* * * * * Items and Incidents. REV. W. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO. STATISTICS.—Our schools have not yet recovered, so far as attendance is concerned, from the shock they received through the riots of last July. But they are gaining, and should no untoward event occur, I hope that before this summer is ended they will be as large as ever before—as large, that is, as we can possibly sustain without an increase of means. Ten schools are now in operation, and seventeen teachers are employed. The aggregate number of pupils enrolled May 31st was 467, and the average attendance was 242. This is a gain over months preceding, and June promises something better still. The total number of Chinese who had attended the schools, for a longer or shorter period, from September 1st (the commencement of our fiscal year) to May 31st, was 1,178. Seventy-eight of these pupils give evidence of conversion. The whole number whom we have reason to believe have been born of God, during the last five years of our work, cannot be much less than two hundred. BAPTISMS.—Six of our pupils were baptized and received to Bethany Church, San Francisco, on Sunday, June 2d. This makes the Chinese membership of that church number forty-four. These brethren had studied diligently the Confession of Faith and the Covenant, which they were called publicly to accept, and had approved themselves well through their five to eight months of “probation” in our “Association of Christian Chinese.” I have no doubt that both the Confession and Covenant contained words which they could not define; but I have also no doubt that “for substance of doctrine,” they assented to the one and consented to the other intelligently, honestly and devoutly. I shall never forget the evening I spent with them, questioning them as to their views and purposes and experiences as Christians. Not one of them but had come out of more or less tribulation, into this decided and outspoken Christian life. Friends turn their backs upon them and load them with reproaches, but they seem to harbor no feeling of resentment—only longing to impart to their persecutors the same blessing they have found for themselves.