No result of my travel has been more valuable to me than the new impression I have received of the effect of missions upon missionaries. I came abroad with a lingering idea of my youth that missionaries were a class by themselves, a solemn set, destitute of humor, and so absorbed in their work as to be narrow-minded. On the contrary, I have found them joyful and even hilarious, broad in their views and sympathies, lovers of the good in literature and art. The mental and spiritual growth of students who left me years ago for a foreign field has greatly surprised me. Then they were boys; now they are men. The demands of the missionary work have drawn out their latent powers; they have found their new environment immensely stimulating; contact with new lands and people has widened their outlook; they have become thinkers and leaders of men. It takes an all-round man to be a good missionary. The learning of a foreign language in which one has to construct his own grammar and lexicon requires persistent effort of the most disciplined mind. The missionary is often called upon to build his own house or church. He must be both architect and supervisor, for his masons know no English, and are bent on slighting their work. He has servants who steal and coolies who lie. He establishes, manages, and governs a native school, and generally has to evolve his own pedagogy. He comes into relation with English officials, American consuls, and native functionaries, and is obliged to know something of social customs. In fine, he is a jack of all trades, besides being a preacher of the gospel who must adapt his message to the understanding of the illiterate multitude and of the cultivated man of caste as well. All this gives the missionary a training beyond that of any university course. Herbert Spencer asserted that a nation makes progress in civilization in proportion to the variety of its environment. The principle applies also to the development of the individual. Our missionaries thought perhaps that they were leaving culture behind them, when they left America for barbarous lands. But losing their lives for Christ's sake they found to be mental gain. Even on the Congo our men have learned more, and have developed stronger characters, than would have been possible if they had accepted ordinary pastorates at home. And they have not lost, but have won, that fine flavor of sanity and judgment, which belongs to men who have had large experience of life.