'Chinamen themselves notice this, and when surrounded by a crowd I have heard them remark laughingly, "Small books go quick." Remembering my instructions, which among other things say, "Pause before you translate," I have hitherto refrained, but now have a very small illustrated narrative in the press, another also illustrated in manuscript, and other two not illustrated in contemplation. If I find funds--the Peking branch of the Tract Society is bankrupt just now--and get them out, you shall have specimens. Probably they won't look well, being first attempts, but you need not be ashamed of the Mongol of them, as they have been written under my direction by a "crack" native scholar, and carefully revised by Schereschewsky, who is a general linguist of good ability, and has paid so much attention to Mongolian that he revised the Gospel by Matthew in conjunction with Mr. Edkins, and is at present at work on a Mongol dictionary.' Medical missions were only in their infancy in 1874, and Gilmour in the same report describes what many another has felt. He illustrates also one of his fixed principles, viz., always do _something_; and never let the work stop simply because you cannot do what is ideally the best. 'I know very little about diseases and cures, but the little I _do_ know is extremely useful. Almost every Mongol, man and woman and child, has something that wants putting right. To have studied medicine at home would have been a great help, but though I cannot hope now ever to gain a scientific knowledge of the subject, I am glad that in our hospital here I have a good opportunity of learning much from Dr. Dudgeon, and all I can do now is to make the best of this good opportunity. I am told that professional men at home are suspicious of giving a little medical knowledge to young men going out as missionaries. I sided with them till I came here, but here the case is different. At home it is all very well to stand before the fire in your room, within sight of the brass plate on the doctor's door on the opposite side of the street, and talk about the danger of little knowledge; but when you are two weeks' journey from any assistance, and see your fellow-traveller sitting silent and swollen with violent toothache for days together, you fervently wish you had a pair of forceps and the _dangerous_ amount of knowledge. And when in remote places you have the choice of burying your servant or stopping his diarrh[oe]a, would you prefer to talk nonsense about professional skill rather than give him a dose of chlorodyne, even though it should be at the risk of administering one drop more or less than a man who writes M.D. to his name would have done?