Our readers may possibly remember that we have been making an experimental effort to plant a mission at Point Pedro, a Chinese fishing village, on one of the headlands making out into San Francisco Bay, about twenty miles from this city, and at least five miles from any American village. The work resembles, as to its difficulties, that which would be encountered in any village in China itself, and the teacher--Miss Mary C. Waterbury--is almost as much alone there as she would be if at work in China. One American family--a gentleman and his wife--reside at the point, having charge of the ranch and collecting the ground rents due from the Chinese fishermen, and in this family she has her only opportunity for free conversation in her native tongue. I make the following extract from a letter from her, giving an account of a “Moon Festival,” observed there by the Chinese. “It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene. I only wished that every Christian in this land could have looked upon it. This day has been a general holiday; no fishing, no work of any kind. These poor, tired men, who ply the oar and draw the net seven days in the week, early and late, day and night, are resting. They are to have a good dinner and a good time generally; and, in connection with it, are observing the oldest form of idol-worship this dark world has ever seen. This--not in China, or in Ethiopia, but right here in Christian America, under the very sound and light of the glorious gospel of the Light of the World. Under the clear shining of a bright, full moon a table is spread with the very best the offerer can afford, and then his guests come out, and, one by one, bow down to the moon and worship--worship, ‘not the one who carries the lantern,’ as a Christian Chinese said, ‘but the lantern itself.’ This is about all there was of it--and it does not make much of a story,--but nothing ever impressed me more deeply. I had read of idolatry before, but now I was looking it square in the face. Not many days ago a poor old man died here. Ever since, his daughter and her husband and the grand-children have been worshiping his spirit with all sorts of votive offerings; not from love to him, not to express their reverence for his memory, but from fear of his ghost. And so, right here in America, there is growing up a generation of idolaters.” [Illustration: SELLING PRAYERS IN A CHINESE TEMPLE.]