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 Christmas in Our Boys' School, Junghsien, West China

, B.A., B.D.

If you were a Chinese, and every day ate two meals of rice and some vegetables, with meat only twice a month, if as often; if you worked from daylight to dark seven days in the week, and had no summer vacation or Christmas holidays; if you had no books to read except possibly (if you were lucky) one or two greasy and tattered volumes of ancient philosophy, not one word of which you understood; in other words, if you were an average Chinese boy or girl, don't you think that you would look forward even more eagerly than you did this year to Christmas? I think you would. At any rate the boys and girls connected with the church in Junghsien were expecting a great treat, and we were planning to give them all that they expected, and more.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, a terrible thing happened that put an end to all these hopes and plans. Can you guess what it was? It was not a fire, or an earthquake, or a riot on the mission. But one morning there came word that the Emperor of China and his