His father was a merchant in the market village of the Chao family, near Jenshow. By dint of industry and economy, he had also added a small farm to his possession. Li was placed in the shop. Affability won friends, time and tact got him trade, while his fearlessness gradually carried him far afield. Back from the borders of the aborigines he brought white wax and ponies; from the province of Uin Lan he led pack mules laden with tea. In Kweichow, south and east, he sought silks and horses. From the far-flung tribes to north and west he bought musk and medicines, and from the Thibetans wools and hides. Soon agencies were established, compass-like, all about his centre, and Li, the trader, was known to big firms in scores of cities, towns, and in the great capital. But travels had touched more than trade. In larger centres he had seen the much-talked-of foreigner, with his ever-present hospitals, schools, and churches, and had heard him discussed from province to province in countless inns and teashops. Once, only once, he had paused one day in his busy life to listen to a street preacher. He carried away little of what was said. How could such things concern him and his sole search for goods and gold? Thus ten years fled by. He lost much, but made more, and at length decided to settle in his native village, among his own, the better to be a filial son to his now aging father. About that time mission problems assumed a new phase. After the dramatic events culminating in the Boxer cataclysm in 1900, the missionary found himself received in a new light. Previously permitted, as a matter of indifference, or in many places despised, insulted, persecuted, he now found himself pushed into unsought prominence. Foreign troops had defeated the forces of the Son of Heaven. Foreign officials had but to say the word, and China bowed to obey. Were not the missionaries friends of these consuls, indeed might they not themselves be officials or paid to act as such? In fact, one nation, France, openly allowed their “fathers” official status. The bishop ranked with a viceroy, the humblest priest with the local magistrate. The fruit of it all came fast. People flocked to the churches, not to be bettered by Christian teaching, but to gain power with which to threaten and coerce their enemies. This, it is not unfair to say, was particularly true among Roman Catholic native priests and their converts, where the worst characters of the community carried the day with high hand. It was at least true of the Jenshow district, where, abetted by the church, “converts” coerced, blackmailed, robbed, assaulted their helpless neighbors. Should reprisals arise they were at once labelled “persecutions,” appeal was made to the priests, then to the bishop, and thus to the chief officials of the province, or locally to the magistrates. The honest, hard-working citizen’s lot seemed hopeless and helpless.