driven to let their children die for want of nourishment and warmth? You do not answer. So it is evident that terrible things such as this have happened in Europe. Well now, would it not be downright unfair of me, if knowing this to be truth, I turned your silence against you by preaching throughout China that French mothers, like those in China, fling their children into the gutter?" Was not this a sensible speech?--and would it not be well if missionaries were equally wise in their way of looking at things? Is it not a pity that so many enthusiastic young men and women should be sent to meet a terrible death in a vain effort to alter what cannot be changed? Those who sanction the going forth of these bands of devoted martyrs do not make sufficient allowance for the fact that the indifference of the Chinese to Christianity is really a part of their own religion. They cultivate stoicism, they never allow anything to upset their _sangfroid_, but meet torture and death with equal composure. It is a hopeless task to endeavour to rouse them to enthusiasm about anything. It would be wiser to leave their conversion alone. All this does not, however, detract in any way from the heroism of the Sisters at Tien-tsin, who, in spite of the ever-increasing hostility to them, went on doing their charitable work, unheeding the danger in which they must have known they stood. [Sidenote: CHUNG-HO] It was on June 22, 1870, that fatal year for France, just before the breaking out of the Franco-German War, when the relations between the French Government and that of Pekin were considerably strained, that the long-smouldering fire broke into flame in Tien-tsin. The Governor, Chung-Ho by name, a Tartar by birth, a kindly man enough, but far too weak for the position he held, was really responsible for the massacre, though he endeavoured to shelter himself from responsibility behind the mandarins, whom he ought to have controlled. The rising against the foreigners had evidently been preconcerted, for there was really no apparent cause for the sudden rush of the bravos upon their victims. It has been said that the French Consul, M. Fontanier, who was the first to fall beneath the blows of the assassins, really gave the signal for the massacre by presenting his revolver at the head of the Governor, but this of course was only an excuse, and nothing could really have averted the catastrophe.