And now try to realize what this means. Fancy a Chinese missionary standing on the top of a taxi-cab at Charing Cross, preaching Buddhism in pidgin English to a cockney mob, and you have the analogy. Here was a good man, a very good man, whose whole life was an example of the purest Christianity, turning that Christianity into a farce, for the “heathen” to mock at. How well I remember a few days after my arrival at Peking, as I was riding out of the Legation gates, being greeted by a gentleman in Chinese dress, who was sitting on the bench by the escort’s guard-room, in the broadest Scotch. It was my friend the missionary. He had a little church of his own at which his few converts attended, and there was one little boy, by whom he set great store, who was by way of acting in some sort as attendant. When the good man was engrossed in his sermon, John (for he had been baptized) would quietly run out and indulge in foot-shuttlecock—a very pretty game, by the bye—or some other sport dear to the Pekingese street arabs, until the voice of the preacher ceased, when he would be sternly called back to his duties. Mr. Thomas knew better than to risk the ridicule of preaching. When the Society insisted, they lost the services of a saint, a devoted apostle who was, above all other men whom I came across in the Far East, fitted by genius, by learning, and by courage, to have done the work which they and he had at heart. Few personalities that I have met in the long days of my life have impressed me more. He was a young man, about eight and twenty. Had he lived he must have made his mark; he fell a sacrifice to ignorance and stupidity, the two demons which have wrought so much evil in the world. We left Chifu in the afternoon of Monday, the fifteenth of May, and on the Tuesday morning took in the pilot who was to steer us up the tortuous course of the Pei Ho river. The first sight of the Taku Forts filled me with pity for the two garrisons—the one British, the other French—which had occupied them since 1860 lest the disaster of 1859, when Sir Frederic Bruce tried in vain to reach Peking for the ratification of the Treaty and two of our gun-boats were sunk, should be repeated. The desolation of the place was chilling. On the side of the fort occupied by our troops were a few mud huts and a sort of wretched inn, the rendezvous of pilots.