germs with them.

The China Inland Mission in Tali was the last of the mission stations
which I was to see on my journey. This is the furthest inland of the
stations of the Inland Mission in China. It was opened in 1881 by Mr.
George W. Clarke, the most widely-travelled, with the single exception
of the late Dr. Cameron, of all the pioneer missionaries of this brave
society; I think Mr. Clarke told me that he has been in fourteen out of
the eighteen provinces. His work here was not encouraging; he was
treated with kindness by the Chinese, but they refused to accept the
truth when he placed it before them.

"For the Bible and the Light of Truth," says Miss Guinness, in her
charming but hysterical "Letters from the Far East"--a book that has
deluded many poor girls to China--"For the Bible and the Light of Truth
the Chinese cry with outstretched, empty, longing hands" (p. 173). But
this allegation unhappily conflicts with facts when applied to Tali.

For the first eleven years the mission laboured here without any success
whatever; but now a happier time seems coming, and no less than three
converts have been baptised in the last two years.

There are now three missionaries in Tali--there are usually four; they
are universally respected by the Chinese; they have made their little
mission home one of the most charming in China. Mr. John Smith, who
succeeded Mr. Clarke, has been ten years in Tali. He is welcomed
everywhere, and in every case of serious sickness or opium-poisoning he
is sent for. During all the time he has been in Tali he has never
refused to attend a summons to the sick, whether by day or night. In the
course of the year he attends, on an average, between fifty and sixty
cases of attempted suicide by opium in the town or its environs, and, if
called in time, he is rarely unsuccessful. Should he be called to a case
outside the city wall and be detained after dark, the city gate will be
kept open for him till he returns. The city magistrate has himself
publicly praised the benevolence of this missionary, and said, "there is
no man in Tali like Mr. Smith--would that there were others!" He is a
Christian in word and deed, brave and simple, unaffected and
sympathetic--the type of missionary needed in China--an honour to his
mission. I saw the courageous man working here almost alone, far distant
from all Western comforts, cut off from the world, and almost unknown,
and I contrasted him with those other missi