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bank. The horse sniffed-and wouldn't budge. I couldn't very well dismount and push him, as I was "holding down" our bedding and provinder; and also I was dressed for ridingthat is to say, I wore two heavy suits of underwear, three sweaters, relics of foot-ball gore and glory, a leather hunting suit and two pairs of leather mittens. On my feet—friend, I am telling the truth, were two pairs of woolen socks, two pairs of bed slippers, a pair of lumberman's socks, and cloth shoes lined with fur, whose size was the 7 days' wonder of the Chinese; leather leggings outside of these. Over all, a corduroy ulster lined with sheepskin and buttoned from chin to toe, made me quite as frisky as an Egyptian mummy.

The elder did what he had often done before-took off his shoes and socks and started exploring his way across the ugly current. Having cautiously worked his way over and found the bridge in order (i. e. none of the roadway stones dropped through) he came slowly back through that water-a shivery process. He, pulling on the bridle, and I pounding behind, we finally started the horse, but as soon as he got well out towards the middle, either because scared or from malice aforethought, he made a bee-line for the unrailed edge, and plunged in, rather keeled in. I have found it hard to forgive that beast. He belongs to a Baptist brother and evidently reasoned that I ought to be immersed-and he improved the opportunity. I managed to get my feet out of the stirrups and dived in as gracefully as a December day and a ton of clothes permitted, striking the bottom like lead. Ordinarily our bedding and stuff in two canvas cases hung to the saddle so heavily that two men were required to lift it off. Fortunately now it slid from the pommel like a feather; and the horse freed, lit out for the farther bank. Fortunately also, he plunged in on the up side of the stream, so that as the current slammed me against the bridge, the elder grabbed me and hauled me in, a heavy catch.

What impresses the itinerant most, as to the vast population of China, is not the teeming myriads of the walled cities, but the fact that in the country one is scarcely ever out of sight of peasants, and when anything occurs, a crowd speedily gathers, and apparently from nowhere. The high banks made admirable bleachers, and the spectators, sensing good

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sport ahead, had there taken front seats. As the fun progressed their merriment was expressed in vociferous advice, yelled loud and oft. The situation for them was rich beyond their wildest dream, to see a "foreign devil" in such a fix. This racy episode broke the monotony of their vacant winter, but not one moved to help. Realizing that the completing of our trip depended on rescuing our necessities, we set to work. I recall the unexcited, matter-of-fact air with which we both "got busy." That hilarious, howling mob on the bank was a gentle stimulus, additional, to get out of the situation as whole as possible. As I sat on the bridge, in water up to my neck vigorously chewing sand, I remember seeing our dinner, consisting of leathery Chinese biscuits and shucked peanuts deftly elude my grab; also, an extra pair of shoes loaded with water, reserved against a time cf great need, and containing heavy socks incased in a pair of rubbers shoot away like two torpedo boats -the tragedy on a Lilliputian scale of a ship in distress, loaded with water to her gunwale, and shipping seas over her bulwarks. As soon as we had safely landed our bedding we rose up from that watery bridge, hugged each other then and there and laughed in thankfulness. I was grateful for a true brother in need; and he, that his friend had been spared. It flashed over me that Paul must have had a pretty brotherly feeling for Silas or whoever it was stood by him in his "perils of river."

Lugging what of our goods we had been able to capture, we floundered over that precious bridge to the farther bank and held a consultation of war. Something had to be done mighty quick or we would freeze. A walled city was somewhere ahead-we did not know how far. The elder insisted that I gallop along ahead, and he would flounder on through the slush on foot. Praying to be guided to the only place in all that region where I could hope to dry out and warm up, I started off. When I drew up to the place, the couple, German missionaries, had just returned from a long trip to prepare the indispensable "Taunen; Baum" "und Leb Kuchen" for their lonely. Christmas celebration. Three fires were set going and for two days we turned and re-turn-.. ed the heavy, sodden clothing, loaded with grit and mud. The neat floors of the Hausfrau were a fright, and decked out in the frock-suit of the small statured husband, I

FOREIGN MISSIONS

looked even worse. But suffering no evil effect from the ducking and truly thankful for the blessing of a rugged constitution, and glad for the goodness of others that the mishap had called out, the elder and I once more set forth, truly "going on our way rejoicing." There were many blessings in store for that trip. The people had begun to hear harrowing tales of a dread disease stalking from the North, and were keeping close at home. They

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were also grateful that we came to them at a time when the foreigner desires to be with his family quite as much as a Chinaman desires to get home for the Chinese New Year. Not the least of the good things that grew out of "the ducking trip" were 60 baptisms; and a promise from many leaders to attend our Christmas Conference and revival services led by Rev. Jonathan Goforth-which promises they all made good, and which revival was fraught with even greater blessings.

The Passing of the Chinese Idols

From a Missionary's Note-book

N MY itinerating trips I witness a sight that is too near at hand for one to realize the tremendous significance of it. But, in the perspective of the church in the Roman Empire, and in the experience of the last one hundred years of missions in China, it is of vast meaning. It is a far cry from Morrison secretly studying Chinese in a dark hole, and his teacher carrying poison on his person against the day he should be accused of helping the "foreign devil," to seeing the temples of China abandoned of the people and falling into ruins.

Before the officials undertook to command their subjects to dump out the idols and use the temples for schoolhouses, multitudes had lost faith in the old system. The slump in our field began markedly in the terrible Boxer year, when German soldiers on punitive expeditions sallied forth from Tsingtau, visited many a Boxer center and treated the gods most impiously. Some of the inglorious company were stoned, they were mutilated, their paint defaced, their mud exposed, their noses and ears were lopped off and their eyes gouged out; they were sawn asunder, they were hacked to pieces; they were buried in pits, they were thrown into vile ponds -and they uttered no word of protest, not to mention the making good of the miraculous powers boasted for them by the Boxer chiefs. Now the shrewd, matter-of-fact materialistic Chinese peasant, often pressed for the next meal, entertains no great respect for idols upon whom he spent hard-earned cash in native offerings, but from whom he gets no help

in his day of special need. Nor in these days of piping peace does it conduce to his awe of their power to see them, as one can now see them in every section, fallen over against the wall, with an arm or leg or sword gone. Sans nose to smell the viands offered, sans ears to hear petitions, sans eyes to see the people's need, these ugly idols made of mud are still more unsightly with their tinsel and trappings unrenewed. Often one sees the Buddahs with their sickly-placid smiles dumped into a corner, helpless, or a hideous war-god, lying prone on his face and broken like Dagon, with none so poor to do him reverence. potently jeering or impotently frowning, they cut a sorry figure, and it cannot be too strongly emphasized that in thousands of villages these conditions now prevail. The Chinese, like the canny folk they are, hung on to their old beliefs, though unsatisfying, as long as they felt they were the best obtainable, but now that they know other nations have something better, they vaguely reach for it.

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The idols have become discredited in many places beyond the power of all the classes of priesthoods combined to counteract, who endeavor as vainly as desperately, to rehabilitate them. As battleships pass yearly to the scrap heap, so do Chinese idols to the fertilizing pile.

Formerly our Christians were eager to use there emptied temples for their schools and for dormitories at our village conferences. Now they have a pride and prejudice against it. I have in mind two poor Christian families in a large market town, who wanted a school

Temple Roof Fallen in, on Placid, Impotent Buddah.

Contrast with former conditions. Floor covered each year with votive silver ignots of pilgrims, making merit.

this year. To make it possible for them to conform to the station condition of helping to open a new school (namely, that the people furnish the building and subscribe at least one-third cost of the school), the heathen

village elders offered their principal temple, cleared of its gods, "free gratis and for nothing." The Christians, however, politely refused and rented a much less spacious building and the heathen helped them to pay the rent, as they desired to send their own children to the Christian school. (Incidentally I might remark that those families under the blessing received later built their own school house.)

Accompanying pictures show a Shantung temple, one of the most famous of this "sacred province." For ages it has been one of the most frequented of all holy spots in the world. In China one often hears it said that probably more millions of pilgrims have visited it than any other. Its floor used to be covered several inches deep with the money offerings of the devotees who annually visited it. Now its roof has fallen in and even it is losing its "flavor"-a fit symbol of the impotence of China's hoary religion to recreate China.

It is trite to reiterate that one-fourth the population of the globe have loosed from their ancient moorings, but it is an appalling fact, appalling, because the Chinese are drifting, they know not whither; appalling, because the Church is in no way prepared to meet this awful, imminent crisis, the greatest of its history. What are you doing to meet it?

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Flood-Famine-Plague

I. From Shanghai.

E ARE again face to face with another year of famine in China. The newspapers have given you accounts of the terrible floods along the Yangtse. The water at Wuhu has risen higher than at any time of which there are records, so that 250 miles from the sea the water was 45 miles wide. Millions of acres of land have been covered and hundreds of thousands of villagers have been driven from their homes. In Hunan, the Yuen river has again overflowed its banks in the prefecture of Changteh and the distress there also is great though not nearly so widespread. In North Anhwei and North Kiangsu famine conditions also prevail; this being the third famine in the past five

years in these two provinces. The people who have survived are already terribly reduced and how they can pull through another winter and spring it is impossible to say.

You realize, of course, how seriously all this affects our work at Hwai Yuen, and that of the Southern Presbyterian Mission in North Kiangsu. We are in danger of becoming a permanent famine relief committee unless something can be done to lessen the danger from floods in the Hwai Valley. There is every prospect that we shall have famine every two or three years unless works of conservation are undertaken on a large scale. The Hwai river must be drained.

A new Famine Relief Committee has been organized in the place of the former Shanghai

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committee, the "Christian Herald" committee in Chinkiang, and our own Hwai Yuen committee.

The committee has now been organized and I have been requested to serve as its honorary secretary during the coming winter and spring. The executive committee of the Kiangan Mission have unanimously voted to set me free for this work. The committee recently organized in Shanghai has for its chairman, Bishop Graves of the American Episcopal Mission; the foreign treasurer is Mr. C. R. Scott, the manager of the International Banking Corporation. Mr. Bondfield of the British and Foreign Bible Society, who was secretary of the Centenary Conference in 1907, is a member of the committee, as are also the Commissioner of Customs and the heads of several large American and European business houses. Dr. Wu Ting Fang, the ex-minister to the United States, is our vice-chairman, and there are nine other prominent Chinese who are serving on the executive committee. The committee, we feel, is a strong one and cannot but command the respect of everyone in China both in the business and missionary foreign communities, as well as of the Chinese Government.

It is fortunate that the most powerful man in the province of Kiangsu at this time, His Excellency Chang Chien, is already keenly alive to the necessity of reclaiming the Hwai region. He has been appointed head of the Hwai River Conservancy Bureau and has, I am told, full powers in both Kiangsu and Anhwei provinces. We hope to co-operate with him in everything that we do in those parts.

The revolution which has recently started in Hupeh and which may spread throughout the Yangtse Valley will in nowise diminish the need for famine relief, but will merely add somewhat to the difficulties of a work which is never easy. While the present is an unfortunate time to appeal for money, we hope it can be made clear to all at home, how very great the need is and how important it is for Christian people and all those who have pity for the suffering farmers to lend their help.

Estimating on $3.00 gold per month, the cost of paying for the work that one family can do, it will take at least $15.00 gold per family to keep them until the spring harvest, even if the work is not begun until December.

In some places it should be begun before this, so as to take on workmen before they are so reduced by famine that they cannot do much. You can readily see the tremendous task which faces the Government, if it would provide work to the not less than 500,000 families which are desperately in need of help. The committee will undertake to support as many as it has funds for. In addition to contributions from abroad, it will solicit help from Chinese sources. It will try to induce the Government to give its relief along the same general lines.

All funds should be cabled to Mr. C. R. Scott, manager of the International Banking Corporation, Shanghai, or they can be sent through the usual mission channels.

(Signed) E. C. LOBENSTINE, Secretary.

II. From Chefoo.

Early in December of last year the Pneumonic Plague, the black death, broke out in the north of Manchuria, among the Russian and Chinese laborers, having been brought in from Harbin over the railway. It was hoped it could be stopped before it reached Chefoo, but there was one condition which had not been taken into consideration, namely: the return from Manchuria to China of thousands of coolies for the New Year festivities which began this year on January 31st. The appalling number of deaths in Manchuria gave wings of fear to thousands of coolies, driving them over to Shantung and "home" earlier than usual. The Japanese aided in the exodus, sending out everyone not a native of the place. The Japanese consul at Chefoo refused to quarantine their boats until all were out, thus scattering plague-infested coolies all through the country, many of them stopping in Chefoo.

A detention camp was arranged on the far side of the bay in barracks formerly used for the Africa-bound coolies, all in-coming ships were met and passengers examined. Many died in that camp, others hired sampans and escaped to the mainland, taking death with them.

The doctors had a set of rules made and printed, both in English and Chinese, which were distributed freely. "What good will they do among the coolies? They cannot read," said some; but many who were able to read were found and results were seen.

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Gate at the east of Chefoo, through the wall built in 1895 to keep the Japanese out. In a small village just beyond this gate, scores have died.

staff have no control.

sealed up, he proceeded to break it open; the native policeman warned him but he said he was not afraid; entered, slept one night, then went on to a friend's house. In a short time he and his friends were all gone and another centre of contagion started. On the whole, however, the people have responded well, considering the long ages of fatalistic superstition and the lack of intellingent information among the masses.

Probably nothing ever struck a dirty, smelly, Oriental port that will result in a more general cleaning up than the plague at Chefoo. It has struck the pocketbooks of every business man in the place; even the Government treasury, and they are ready to listen to plans for future betterment. One firm alone sold

Over this place the Chefoo Sanitary

In the year 1900 the Hon. Chester Holcomb, for many years Interpreter, Secretary of Legation, and Acting Minister of the United States at Peking, in his illuminating book, "The Real Chinese Question," mentioned three of the reforms most fundamental, in order that China might develop strength:

1. The establishment of uniform and invariable systems of weights, measures and coinage.

2. The readjustment of the salaries and pay of all officials and public servants upon a reasonable living basis, coupled with the prohibition, under the most severe penalties, of the receipt of any sums of money from the people. (In other words, the elimination of official oppression and graft.)

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