ich he used to put up in a main
thoroughfare, and there he stood from early morn until night healing the
sick, selling Christian books, talking with inquirers, preaching at
every opportunity the full and free Gospel of salvation. His constant
and consistent life of Christlike self-denial in the effort to bless
them told even more upon the beholders than all these other things
combined. His correspondence is full of sharp and clear pictures of his
daily toil, and of his spiritual experiences.

'_Ch'ao Yang, May 14, 1886._--The people are very poor here. Last
year the crops were not good. When the leaves come out on the
trees, the poor people break off branches and eat the seeds of the
elm-trees. I saw one woman up a high tree, taking down the seeds.
She took off half the door, laid it up against the tree, went on
the cross-bars like a ladder, and so got up. She threw down the
little branches and twigs, and her three children below gathered
them up. The elm seeds are just ripe now. They are the size of
large fish-scales; when the wind blows they come down like snow.

'I met three lamas going to a far-off place to worship. Every two
or three steps they lay down flat on the ground, then got up other
two or three steps, then prostrated themselves again. They did not
know about Jesus saving people, and thought they would save
themselves in that way. Poor people! yet they don't like to hear
about Jesus saving people. They want the credit of thus saving
themselves.

'_September 3._--At Ta Cheng Tz[)u] we had seven days and seven
nights' rain. It was a great flood. The river rose and washed away
about a hundred acres of land and forty or fifty houses. For two
days the river floated down house-roof timbers, beams, &c. One poor
man pulled down his house to save his timbers, and the house fell
on him and killed him. It was pitiful to see the river washing away
good land, two square yards falling into the roaring flood at a
time. The Chinamen did nothing: only stood and looked at it. Lots
of walls and many houses fell down. One house in the court next our
own fell down one morning after the rain was all over. The people
had just time to jump out at the window. No one was hurt. Our room
did not leak much, but the outside of the wall towards the street
fell down. The inside of the wall stil