'Of all the countries I have visited Mongolia is the most sparsely peopled, and yet it is, of all the places I have seen, the most difficult to get private conversation with any one. Everybody, even half-grown children, seems to think he has a perfect right to intrude on any and all conversation. Bar the door and deny admittance, and you would be suspected of hatching a plot. Take a man away for a stroll that you may talk to him in quiet, and you would be suspected of some dangerous enchantment. Remembering that one must always have some definite message or business to perform when he travels, and hoping to be able to do something with this same blackman, I had purposely left, in the Chinese inn, some presents which I could not well carry with me, and after a day's rest the blackman and I started to bring them. That gave us twenty-three miles' private conversation, and a good answer to give to all who demanded, "Where are you going?" "What to do?" He gave me the history of the origin and growth of his belief in Christ. I taught him much he did not know, and at a lonely place we sat down and lifted our voices to heaven in prayer. It was the pleasantest walk I ever had in Mongolia, and at the same time the most painful. My feet broke down altogether. It was evident I could not walk back again the next day, so, acting on my follower's advice, by a great effort I walked into the inn as if my feet were all right; we bargained for a cart and, the Chinaman not suspecting the state of my feet, we got it at a reasonable rate. Mongols and Chinese joined in explaining to me how much time and labour I would have saved if I had hired a cart at first, taken everything with me, and not returned to the inn at all. From their point of view they were right; but the blackman and I looked at the thing from a different standpoint. We had accomplished our purpose, and felt that we could afford to let our neighbours plume themselves on their supposed superior wisdom.