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258 which he was born. The text carried the day. The benefits which he had been, as it were, singled out from a whole people to receive, his sense of justice and gratitude alike would not let him appropriate to his own advantage. And so, though he knew not what should befall him, he set his face to return; and he went to do what he has done.

He sailed soon after his graduation for Hong Kong which, after a voyage of 151 days, he reached in the month of April, 1855. When the Chinese pilot came on board he found that he could, with some difficulty, understand what he said, though he could not make the pilot understand him, which shows the condition of his knowledge of Chinese on his arrival in the country. It took him all the time he was not otherwise employed for two years to acquire facility in the use of it.

As for his grand scheme, he had settled it in his own mind that the first step to be taken toward carrying it out was to contrive a way of getting it before some influential public man or men — a thing itself of infinite difficulty.