wed. After the long rows of boys
came an honor-squad of Chinese soldiers, shouldering their guns and
bearing the Chinese and the American flags. This portion of the escort
had been furnished by the Chinese governor, who in this way certainly
showed his friendly regard for the American mission. We concluded the
procession, sitting in our sedan-chairs, each of our party of four borne
upon the shoulders of four men. The band struck up, a great explosion of
firecrackers ensued, and we began our journey of a mile and a half to
the gates of the city, and then two miles and a half farther through its
crowded streets, until we reached the mission buildings and the
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Groesbeck on the other side of the town. The
Chinese are great on ceremonial, and all this reception had been
arranged by the students themselves, in honor of Mr. Groesbeck's teacher
and his teacher's wife. Needless to say that I was astounded at such a
reception, for Augustus Caesar never made an imperial entry in Rome more
thrilling than the triumphal entry which Augustus Strong made that day
into the great city of Chao-yang.

Mr. Groesbeck said that no public notice had been given of our coming.
Yet the whole population of three hundred thousand seemed to have come
out to meet us. Imagine a street two and a half miles long, but only ten
to fifteen feet wide, thronged with water-carriers and beasts of burden
compelled to give way to our great procession! Every nook and corner of
the way, the fronts of the one-storied shops and the entrances to the
cross-streets, were all a perfect sea of faces--rows of children little
and big overtopped by rows of half-naked men, with scores of women
peering wistfully from windows in the rear--faces by thousands and tens
of thousands, till it seemed as if the whole population of the planet
had emptied itself into Chao-yang. I looked upon hundreds of splendid
forms of men, naked above the waist, and carrying heads worthy of notice
from any sculptor, none of them hateful, all of them impressed and
wondering, and they seemed to me the embodiment of China crying out for
God. When we were only half-way through the city, the endless masses of
humanity had so impressed me that I could not restrain the tears. The
sight was simply overwhelming. And all this the parish of one man! It
is to save this great city, now almost wholly given to idolatry, that
Mr. Groesbeck asks for money to build in its very center an
assem