Not only those who were converted, but all the rest, made these matters the subject of familiar conversation; then, when they went back to their own country, they told about them to those who were there; and by this hospital the order was made famous in China. To this end it was a great assistance that when the sick man first came in, and his sickness gave an opportunity for it, they did not immediately discuss spiritual matters with him, until by experience he saw the truth of what the religious ordinarily said to him, and had learned with what solicitude and care they attended to his health and his diet. Upon this good foundation, and the confidence which they had created among them by such works, they built up, little by little, the preaching of the faith, and the consistency of its mysteries, confuting the errors of his infidelity. Now when all this rests upon a basis of so much beneficence which is not his due, but which he has received out of kindness alone, he is very willing to accept it; and he earnestly begs for baptism, receiving that sacrament with great joy. Sometimes, when some with great obstinacy have resisted the light, the Lord has amazed their ears, and has forced them to be eager for baptism, as happened to one who had a severe disease of the head. He was very perverse, and one day--the day of St. Nicholas the bishop--when he had been asleep for some time and had not spoken, he aroused a little, calling upon them to baptize him, because he wished to become a Christian. When the religious wondered at this, as did all the rest who had seen him a short time before in so contrary a mood, they asked him the reason for the change. He answered that he had seen a venerable old man, whom he described as the saint to whom that day is sacred is represented; the vision had commanded him to be baptized. In another case, one of two sick men was baptized; and the other saw a vision of that man rescued from demons as a result of the baptism. In still another case two impenitent sick persons refused to be baptized. One of them died, and the other saw him in a vision tortured by frightful demons, and prayed to be baptized.] The result is, that few who enter the hospital are not baptized, while all tell of the good done in it for the people of their nation. Years ago, a Chinese heathen came from his own country, and the first thing that he did when he reached this country was to ask for this hospital, of which he had heard so much good in his own land. When they showed it to him, he went straight to it, and told the fathers that in China he had heard how the fathers in this hospital cared for and fed those who were not their kinsmen or their acquaintances; and that the glory of so noble a thing and so pious a work had caused him to come to keep them company and aid them. The religious received him lovingly, and, finding that he had unusual intelligence, they taught him not only