The average expense of a boy was at first estimated at forty dollars, but with the rise of prices as the years went by, this estimate had to be raised. The scheme worked well enough to enable the school not only to go on, but gradually to increase its numbers as other events opened the way. Nor was there any difficulty in obtaining all the pupils that could be accommodated. At the beginning all were from families who were too poor to educate their boys in native schools, and to whom the fact that in addition to the good education received, their boy was also clothed and fed, proved inducement sufficient to overcome the opprobrium of allowing him to fall under the influence of the hated foreigner. It really meant no little in those early days, and, in fact, in all ante-Boxer times, for parents, even though Christians, to send their boys to the Tengchow school. An honored native pastor who was at one time a pupil there wrote: When my parents first sent me to school, there was a great protest from all the village. They tried to scare my mother by saying that the foreigners were vampires who could extract the blood of children by magic arts. Nevertheless I was sent; though I must own that I was a little scared myself. When I came home at Chinese New Year vacation, I was most carefully examined by all these prophets of evil; and when they found that not only my pulse was still a-going, but that I was even rosier and in better flesh than before, they said that the three months I had been there were not enough to show the baneful results; only wait! After the Germans took Kiaochow and began the railroad, the rumors in that region became worse. Under each sleeper a Chinese child must be buried. To furnish axle grease for the “fire-cart” human fat must be tried out—anyone could see the great boilers they had for the purpose; and under those great heaps of fresh-turned earth they buried the bones. At the time of the Tientsin massacre it was currently reported that Mateer was fattening boys for the purpose of killing them, and then taking their eyes and hearts to make medicine with which to bewitch the people. Nevertheless the numbers were always full, except at brief intervals, when reduced by popular disturbances, epidemics or such causes. The school in its second year had twelve pupils, just double the number with which it began its work. It will be remembered that in 1867 the Mateers built and occupied their new home. This vacated the old Kwan Yin temple premises. In the application to the Board to erect the new home Mateer said: