n which
Gilmour justified these words, yet perhaps no legitimate blame can be
laid at the door of the Directors of the London Missionary Society. Both
the friends and the critics of missions are sometimes more ready to
tabulate converts than to ponder and estimate aright the difficulties
and drawbacks of the work. But in any estimate of the comparative
success and failure of the Mongol Mission it should be borne in mind
that Gilmour never really had a colleague. He never even had a companion
for his work on the Plain, except his heroic and devoted wife. And in
later years circumstances over which the Directors could exercise little
or no control successively deprived him of the fellowship, after a very
brief experience, of Dr. Roberts and Dr. Smith.

In the summer of this year, in the company of Mr. Edkins, he visited the
sacred city of Woo T'ai Shan, a famous place of Mongol pilgrimage.

An amusing illustration of his well-known love of argument occurred on
this trip. In Mr. Edkins he found a foeman in all respects worthy of
his dialectic steel. Chinese mules will only travel in single file, even
where the roads are wide enough to allow of their travelling abreast,
and as Gilmour's went in front of that ridden by Mr. Edkins, he used to
ride with his face to the tail of his beast, and thus the more readily
and continuously conduct the argument then engaging their attention.

In November he tried the experiment of living at the Yellow Temple in
Peking during the winter, in order that he might meet and converse with
the numerous Mongols who visit the capital every year. Here he not only
made new friends, but he also frequently renewed acquaintance with those
he had met on the Plain. These visited him in his compound, and were
occasionally a weariness and vexation to him, inasmuch as they very
frequently severely tried his patience, without affording him the
comfort of knowing that the good tidings of the 'Jesus book' were
finding an entrance into their dark minds and hard hearts.

In a letter to an intimate college friend, the Rev. T. T. Matthews of
Madagascar, which he wrote, November 21, 1872, he vividly describes this
part of his work, giving some of his typical experiences:--

'I am writing in the Yellow Temple, about a mile and a half from
Peking, and three or four miles from our mission premises. I have
rented a room, brought my Chinaman servant, and live as a Chinaman,
all but the clothes an