His brethren also were opposed to the ascetic mode of life he adopted, and the extreme of hardship which he so often and so willingly encountered in his work. But he himself often said, and there are many references in his diary to the same effect, that the kind of life he was living in the interior was quite as healthy, and quite as conducive to longevity, as the ordinary and certainly much more comfortable life of a missionary at Peking. While it may be true that the exposure and sufferings of twenty years had so weakened him as to leave him powerless when seized by the last illness, yet the labours of twenty such years spent in the service of God and the service of man are surely the seeds from which there shall yet spring a rich harvest to the glory of God and to the blessing of the dark and degraded Mongols and Chinese. By the close of 1886 three main centres of work had been selected in the new district--Ta ChÍng Tz[)u], T· Ss[)u] Kou, and Ch'ao Yang--all three being towns of some importance. Mr. Gilmour used to spend a month or so in each town, visiting also the neighbourhood, especially those places where fairs were held, and where consequently the people came together in large numbers. He had a tent which he used to put up in a main thoroughfare, and there he stood from early morn until night healing the sick, selling Christian books, talking with inquirers, preaching at every opportunity the full and free Gospel of salvation. His constant and consistent life of Christlike self-denial in the effort to bless them told even more upon the beholders than all these other things combined. His correspondence is full of sharp and clear pictures of his daily toil, and of his spiritual experiences. '_Ch'ao Yang, May 14, 1886._--The people are very poor here. Last year the crops were not good. When the leaves come out on the trees, the poor people break off branches and eat the seeds of the elm-trees. I saw one woman up a high tree, taking down the seeds. She took off half the door, laid it up against the tree, went on the cross-bars like a ladder, and so got up. She threw down the little branches and twigs, and her three children below gathered them up. The elm seeds are just ripe now. They are the size of large fish-scales; when the wind blows they come down like snow. 'I met three lamas going to a far-off place to worship. Every two or three steps they lay down flat on the ground, then got up other two or three steps, then prostrated themselves again. They did not know about Jesus saving people, and thought they would save themselves in that way. Poor people! yet they don't like to hear about Jesus saving people. They want the credit of thus saving themselves.