the object of our residence in this
country, and received from our hostess extravagant compliments upon our
extraordinary ability and learning, the reputation of which, they said,
was well known to the Mandarin.

The object of my visit was then mentioned, and I was asked to see the
tooth, of which, being very loose, I recommended the extraction, and was
able to assure the patient that the pain would not be very great. Many
of the younger women gathered around her, comforting her, and covered
her eyes that she might not see the forceps; they begged her to remember
that the pain would soon be over, and as soon as I could induce her to
open her mouth, I removed the troublesome member. "How wonderful!" they
all exclaimed. "Why, it did not hurt at all!"

After such a surgical triumph, long-neglected and half-forgotten pains
were remembered by the bystanders, and all the ladies on my next visit
came to me with some complaint. We sought to awaken in them the sense of
those far deeper ills which they so little realised, finding once more
that in following the method of Christ a sense of need had been
awakened: "Ye seek Me because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled.
I am the bread of life."

As soon as the operation was over, we suggested that we must be
returning home, but this could not be allowed until we had partaken of
further refreshment, and servants appeared with delicacies--meat balls
in gravy, flavoured as only a Chinese cook can flavour, lotus seeds in
syrup, luscious fruits, sweetmeats, and a drink of apricot kernels,
sweet to excess. The meat balls were daintily wrapped in pastry, and as
she helped me to some of these, the _Tai-tai_ said: "I think you do not
care for pork." I replied that we did not as a rule eat much pork. "I am
so glad," she said: "these are fowl, and therefore you can eat them
without fear." A few days later we heard that the head cook was under
severe punishment and incarcerated in a dungeon, because he had not
taken the trouble to find out what were our special tastes in matters of
the table, and had served pork in place of fowl! Some years later he was
a patient in our Refuge, and told Mr. Wang that he would like to make a
feast for us. We thought this extremely kind of him, considering what he
had suffered on our behalf, and he was asked to our kitchen to prepare
the food, while we invited some friends to share it with us. I think he
was a man of preconceived ideas rather than a geni