When New Year came, there was a celebrated and much-attended festival on the Fairy Hill, near our home. From far and near crowds came to worship in the temple of the goddess, bestower of sons and healer of smallpox. Beggars, in all stages of filthiness, lined the roads reaping a rich harvest from the worshippers, eager to accumulate merit by acts of charity. My father joined the procession that started one day from our village. Fasting and in silence they wended their way across the fields, each man with a stick of burning incense in his hand, and preceded by banners and an idol in a shrine. Arrived at the temple the noise was deafening. Drums and gongs clashed, innumerable crackers spluttered, and the air was heavy with the smoke of incense. My father knelt before the grim idol. The priest shook together a lot of bamboo slips, from which my father took one, and the priest handed to him the corresponding response of the idol. Anxiously he stepped outside and read. Would it be favorable? Would the angry gods regard his prayer at last? He read the printed slip, and a look of intense disappointment passed over his face, for he read thus: From sickness no release; In lawsuits no success; Your children hard to rear; From false charges no redress; The lost will not be found, Nor flocks nor herds increase; From marriage no good luck, And from labor no release. Such was the result of many prayers and much fasting. Truly the gods keep their wrath for ever. CHAPTER VII. I RECEIVE A NEW NAME. Sadly my father wended his way down the mountain. All was hopeless. Heaven had forgotten to smile upon him. Then he noticed ahead of him a small crowd surrounding a foreigner. He was a missionary from the neighboring town, and was busy selling books and preaching to the worshippers of the goddess. Father stepped up, partly out of curiosity and partly remembering the good deeds of the foreigners in the famine district. The crowd were inclined for some fun at the stranger’s expense; but he answered with such good humor and politeness as to win their good opinions. Then he commenced to preach. He did not abuse the idols—there might have been trouble had he done so—but he told of a True Spirit who was loving and good. Father listened. Who could that Spirit be, so full of love? Not the god of thunder whom everybody feared, for he struck men dead in his wrath. Not the fierce god of war, or the pitiless Niang-niang rejoicing in the sufferings of the smallpox victims.