had anything to do with it, played, as in India and Hawaii, the part of the pioneer. It was a New England man, Elijah C. Bridgman, born in Belchertown, Mass., April 22, 1801, who with David Abeel replied to. the call for reinforcements sounded in 1828 by the English missionary, Robert Morrison, already on the ground. He was joined by Bridgman at Canton in 1830. Morrison had been sent out by the Congregationalists of England, Bridgman by the Congregationalists of New England, operating through the American Board. The suspicions of the government and popular indifference and even scorn made the early years toilsome and their outcome meager, but there came a time, as it often comes in connection with all persistent and worthy endeavors, when the crevices and the seams in the rock began to appear. On New Year's Day in 1847 Stephen Johnson, born in Griswold, Ct., in 1803, planted another New England shoot in Foochow, the capital of the great Fukien Province. Looking back in 1850 upon the two difficult decades which he had spent in China, Bridgman was able to say: "When the beloved Abeel and myself arrived here, there was, in all this wide field, only one Protestant missionary, and only limited access to the people at one port. To propagate Christianity, on the part of the foreigner, and to embrace and practise it, on the part of the native, was then alike, in either case, a capital crime. In these twenty years what changes have we seen! Morrison and Abeel have gone to their rest, and many others who came subsequently to China are also gone; yet teachers of Jehovah's blessed gospel are now in the field; and we have free access to millions of the people. The first fruits of a great and glorious harvest begin to appear." He labored for thirty-two years with the Morrison Education Society and the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. His enduring monument is made up of the volumes of the Chinese Repository, which he founded and ably edited for nineteen years. Linked with the name of Bridgman in any retrospect of the first impact of the West and of New England upon China should always be the name of Peter Parker, who was born in Framingham, Mass., June 18, 1804, and educated at Amherst and Yale. Indeed, the name of this modest, capable, high-minded American surgeon should be written in golden letters in the annals of China. He arrived in Canton just in time to help fill the vacancy caused by the death of Dr. Morrison. With the point of his lancet he pierced China's conservatism and opened the way for the interchange of commerce between China and the western nations. His professional skill literally opened hundreds of blind eyes. The Ophthalmic Hospital which he started in Canton, November 4, 1835, is the oldest hospital in the Orient. Patients from every one of the eighteen provinces of China year after year have found physical relief, gaining incidentally a new and far more favorable idea than they had cherished of the "foreign devil." Dr. Parker prescribed for a hundred or more patients daily. Many of them came from places five hundred miles distant. They represented all classes from beggars to high officials of the imperial government. Within five years six thousand were treated at the hospital. Dr. Parker became an apostle of international good will between China on the one hand and England and the United States on the other. Upon President Van Buren he impressed the importance of establishing diplomatic relations with China. On a visit to Washington he preached a moving sermon before Congress, consisting largely of the simple recital of the physical and spiritual transformations he had seen in China, in which he himself had had no small part. So highly was he regarded in government circles that the President appointed him in 1844 secretary and Chinese interpreter to the legation in China. Not long afterwards he was elevated to the position of Minister Plenipotentiary, charged with the important task of revising the treaty of 1844 which he had helped to make. For the magnitude and permanent effects of his labors, both China and the United States owe to Peter Parker an incalculable debt. Among many men of might from various lands who left the impress of their strong personalities on China this typical son of New England stands on a level with the mightiest. Among diplomats the name of Caleb Cushing, who was born in Salisbury, Mass., January 17, 1800, holds a prominent place. At a period when the Chinese looked upon Americans with suspicion and distrust, not to say with contempt, he was sent to China under President Tyler as a special commissioner, with powers enlarged to envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty and establish regular diplomatic relations with the Celestial Empire. It was in this work that he availed himself of the services of Peter Parker and Elijah C. Bridgman, both of whom acted as his secretaries, and to whom he paid high tributes for their scholarship and knowledge of matters Chinese. Another man who met all the difficulties of pioneer work among a proud and distrustful people was Lyman D. Peet, born in Cornwall, Vt., in 1809. He landed first at Bankok, Siam, and after six years' service among the Chinese immigrants there was transferred to Foochow. His fine personal appearance and kindly manner went far to disarm prejudice against |