at North Beach. These visits
subjected our courtesy and tact to a severe test. He loved little
children, and at each visit he would bring with him a gayly-painted box
filled with Chinese sweetmeats. Such sweetmeats! They were to strong for
the palates of even young Californians. What cannot be relished and
digested by a healthy California boy must be formidable indeed. Those
sweetmeats were--but I give it up, they were indescribable! The boxes
were pretty, and, after being emptied of their contents, they were kept.

Ah Lee's joy in his new experience did not abate. Under the touch of the
Holy Spirit, his spiritual nature had suddenly blossomed into tropical
luxuriance. To look at him made me think of the second chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles. If I had had any lingering doubts of the
transforming power of the gospel upon all human hearts, this conversion
of Ah Lee would have settled the question forever. The bitter feeling
against the Chinese that just then found expression in California,
through so many channels, did not seem to affect him in the least. He
had his Christianity warm from the heart of the Son of God, and no
caricature of its features or perversion of its spirit could bewilder
him for a moment. He knew whom he had believed. None of these things
moved him. O blessed mystery of God's mercy, that turns the night of
heathen darkness into day, and makes the desert soul bloom with the
flowers of paradise! O cross of the Crucified! Lifted up, it shall draw
all men to their Saviour! And O blind and slow of heart to believe! why
could we not discern that this young Chinaman's conversion was our
Lord's gracious challenge to our faith, and the pledge of success to the
Church that will go into all the world with the news of salvation?

Ah Lee has vanished from my observation, but I have a persuasion that is
like a burning prophecy that he will be heard from again. To me he types
the blessedness of old China newborn in the life of the Lord, and in his
luminous face I read the prophecy of the redemption of the millions who
have so long bowed before the Great Red Dragon, but who now wait for the
coming of the Deliverer.

The Climate of California.

Had Shakespeare lived in California, he would not have written of the
"winter of our discontent," but would most probably have found in the
summer of that then undiscovered country a more fitting symbol of the
troublous times referred to; for, with the fogs, winds,