write you, may it not be in the ebb tide, at
the end of a mail.

'Your husband's a Director. I _do_ hope they are sending me a
doctor. If he can do anything in the matter, I wish he would.

'Yours, dried up and feeling dumb,
'JAMES GILMOUR.'

Enclosed in the above was the following letter, dated March 10, and
addressed to 'The Clapham Congregational Church Ladies' Working
Society.'

'Dear Friends,--Many thanks for your handsome donation (10_l._),
notice of which has reached me last night. I am told you want to
hear from me. All right. I am just back from a month's raid into
Ch'ao Yang. Had a fine time. Good weather and plenty of work in the
marketplace. Baptized four adults, three being women--all Chinese.
It is the day of small things truly, but I am not a little
encouraged, over the women especially. That now makes four
Christian families in Ch'ao Yang or its immediate neighbourhood.
The two wives baptized this time have Christian husbands. It has
all along been our prayer that the unsaved relatives of the saved
might be saved.

'Mrs. Chu's husband was baptized a couple of years ago. She
consented to his taking their two children to me to be baptized,
but she herself would have nothing to do with Christianity or
Christ. This time she got over her difficulties. I was much
pleased, especially as she had annoyed her husband a good deal last
year about his having been beaten about his Christianity. She also
had her little child baptized. Pray that God may keep and help them
in all the many complications that will arise on account of their
Christianity, living as they do in a composite family, the ruling
powers of which are heathen.

'Mrs. Ning is a model wife. They are poor. Her husband cannot dress
in good clothes, but is always as neat as a virtuous wife, skilful
with her needle, can make him. She mends so neatly. I once
discarded a vest (Chinese) and gave it to her husband. He took it
home, and later on I saw him swelling about in it quite like a neat
old gentleman, though I was almost ashamed to give it him.

'They have had family worship in their home for a year or two--they
say. We went to baptize her. It was such a small, poor house, but
so very nice inside. Mother