These occasions continued to offer like opportunity in succeeding years, and he took all the advantage of it that he could. Only rarely did students give him any cause for annoyance. On May 22 he went to a fair that was held just outside one of the gates, and tried his hand at preaching to that miscellaneous audience in the open air. In the forenoon he talked himself tired, and returned in the afternoon to repeat the effort, but with what effect he could not tell. Rain came on and he had to stop. He added in his Journal, “Oh, how I wish that I could use Chinese as I can English,—then I could preach with some comfort!” On Sabbath, June 19, he preached his first sermon before the little Chinese church organized at Tengchow. The notice he had was short, Mills having been taken ill, and sending him word that he must fill the pulpit. He says: “I could not prepare a sermon, and translate it carefully and accurately. I had just to get ready some phrases, and statements of the main points, and depend on my Chinese for the rest. I got on better than I expected I should, though to me at least it seemed poor enough.” We need not follow the process of his acquisition of the language any further, except to say that he never ceased to study it, and to seek to improve in it, although he came by and by to be able to use it, in both speaking and writing, so well that the Chinese often took more pleasure in hearing and reading his productions than if he had been a native. As the senior missionary, Mills had charge of the church organized at Tengchow, and any preaching that Mateer did in it was occasional. It was not long before a movement was organized for evangelistic work on the streets, and he gladly took part in that method of work. He was anxious also to obtain a room which he could use as a chapel. His first efforts to secure such a building were rendered futile on account of the intense opposition of the people, and the disinclination, or worse, of the officials to enforce his legal rights in this matter, under the treaty. It was not until the middle of April, 1867, that he succeeded in opening a room where he and his Chinese assistant could have a regular place for preaching and selling books. It stood on a principal street, and was, therefore, as to location, well suited for the work to which it was set apart. The opening of it was the occasion for the gathering of a crowd of rowdies who threw stones at the doors, and otherwise created disturbance; but prompt arrest of the ringleader and the haling of him before a magistrate brought the rowdyism to a close. Of course, the school afforded another local opportunity for evangelization, and it was from the very first effectually employed.