The American missionary in the Far East is a curious creature. He represents a union of devices which have made him a factor of considerable commercial importance. American missionaries in Korea were formerly closely associated with the more important export houses in the leading industrial centres of America. Owing to diplomatic representation this practical demonstration of Western superiority is no longer openly indulged. In Seoul, however, an American missionary inconsiderately receives paying guests, causing a manifest loss of business to the Station Hotel; in Won-san, another exploits his orchard. As a class they are necessarily newspaper correspondents and professional photographers; upon rare occasions—and here I refer especially to a small coterie of American missionaries in Seoul—they are the scholarly students of the history, manners, customs and language of the country in which they happen to be placed. The American missionary has a salary which frequently exceeds £200 a year, and is invariably pleasantly supplemented by additional allowances. Houses and servants are provided free, or grants are made for house rent; there is a provision for the education of the children, and an annual capitation payment is made for each child. As a class, American missionaries have large families, who live in comparative idleness and luxury. In Korea, they own the most attractive and commodious houses in the foreign settlements, and appear to me to extract from their surroundings the maximum of profit for the minimum of labour. I do not know whether it is with the permission of the executive officers of the American Mission Boards that their representatives combine commerce with their mission to the heathen. When a missionary devotes no little portion of his time to literary labours, to the care of an insurance agency, to the needs of a fruit farm, or to the manifold exigencies of casual commerce, it seems to me that the interests of those who sit in darkness must suffer.