But with our Christian Chinese these days are holy days rather than holidays. The week is a week of prayer. In all their sociality their religion is remembered and their Saviour is recognized. If on their special reception-day, a minister is among the first to call, he will be likely to be asked to open the day’s enjoyment with prayer. Every day there are special religious services; and connected with these, fresh resolves of consecration to Christ and fresh and earnest intercessions for each other and for their still benighted countrymen. One such meeting I attended by appointment at the home of our Oakland brethren. I remained with them an hour and a half. The school there had been in an unsatisfactory condition; running down in attendance and in spiritual power, while the schools in this city and at most other points were advancing in both respects. We looked the facts in the face; prayed over them; and then took counsel together. The result was a unanimous determination to take up missionary work among their countrymen with more earnestness and more system than ever before, and with God’s help to make their school as large and as efficient for good as possible. [Illustration: JAPANESE PLEASURE PARTY.] Perhaps the account given by Mrs. Carrington, of the services at Sacramento, presents the week’s work as fairly as any. “A watch meeting closed the old year and opened the new. On Saturday evening there was a union meeting at the Presbyterian Mission House. On Wednesday evening a New Year’s banquet was given at our Mission House. Rev. Dr. Dwinell and Mrs. Dwinell, with the superintendent and teachers in the Chinese Sunday-school and other friends, were present. Other evenings were spent in less formal but more social worship, and on Saturday evening, February 25, a crowning union service was held at our Mission House. The room was filled to overflowing. Twenty or more of the American friends were present, and much interest was manifested. And so this New Year’s festival was closed.” As between the hurried and meaningless New Year’s calls, with the accessories of unwholesome food in gluttonous quantities, washed down by poisonous wines and fiery liquors, which the old Knickerbocker custom has entailed upon Americans, and these festivities of our Christian Chinese, it does not take me long to judge which ought to be preferred. * * * * * CHILDREN’S PAGE. * * * * * THE GRASSHOPPER TEACHER. _By M. K. Smith. Atlanta University, Ga._ A young lad who had found his way from the West coast of Africa to Atlanta University entered my class in entomology last October. Shortly after, when naming the teachers under whose instructions he came daily, he quaintly designated me as his “grasshopper teacher.”