evangelists-Li, Yu and Tsa. They were ably assisted by the local pastors and helpers. Only one sermon was preached by a foreigner. A large corps of ushers and personal workers, all Chinese, were present at every service and did most effective service. A foreigner led the singing and foreigners "kept the door," but the greater part of the work was done by the Chinese.

Only time can tell about the actual results. Many of the names and addresses given, no doubt will be false, and many persons signing the cards doubtless can never be found, but making every possible allowance, this is by far the greatest awakening which has ever occurred in Soochow. It is safe to say that this great, self-satisfied city knows more about the

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Church and the Gospel which it brings than it ever did before. Hundreds of large placards were put up and thousands of hand invitations were given out, which in themselves would have been sufficient to cause the entire city to ask about the Church and its mission. Every day for two weeks between two and three thousand people heard the Gospel. About four thousand gospels and several hundreds of tracts were given away. Over sixteen hundred persons were brought into close touch with sin and the great verities of this life and that which is to come. The influence of the meetings extended beyond Soochow. Cards were signed by people from several distant cities and many of the towns and villages near by the city.

a case of flood upon flood and famine upon famine. Rain poured in western Hunan from the seventh to the sixteenth of June, swelling the Yuen River to such proportions that embankments were broken in a number of places, and large areas that a few weeks ago gave promise of a bountiful rice harvest were completely flooded. The loss of life and property has been great. Horses, cows and other domestic animals were drowned by the scores, while it is conservative to say that at least a thousand people were drowned by the upsetting of boats in the treacherous current, the unloosing and destruction of old house boats used as homes by the boating population, and the collapse of houses.

The Yuen River rose twenty-five feet in three days, part of the city wall on the interior gave way, and for a time the situation within the city walls was perilous. It was only by using heroic measures in cutting a dyke above the city, and thus diverting to some extent the force of the current that the city escaped. On the river street poor beggars and famine refugees in large numbers who were too weak

to make their escape were drowned by the sudden onrush of water. Above Changteh almost entire villages along the riverside were swept away by the mad rush of the current, and hundreds of people were thus drowned.

The flood has inundated farming lands for many miles, and as the whole district is lowlying, the water, being on the inside of the embankments, will be slow to recede. The rice harvest was a practical failure last year. and this flood has marked its doom for the present year. For five years previously certain parts of the district have had only partial harvests, and the condition of the country people has been one of distress and want. After facing the famine in its seriousness and witnessing suffering of such magnitude, the foreign community decided to make known the situation, with a view to receiving such help as generous residents in China, as well as abroad, may be disposed to render. But the point on which emphasis must be laid is that the misfortunes of Changteh are not a thing of this year or of last. The country has always been low-lying; the Tungting Lake and the Yuen

River have always been at hand to provoke sudden flood.

In the recent riots at Changsha there is evidence that much of the disturbance was originally caused by an influx of refugees, the produce of last year's floods, from Changteh. For how many hundreds or thousands of years these evils must have been apparent to the officials of Hunan, we cannot say. But it is evident that there can be no permanent prosperity for Changteh, or for other parts of China similarly liable to calamity, unless the industrial problems of China are grappled with comprehensively, and some effort is made to provide another prop for the nation besides the uncertain one of agriculture.

The forty-five village schools for boys can each send only one boy every other year to our Boys' High School, as that institution is already overcrowded. An enlarged high school, perforce on a new site is part of the Station plan for the near future at Wei Hsien Station.

BOOK NOTE

The annual output of missionary literature has become enormous. Fortunately for our pocket-books, the number of books that are really indispensable is comparatively few. Among these are "The Christian Movement in Japan" and "The China Mission Year Book." The former has become a standard publication, the volume under review being the eighth annual issue. It is edited by the Rev. Dr. Daniel C. Greene, assisted by Mr. G. M. Fisher, is published in Japan for the Conference of Federated Missions, and is handled in America by The Young People's Missionary Movement, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York. "The China Mission Year Book" is the first issue of an annual volume which has long been greatly needed. The editor is the Rev. D. MacGillivray. It is published in Shanghai for The Christian Literature Society of China, but may also be obtained in this country from The Young People's Missionary Movement. These small compact volumes contain an enormous amount of information. No one who is interested in Japan or China should fail to secure them. They are to the student of Missions what the Statesman's Year Book is to a public man. There are no other single books which tell so much about the countries which they treat.

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MONTHLY CONCERT FEBRUARY.-"The Plastic and Changing Conditions in China-The Church's Opportunity." Isa. 49:8-13. Alternate Topic: "Plastic Conditions (Continued). Great Changes in India, the Mohammedan World and Africa. In Connection with the above lands treat the results of the Russo-Japanese War." Books.

"Report of the World Missionary Conference, Edinburg, 1910."

"The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions," John R. Mott.

"Students and the Present Missionary Crisis."
"Dr. Apricot of Heaven Below.'
"Changing_China," William Cecil.

"Report: China, Japan and Korea," Arthur Judson Brown.

"The China Mission Year Book," McGillivray. MARCH.-"The Open Door in Africa and Its Dan

gers." Psa. 68:28-32.

HOME

UR American Indians are still largely a child race, dependent, undeveloped, untaught. They possess all the possibilities of strength of body, brain, and character that belong to any other people but they have been frequently misled and deceived, sometimes flattered, more often scorned, and have been driven here and there as their lands seemed desirable to the white man, until they have become bewildered and discouraged.

In dealing with these people, and I refer to the great majority of the race still in need of guidance, it is necessary to remember first of all that we do not understand them very much better than they understand us, and we must perpetually strive to look at things from their point of view if we hope to help them. From babyhood the Indian is trained to think as his fathers thought and to reason as his fathers reasoned. He is taught to revere the older Indians and to model his conduct by theirs. Is it then strange that a boy, fresh from the far off boarding school, runs against a solid wall of opposition and disapproval when he endeavors to teach his old father and mother new and strange ways of living. Perhaps among no other untaught people do the educated children find quite so much difficulty in introducing new customs; certainly not among the negroes where old folks are generally quite as anxious to learn as the children to teach. Under such conditions progress for the Indians must of necessity be slow, and tact and patience with them unfailing.

Nevertheless, looking back over the past 30 years, the race has unquestionably made a tremendous advance. In 1878 General Armstrong, the pioneer of industrial education, admitted fourteen prisoners of war to Hampton Institute, the well known industrial school for freedmen. Capt. R. H. Pratt, who afterwards started the Carlisle School, had these Indians in charge. So suc

cessful did this educational experiment prove, that more were brought a few months later from the Sioux country, coming in blankets and feathers into an absolutely unknown mode of life among strangers who spoke a foreign language. In three years they were expected to master English, reading, writing, etc., and to acquire entirely new habits of living to which they were to convert the rest of their tribe upon their return; a task for generations one might well think. What hardships there were to overcome we can have but the vaguest realization of-the life in the tipi or the crowded one room cabin, on some reservations great scarcity of water, little chance for cleanliness or good food, prejudice and antagonism on all sides against the strange new religion learned at school, and always the old heathen customs and life-long associations dragged at their inclinations, and the new civilized temptations were pressed upon them by the outcasts of the white race.

And yet the new idea took root and grew. Government schools were established on the reservations, and boys and girls are now well advanced before they enter the non-reservation schools for the trades and higher training they can not get at home. The last few years have shown much more rapid changes and the children of the early Hampton Indians are now applying for admission to the school. Carlisle's last report shows twenty-nine children of their former pupils enrolled, a significant fact which brings up the question of how much is to be expected of the second generation of a people passing from barbarism into civilization. How many of us can look far enough back into our own ancestry to answer?

Each year the houses and barns on the reservations improve, and on many, good two-and three-roomed frame houses have taken the place of the log cabin with sod roofs and unsanitary earth floors. But there is vast need of