The Americans try to keep us out, but they also try to convert those who get in. They have what they call Chinese missions, to which Chinamen go. To be converted? No. To learn the language? Yes. I am told by an American friend that here and in China over fifty thousand Chinese have embraced Christianity. On the Atlantic coast I am assured that eight hundred Chinamen are Christians, and on the Pacific slope two thousand have embraced the faith of the Christians. There is a Christian Chinese evangelist working among our people in the West, Lum Foon, and I have met the pastor of a Pacific coast church who told me that nearly a third of his congregation were Chinamen, and he esteemed them highly. But the most conclusive evidence that the Americans are succeeding in their proselyting is that in one year a single denomination received as a donation from Chinamen $6,000. The Americans have a saying, "Money talks," which is much like one of our own. On the other hand, a clergyman told me that it was discouraging work to some, so few Chinamen were "converted" compared to the great mass of them. The Chinese of California have sent $1,000 to Canton to build a Christian church, and the Chinese members of the Presbyterian Church of California sent $3,000 in one year for the same purpose. I am told that the Chinese Methodists of one church in California give yearly from $1,000 to $1,800 for the various purposes of the church. The Christians have captured some brilliant men, such as Sia Sek Ong, who is a Methodist; Chan Hon Fan, who ought to be in our army from what I hear; Rev. Tong Keet Hing, the Baptist, a noted Biblical scholar; Rev. Wong, of the Presbyterians; Rev. Ng Poon Chiv, famous as a Greek and Hebrew reader; Gee Gam and Rev. Le Tong Hay, Methodists; and there are many more, suggestive that our people are interested in Christianity, against the _moral_ teachings of which no one could seriously object. I dined some time ago with a merchants' club, and was much pleased at the eulogy I heard on the Chinese. A merchant said, "My firm deals largely with the Chinese and Japanese. When I make a trade with the Japanese I tie them up with a written contract, but I have always found that the word of a Chinese merchant was sufficient." This I found to be the universal feeling, and yet Americans exclude us at the bidding of "hoodlums," a term applied to the lowest class of young men on the Pacific coast. In the East he is a "tough" or "rough" or "rowdy." "Tough nut" and "hard nut" are also applied to such people, the Americans having numbers of terms like these, which may be called "nicknames," or false names. Thus a man who is noted for his dress is a "swell," a "dude," or a "sport."