3. To get the use of a little steamer in some way and do what we started out to do‒explore the region of the Sobat. The least that we can get a steamer for is said to be £12 a day. We cannot expect to be gone less than a month and do the work well. That would be £360. You can understand, I think, what our perplexity is. Our hope now is to arrange it in some way through Giegler Pasha to get a steamer at a more reasonable sum. As soon as we can do this, I think we shall go on, and if we do, the French Consul, an able French gentleman, and our Consul with others, advise us to ask for a body-guard of soldiers from the government. We need your prayers, and I wish we might have your wisdom in this emergency. * * * * * CHILDREN’S PAGE. * * * * * CHING LING’S PASSPORT. BY MRS. HARRIET A. CHEEVER. “And you say there is no hope!” “None whatever, that we can see.” “But I am barely five-and-thirty, Doctor. Only think! still in my early prime,” urged the pleading voice. “I know it, Fairfax; I know it, my poor fellow; and would thankfully have it otherwise, but God wills it so. I cannot deceive you, and your special request was to know the truth.” “But Heaven knows I was unprepared for it!” was the passionate rejoinder. “Try and calm yourself, my friend,” continued the doctor in low, deliberate tones. “I’ve still another unwelcome piece of intelligence: Mrs. Carter says she can remain no longer, feeling as she does, completely worn out with her duties; and just now, with so many critical cases on my hands, I hardly know where to look for another nurse. You say there is no friend or relative you could summon?” “No; and it makes no sort of difference _who_ comes in Mrs. Carter’s place; I might as well die alone like a dog, if I’ve got to hand in my checks at the outset of the game‒confound this heat!” and the voice even more than the words was full of bitterness and rebellion. Dr. Wharton took his hat, but paused again at the bedside. “I am going around by the Chinese quarter this noon,” he said, “and will do my best to bring some good assistant. Some of those Chinamen make excellent nurses. Have you any objection to trying one?” “Oh, I don’t care a‒pin who comes,” answered the poor, impatient, suffering man; and the next moment the doctor left the room as the nurse glided softly in, and the patient closed his weary eyes. Philip Fairfax was a man of wealth and education, but his fine fortune had been sadly misused. Moreover, his naturally sound physical constitution had been unwarrantably abused by a hard round of indulgence in dissipation and vice, which had caused him in his early manhood to fall an easy prey to the dangerous malarial fever so prevalent at certain seasons, and which now had assumed a malignant form, rendering recovery almost impossible.