When he heard that the foreigners had a method of talking to a distance of ten, twenty, fifty or five hundred miles, he did not say like the old farmer is reported to have said,--"It caint be trew, because my son John kin holler as loud as any man in all this country, an' he caint be heerd mor'n two miles." Kuang Hsu believed it, and at once ordered that a telephone be secured for him. In 1894 the Christian women of China decided to present a New Testament to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday which occurred the following year. New type was prepared, the finest foreign paper secured, and the book was made after the best style of the printer's art, with gilt borders, gilt edges, and bound in silver of an embossed bamboo pattern and encased in a silver box. It was then enclosed in a red plush box,--red being the colour indicating happiness,--which was in turn encased in a beautifully carved teak-wood box, and this was enclosed in an ordinary box and taken by the English and American ministers to the Foreign Office to be sent in to Her Majesty. The next day the Emperor sent to the American Bible Society for copies of the Old and New Testaments, such as were being sold to his people. A few days thereafter a Chinese friend--a horticulturist and gardener who went daily to the palace with flowers and vegetables--came to me in confidence as though bearing an important secret, and said: "Something of unusual importance is taking place in the palace." "Indeed?" said I; "what makes you think so?" "Heretofore when I have gone into the palace," said he, "the eunuchs have treated me with indifference. Yesterday they sat down and talked in a most familiar and friendly way, asking me all about Christianity. I told them what I could and they continued their conversation until long after noon. I finally became so hungry that I arose to come home. They urged me to stay, bringing in a feast, and inviting me to dine with them, and they kept me there till evening. One of them told me that the Emperor is studying the Gospel of Luke." "How does he know that?" I inquired. "That is what I asked him," he answered, "and he told me that he is one of the Emperor's private servants, and that His Majesty has a part of the Gospel copied in large characters on a sheet of paper each day, which he spreads out on the table before him, and this eunuch, standing behind his chair, can read what he is studying."