llustration: THE IMPERIAL CHINESE POST OFFICE ENTRANCE ON A RAINY
DAY IN THE 'NINETIES]

Meanwhile the "five years longer" that he had privately set as the
term of his life in China when he refused to become British Minister
at Peking (1885) were long since passed, and five other years had
followed them, yet he had never found it possible to return to his
own country. Each spring he debated whether he might safely leave his
unfinished plans, which, ranging as they did over a vast number of
subjects, could not well be given half completed into other hands, and
each spring some new problem claimed his attention. In 1896, however,
he faced a harder decision than usual. The road was perhaps unusually
open--and yet he knew that, half hidden, there were obstacles waiting
to be met.

At this crisis of indecision he decided to do what he had so often
done before--consult the Bible. This had been a habit of his father's
before him; in fact, his whole family had asked guidance on every
venture they undertook, no matter how humble it might be, and the
training of his childhood was not outgrown. He accordingly took the
Bible lying on his desk and opened it at random one evening. There,
truly enough, was an answer clear and unmistakable in the very
first verse his eye lighted upon--Acts xxvii. 31: "Paul said to the
centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye
cannot be saved." It immediately decided him to remain in China, and
he suffered no more from perplexity or indecision.

Robert Hart was indeed deeply religious. Unlike so many men who
have passed their lives in the East, he never absorbed any Eastern
fatalism, nor did the lamp of his faith ever burn dimly because he
mixed with men of other and older creeds. The Christian ideal he
always considered the highest in the world; but once, when trying to
live up to it, he was brought to confusion, though not through any
fault of his own.

One day, as he was leaving the gate of a certain mission where he
had been to pay a call, a Chinese of the poorer classes, unkempt and
dirty, came and threw an arm about his shoulders, saying, "I see you
are also coming away from the mission, so we are brothers in Christ. I
will accompany you on your way."

The I.G. afterwards confessed that his first feeling was one of
irritation at the man's familiarity--which amounted almost to
impertinence--and his second, disgust at the grimy hand so near his
collar. To summarily sha