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,
