e you left Peking?" and such questions
kept before my mind painfully how slowly things move, and drew out
my soul in more painful longing for God's blessing in the
conversion of men.

'In the beginning of July I must have got a touch of the sun.
Nearly all that month I was ill, but just then was the great annual
fair at Ch'ao Yang, so, ill and all, I had the tent put up daily
and dispensed medicines. My assistant, however, had to do most of
the preaching; I had not much strength for that. The first three
weeks in August I had diarrh[oe]a and dysentery. I was at Ta Cheng
Tz[)u]. There was no fair, and but poor market gatherings, but,
weather permitting, we put up our tent daily and did good work.
Paul says (Gal. iv. 19), "My little children, of whom I am again in
travail until Christ be formed in you," and he is right. It is a
carrying of men in prayer until the image of Christ is formed in
them; and how many of them prove abortions.

'One of the converts at Ta Cheng Tz[)u] caused me no little
anxiety. I knew that he professed to be impressed last winter. He
said he wanted to call on me in my inn and tell me his
difficulties. I was eager to get home, but as he said he would have
no leisure before a certain date, I waited till then, nearly a
week, for almost no other purpose than to see him. He never came,
and I trudged back to Peking downcast about him.

'This year when we came to Ta Cheng Tz[)u] on our way to Ch'ao
Yang, on going to his place for breakfast (he is one of two
brothers who own and manage a restaurant, and both of them, and a
third brother, are members of a sect which forbids opium, whisky,
and tobacco), we were shown into the more private part, and he and
his brother and the cook set upon us to inquire more fully about
Christianity, how to enter it, etc, etc. This took me by surprise,
and made me so glad that my breakfast for the most part remained
uneaten, though we had travelled eight hours that morning. In the
evening I did not go for a meal, and my assistant on going was met
at the door by the inquirers, and so engaged in conversation about
Christianity that darkness set in, the cooking range was closed,
and the establishment shut for the day before they were finished.
My man had no dinner. Next day we went on towards Ch'ao