out
4_s._ or more buying his good-for-nothing son an elegant
snuff-bottle. In short, the man's folly makes it utterly useless to
help him. I once before relieved him from threatened detention for
debt for the amount of twopence-halfpenny, just after I had made
him a present, and I expect perhaps to have to do so again. What
astonishes me is that the Mongols _can_ get into debt so far. I
don't believe my Mongol can pass a single man he knows without
being in danger of being dunned for some hopeless debt or other.
And yet his debt does not seem to distress him. He is most
distressed because people will not lend him more money.

'The last of the chiefs was rather rich. He is (he says) to have a
profitable piece of Government work in hand in spring, and on the
strength of that wanted me to lend him now a shoe of silver, about
15_l._, to be repaid to me in spring. Of course I did not. He then,
though my guest, kept on saying, "Heart small, heart small," which
pretty much amounts to saying, "Coward, coward." He finally took
revenge by offering to lend _me_ a shoe of silver in spring, but
of course I declined. A pretty pair they are! If what they say be
true, in spring they may make a good thing of it; but this has
happened to the scribe before, and in two months after he was as
poor as ever. In short, they are foolish and thriftless.

'While I have been writing this letter I have overheard my Chinese
servant saying, in reply to a question from a Chinaman, "There is
such a thing as a preaching letter: you can preach by a letter." So
I am going now to preach. Don't get weary; stick to it. Don't be
lazy, but don't be in a hurry. Slow but sure; stick to it. We have
no great effort to make, but rather to stick to it patiently. "_No
good work is lost_," Sir William Thomson used to say in his
philosophy class, and it is eminently true in our case. (I wish
these Chinamen would hold their tongue.) All our good work will be
found, there is no doubt about that. All I am afraid of is that our
good work will amount to little when it is found. (These Chinamen
are a bore.) I sometimes think that if all we say be true, as it
is, that men at last shall stand before God--and we shall see them
after they know that all we say is true--and they will pitch into
us for n