One day a friend gave each of the twins a bright new five-cent piece. Their mother took care of the coins, saying, “I will keep them for you, until we can get enough to use as buttons for your next new jackets,” and the little fellows were ever so happy. Not long after, people were gathering money to build a new church, and the little boys’ father said to them: “Children, have you got anything which you can give to help to build the new church?” The little boys thought and thought, then one of them said, “Yes, we have our silver buttons.” So they gave their treasured little shining pennies most gladly. But I think that God was gladder still. CHAPTER III THE CHILDREN’S HOME Homes differ as much in China as in other lands. Some are palaces, some poor huts, some are caves cut into the face of cliffs, some are boats upon rivers, where thousands of boys and girls learn to handle the oar from their earliest childhood. Some are in dusty villages by the roadside, others are set between stairs of green rice fields upon mountain slopes, or built upon flat plains among giant millet and other crops. A large number of children are brought up in cities. You cannot easily get at their homes because of the streams of blue-clad people who throng the streets. Come for a walk among the busy shops, so that you may know something of the place where Chinese boys and girls spend so much of their time. Sedan-chairs, carried by strong men, push through the crowd, shaving butchers’ stalls and narrowly missing the heads of running children. Burden bearers, with bags of rice on their backs, or loaded with vegetables, pigs in open baskets, bales of cotton or tobacco, follow one another over the slippery pavement. Here comes a pedlar selling tapes, needles and bits of silk. He is called a ‘bell shaker,’ because he tinkles a little bell to call attention to his wares. That poor man, with shaggy hair and half-naked skin, is ‘a cotton-rags fairy,’ or beggar. He lives in a ‘beggars’ camp’ not far away. Look in at this temple. The heavy scent, reminding you of rose-leaves and stale tobacco, which comes through the open doorway, is the smell of incense. Beyond the court, inside the door, is a big room where idols, once bright with gilding, now blackened with smoke, sit each upon its throne. Those spots of light inside the hall are made by candles burning on the altar beneath the gloomy roof. Boys and girls do not care to go inside, unless their mothers bring them to bow before the idols. Some of the images have ugly faces, blue, black and fiery red, which children can scarcely look at without being afraid. Some are gilt and have a strange smile upon their lips. Here is description of an idol in its temple: “I dreamed I was an idol, and I sat Still as a crystal, smiling as a cat, Where silent priests through immemorial hours Wove for my head mysterious scarlet flowers. * * * * *