ted the tea? Whether it was pleasant or otherwise?
The kindness of the one who offered it to us? Or the dangers that
might lurk on the edge of that cup? For tea, even very hot tea, cannot
be expected to sterilize the rim of the cup; and who knows who used it
previously, or what dangerous disease he might have had? It had been
washed, of course, or at least rinsed out, but--

"Don't the Chinese scald their dishes when they wash them?" you ask.
Well, do you? "M-m-m, not always, but the danger is much less in
America," you say. That may be true; but it is hard to realize the
danger of infection in one's own home, wherever it may be; and even
those who live under what we might call unhygienic conditions are no
more conscious of the danger in their own homes than you are in yours.
I used to think, sometimes, that the most dangerous thing we met with
in China was just an ordinary teacup, and that the germs that lurked
on its rim were more menacing than tigers or bandits. (Let me hastily
add that in all my fifteen years in that country, and having partaken
of tea from ten thousand teacups, more or less, in many places and in
many homes, I am still quite alive, and in good health and spirits!)

"Now, that wouldn't worry me!" you think cheerfully. "I'm just not
particular!"

I am sorry, but that is not at all the conclusion I want you to draw
from the above remarks. I am giving no one license for not being
careful. No child of God should feel at liberty to disregard what he
knows to be the rules of good health, just because he feels like it,
much less the man or woman on the mission field.

* * * * *

The cook comes in with a basket of foodstuffs fresh from the market.
The young missionary spots a particularly luscious plum, picks it up,
and takes a bite.

"Mary!" a scandalized senior gasps. "_Whatever_ are you thinking of?
Eating that plum without scalding it first! You'll likely get cholera
or typhoid and die!"

Yes, in most mission stations the rules of hygiene are adhered to very
strictly, and it would be a hardy junior worker who could come through
alive without observing them.

Perhaps several years have gone by. You are in charge of the home
yourself, and the "discipline" relaxes a bit. Perhaps you even resort
to washing your fruit in cold boiled water instead of scalding it,
because scalding does spoil it so! Then the younger workers are sent
to you, and you become the head of a n