AND so you thought the Chinese do not know anything?

Look into this school; see wise Mr. Ah Lee sitting before his thirteen youngsters. See how bright they look. And surely they know how to get as much fun out of a cat’s tail and get rapped over the knuckles as hard as any American boy. Yes, they sit upon the floor, and they don’t seem to have blackboards and maps and many other nice school contrivances, but they manage somehow to learn one of the most difficult languages in the world.

Our poor missionaries do have such a time in mastering Chinese so they can converse with the people and preach the Gospel to them. The trouble is that a word may mean one of a dozen different things, just as you happen to give it this tone (sound) or that.

A Mr. Meadows once wished to say “bargain money” to a Chinaman. He used the proper Chinese word for it, but pronounced it as though it meant to the Chinaman “Do you hear? do you hear?” And what said John Chinaman? Just nothing at all, but came nearer and nearer to Mr. Meadows, turning one side of his head then the other to listen.

Once Mr. Pohlman asked a Chinese family if they drank wine, but he pronounced the word wine (tsÉn) so it sounded to them like their word for land (t’sen).

At another time he asked a mourning family if they had buried (tÁi) the body of their dead grandmother. But he sounded it t’ai, which means to kill. Imagine their looks.

But the missionaries work away at the queer Chinese words and tones until they can tell the “old story” plainly—and hundreds have heard and understood, and now believe.

You know how hard it is for the Chinaman to speak our language. He says “Amelican” for American, our r is so difficult for him to get.

But the time is coming when every one of God’s family will know the one great language, and there will be no hard schoolmaster to scold or whip it into them.

L.