nt requires
Der religious Idee.'"--_C. G. Leland._

This is America. They call her the _City of Peking_, and she belongs to
the Pacific Mail Company, but for all practical purposes she is the
United States. We are divided between missionaries and
generals--generals who were at Vicksburg and Shiloh, and German by
birth, but more American than the Americans, who in confidence tell you
that they are not generals at all, but only brevet majors of militia
corps. The missionaries are perhaps the queerest portion of the cargo.
Did you ever hear an English minister lecture for half an hour on the
freight-traffic receipts and general working of, let us say, the
Midland? The Professor has been sitting at the feet of a keen-eyed,
close-bearded, swarthy man who expounded unto him kindred mysteries with
a fluency and precision that a city leader-writer might have envied.
"Who's your financial friend with the figures at his fingers' ends?" I
asked. "Missionary--Presbyterian Mission to the Japs," said the
Professor. I laid my hand upon my mouth and was dumb.

As a counterpoise to the missionaries, we carry men from Manila--lean
Scotchmen who gamble once a month in the Manila State lottery and
occasionally turn up trumps. One, at least, drew a ten-thousand-dollar
prize last December and is away to make merry in the New World.
Everybody on the staff of an American steamer this side the Continent
seems to gamble steadily in that lottery, and the talk of the
smoking-room runs almost entirely on prizes won by accident or lost
through a moment's delay. The tickets are sold more or less openly at
Yokahama and Hong-Kong, and the drawings--losers and winners both agree
here--are above reproach.

We have resigned ourselves to the infinite monotony of a twenty days'
voyage. The Pacific Mail advertises falsely. Only under the most
favorable circumstances of wind and steam can their under-engined boats
cover the distance in fifteen days. Our _City of Peking_, for instance,
had been jogging along at a gentle ten knots an hour, a pace out of all
proportion to her bulk. "When we get a wind," says the Captain, "we
shall do better." She is a four-master and can carry any amount of
canvas. It is not safe to run steamers across this void under the poles
of Atlantic liners. The monotony of the sea is paralysing. We have
passed the wreck of a little sealing-schooner lying bottom up and
covered with gulls. She weltered by in the chill dawn, unlovel