up the last day of the year, he persuaded them to sell the pictures to him. He told me afterward, with a mischievous laugh, "I tore them up and burnt them." There will be no idols in that house this year; for if they are not set up on the first day, they will not be until the next New Year's Day.

One afternoon, as I told a group of God's great love for his children, one woman caught my hand and whispered so eagerly, "Would He be pleased if I took down my 'Heaven and Earth' (a god) and burnt it?" I said: "That is the first step, to put away all your other gods. Then he will surely teach you." The second day, as on the first, the room was packed to overflowing. Of course many had come to see the foreigner, but even among those, interest in the bearer was soon lost in the message. Mrs. Chang and I talked until lips and tongue were so dry that the words almost refused to come. The women were very thoughtful, and said, "Rest a little, and we will wait for you." But after a moment one woman pulled my sleeve, saying, "Do tell me how

to pray to God."

So many times have I been asked that and similar questions on this trip. We had large numbers of men and women, quiet and earnest, at morning prayers, and the helpers tell me I was too busy with the women to see how many men they received. The women were very eager for us to stay longer, saying: "If you go away how shall we learn? Who will tell us?"

We visited three other villages near together, being out only two nights. It was all the time we felt that we could give. Here the assistant and wife was with us. Her husband gave out medicine in one room, teacher Wang mounted a cart in an outer court, I was in one corner of the inner court, Mrs. Chang in another, and the young wife was in another room. We all had earnest, attentive hearers. So many said, "Why didn't we know this before?"

The third week we went on to Sin Ch'in, forty li from T'ang-feng. Here we have four church members and several who are interested. The room was crowded day after day, and though curiosity was the ruling motive, who can say hearts were not reached? As one of the helpers said, "Our opportunity is very great, and the Lord will surely help us to use it." The family where I stayed said: "Before, our neighbors reviled and ridiculed us, but now they let us alone. If they are not strongly for us, they are not against us." The young man of the house, who is now an assistant in the PangChuang dispensary, said, "The first time that Mr. Pierson came here I reviled him, and my father threw mud at him." The father is a delightfully warm-hearted Christian now, and I had a very happy week in his family. The women of the family came very early to my room for prayer and a little word before breakfast, and we had the same thing together at night. The Lord has given me a great blessing on this trip in making the women so companionable, and in bringing us very near together.

I have written you rather fully in regard to the trip because I know you will be interested, and because I feel that you will see the importance of some one's coming to our aid, so that one can be on the road more and yet the home work not be left undone. The helper said to me, "The harvest is plenteous, but the laborers-oh, why doesn't the Board send them out!" Every village urged me to come again, and now that I am at home, invitations are coming from other places, two of them new ones. The schools are opened, the dispensary patients must be visited, prayer meetings and Bible women looked after, so I feel tied. If I run away I think about the home work. It is a little hard to see the work undone. I truly work as hard as I can, but when the days have a limit, what can one do? I do hope some one will come soon, the work here at Pao-ting-fu has such a bright outlook.

To give light to them that sit in darkness Luke 1:72

LETTER FROM DR. PAULINE ROOT.

DEAR GIRLS: I have written to you of the pitiful condition of your Hindu sisters, of the growing influence for good of the handful of Christian Japanese women, and how many times since I came to this country have I already told of the sad sights one meets, not only in India's and China's homes, but in dainty Japan as well. You have, many of you, opened your hearts to help our dear Hindu women; I want you to turn in loving sympathy, and a longing desire to help, to the vast body of Chinese women who must be reached. They are not easy to reach; proud are they, and proud they may well be if ancient civilization, learning, and family give one the right to be proud. Many are rich, but they are not satisfied; more, thousands upon thousands are pitifully poor, and they hunger for bread, and no one gives bread; and their hearts hunger for-they know not what, and no one speaks peace to their souls. Sometimes I hardly wonder that dear little babies are at times left by the road to die, when I turn my memory backward and call to mind the many whom I saw by the roadsides grubbing up roots and grasses for food. What are we doing for these millions of dying souls? Something. And to the praise of God let it be said that all Chinese Christians are not "rice Christians," but having accepted bread, have turned with simple gratitude and trust to Him who spreads a table for them in that desert land, and in the presence of their enemies,-a table full of good things for their souls.

(410)

LETTER FROM DR. PAULINE ROOT.

411

I look back, as I sit here in this beautiful room belonging to one of the King's children, and I see the dirty-oh! so dirty-Chinese houses where I visited; the cattle in the courts, the filth, the vermin, the nauseating odors,. the scavenger dogs and pigs, emaciated and savage, the half-naked men, the prudishly modest and immodest, vermin-infected women, the lepers, the blind,. the lame, the diseased, the simply coarse, the vilely obscene; and here, too, I see your missionaries,―delicate, dainty, cultured,-not repelled, but rejoicing, that "as Christ was in the world, so are they." I see them, despised and rejected of men, going out from their dainty homes on long journeys in springless carts or on too springy donkeys, sometimes in Chinese dress, to live among the people for weeks. They not only sit with them hour after hour on the kang, close in contact with all that their instincts would keep them from touching, patiently leading them step by step Christward, but they live with them, eating their food; sleeping by them; and I have seen them pillowing their heads (with none of the revulsion that came to me, the outsider) on their bosoms, as they comforted them. It takes the spirit of Christ; but oh, girls, if you could see how these uncouth, illiterate women blossom out as they are comforted, and as the Lord's sunlight floods their hearts! The Lord's own, even in China, become lovely in their lives, clean in their bodies, and filled with the wisdom from above; so much so, that some of your own missionaries, when days grow dark, lay their heads for comfort and help upon those whom they have led out into the light.

As I look back upon my four months in China, in Canton, in Shanghai, in Tung-cho, Peking, and Pang-Chuang, it seems to me that I never met more lovely or lovable women, in Christ, than some whom I met there. Some of you have said, with a shrug of the shoulders, with a little impatience, perhaps, "I have no interest in the Chinese." Don't say it again, girls. If you only knew,—if I could but let you see through my eyes, you could not say it. Be certain of one thing,—and I speak that which I have seen,—if you have any love for souls, or even for helping people who need help, you would, if you were in China, learn to love, and love dearly, those for whom you labored,―your Chinese women.

And now a word for the medical work. If you had gone, as I did, into fine palaces of the rich, where no foreigners but medical women can enter; if you had seen there, as I once saw, fifty-two daughter-in-laws with feet so tiny that a baby's shoe would be too large, so crippled that they could not walk unless supported; if you had seen among them the pale, haggard, beautitul faces of the confirmed opium smokers, and had heard them cry out to you to save them; if in the middle of the night you had gone to the help of one who had taken opium to end her life, because she could not stand the