But these are the sharp spice. There is another side, more like currant jelly. The people are generally as kind as they can be. “We will give you the best we have,” is what is often told me, and they do it. Here are houses, where I occasionally stop a week at a time, and the people will take nothing for it. Here is a region for forty miles, where a man’s company is supposed to pay for his lodgings at any house. Now I meet a man who offers to go home, half a mile, on purpose to get me a dinner; or a girl, with whose family I am very slightly acquainted, stands on the porch as I pass and says, “Mister, have you been to dinner? You had better stop and have some.” Here is a hotel-keeper, who has sold whiskey for fifteen years, who puts me in his best room, one fitted up for private use, and will take nothing for it. Now I am invited into the home of the superintendent of a large mill, and during the two years and a half that I have occasionally preached at the place I have spent seven weeks in his family, yet he will never take anything for it, and hardly allow me to thank him. Again, here is a steamer, which has always carried me free whenever myself or family wished to travel on it, and which during two years and a half has actually given me sixty or seventy-five dollars’ worth of travel. Then there is another which runs irregularly, but whose captain says, “Whenever you or your family or your Indian and canoe wish to travel where I am going, I will take you all free,” and who has actually made extra effort with his steamer in order to help me. Indians, too, are not wholly devoid of gratitude. Now it is a funeral. They are often accustomed to make presents at such times to their friends who attend. “Take this money,” they say to me, as they give me two or three dollars; “do not refuse; it is our custom, for you come to comfort us with Christ’s words.” Again, I am at a great festival, and am there on purpose to protect them from drunkenness and other evils equally bad; so they hand me seven dollars and a half, saying, “You have come a long distance to help us; we cannot give you food as we do these Indians, as you do not eat with us,” (and generally I do not, if I can avoid it); “take this money, it will help to pay your board.” Or, again, they carry me nearly a hundred miles free, in order that I may teach them and dedicate a church for them. God is good to put these kind thoughts into the hearts of the people, and not the least good thing He has put in the Bible is that verse about the giving of a cup of cold water. THE CHINESE. “CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION.” Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association. PRESIDENT: Rev. J. K. McLean, D. D. VICE-PRESIDENTS: Rev. A. L. Stone, D. D., Thomas C. Wedderspoon, Esq., Rev. T. K. Noble, Hon. F. F. Low, Rev. I. E. Dwinell, D. D., Hon. Samuel Cross, Rev. S. H. Willey, D. D., Edward P. Flint, Esq., Rev. J. W. Hough, D. D., Jacob S. Taber, Esq.