is still occupied by missionaries nearly every summer, though its comparatively low elevation renders it rather a place of rest than a sanatorium. There in 1865 and 1866, my seventh and eighth years of consecutive life in China, I spent, under medical advice, respectively six weeks and three months of the hot weather. During the latter stay I worked fairly hard at a version in Ningpo romanized colloquial of the "Occasional Services" of our Prayer Book, and at writing the whole Prayer Book, as far as it went, into Chinese characters with adaptations.

It will be seen that in the first nine years of my residence on Chinese soil I by no means denied myself the refreshment of an escape from city life; now by a sea trip, now by a longer or shorter sojourn in the hills. On the whole from eight to ten months were so spent, of which the greater part was shared. by my wife and children.

Many years later, as missionary Bishop, in 1882 and 1887, we made two more visits to the well-loved "Lotus Convent;" when leaving my family there I went on visitation, respectively, to Shanghai and some hill stations and to T'aichow.

Several years after our first settlement in Hangchow a fellow-missionary acquired for that station a hill-site, Wushih Fêng, on the shore of the West Lake, perhaps four hundred feet above the level of the water, where in time two cominodious houses were built, of which much use was made by us, as an escape from the heat of summer, almost continuously during the subsequent years. Its popularity has waned since Mokanshan came into vogue with its much greater elevation and consequent value as a sanatorium. I find, however, that during thirteen years' continuous residence in Hangchow, from the end of 1895 till my wife's death in 1909, we paid together twelve visits to Wu-shih-fêng, of which three lasted eight weeks each, more or less, two about a week each; the whole averaging twenty-four days and a half. During some of these I was occupied with such duties as, e. g., the examination of candidates for the ministry and their Ordinations, anxious correspondence growing out of the hostile. attitude of the Romanist Mission in T'aichow, and during one summer regular lessons in Chinese given to lady missionaries. who were, like us, making holiday on our hill. Meantime our neighbourhood to the city of Hangchow made visits to its church and schools and to the leper hostel on the lake shore always possible and sometimes desirable.

Since my appointment as Bishop, thirty years ago, fairly extensive travelling on visitation has become necessary, and on the whole has no doubt done much, though sometimes exhausting, to keep me in health. Taking one year with another I have been seldom less than three months on the move, and in all sorts of conveyances have covered two or three thousand miles in the year.

My conveyances were various, including the comfortable. steamboat that took me from Shanghai to Ningpo, or (on two occasions) to Hankow, and, in a descending scale, the Wu-hsieh Ku'ai of the Grand Canal and the Huangp'u, the mat-roofed boats of the Ningpo and Shaohsing rivers and canals, the far rougher craft of the Ts'ien-t'ang river and of the T'aichow river and canals, and last and least the foot-boat, or skiff propelled by the oarsman's feet, a cramped but by no means impossible vehicle, and in which some thousands, probably, of my many miles' journeying have been accomplished. On land, sometimes for days together, one walked or made use of the hardly less wearisome conveyance the sedan chair. As I have remarked, however, these itinerations in the open air, wearying or not, tended no doubt more or less to keep me in health.

I have not found time to look through all my diaries, but probably in the years I have not referred to we took our summer change frequently, if not every year. But I never again visited, for more than a day or two, either Japan or Chefoo, nor have I ever spent a summer at Kuling or Mokanshan, though in 1906 I spent the inside of a week at the latter place.

With such a record it would ill become me to find fault with missionaries who avail themselves of existing opportunities of refreshment through a change during the summer from the Chinese city, or the foreign concession on the plains, to a hill-lodge on Kuling or Mokanshan, or a watering place in Japan or on the shores of North China. The Church Missionary Society indeed has recently laid down the law that each of its missionaries shall secure at least one month's absence from the station during the summer, unless his (or her) doctor sanctions its omission.

Features of the existing practice of which I hear, and which in my judgment are open to criticism are, e. g., the unsanctioned extension of the holiday period, failure to consider the interests of the Chinese church, or of our colleagues, in

fixing its date, and the-shall I say?-dissipation, religious or otherwise, which I am told renders some of the popular resorts rather the reverse of restful to men and women, whose close occupation during ten or eleven months has made them crave rest from even the engrossing topics of their missionary calling. A former secretary of the Church Missionary Society in London once wrote to us on this subject the advice to copy the example of our medical colleagues rather than too implicitly to follow their directions. A well-known medical missionary was not unnaturally annoyed at this counsel as-however honourable from one point of view, yet-reflecting either on the competence or the good faith of the physician's advice. Nevertheless, with all due respect for the value of medical advice, it would be well if the devotion with which our doctors stick to their exhausting duties through hot and pestilential summers, rather than leave the dispensary unmanned, or a colleague balked of his chance of rest, were more often copied by the rest of us. of our Chinese fellow-Christians, too, pastors, evangelists, or communicants, we may also do well to pause, when tempted to take or to prolong our leave, without full consideration of what is due to them and care to let them know the motives of our actions.

For the sake

I have written more than enough, however, for one whose experience in the characteristics of our health resorts is as limited as it is extended, or perhaps unique, with respect to residence within city walls.

I

The Use and Abuse of Summer Resorts

BY REV. G. G. WARREN, CHANGSHA

FEEL compelled to begin this article by saying that I

have been asked to write it. I am fain to believe that most missionaries use and do not abuse our summer resorts, though I have to acknowledge that there is an abuse on the part of what I hope is a small minority. The difficulty of writing for an anonymous minority is enhanced by the fear that the individuals who make it up are supremely ignorant of their position and that of all men they are most likely to take to heart every sentence that can be written in favour of summer resorts and thereby confirm themselves in the error of their ways.

Those of us who have been in China over twenty years can testify to a great modification in the general judgment of missionaries and the missionary movement by our fellowcountrymen in mercantile and other callings. But there is a striking similarity between the references made to-day about missionaries and summer resorts to the references of a bygone day to missionaries in general. The analogy may comfort some into the conclusion that as the change from the old style of references to our work has been due rather to increased knowledge of what they are talking about on the part of our friends and not to any change on our part, so there may be hope that the references to our recreation will be similarly modified.

Certainly one general difference between the missionary and the merchant is often overlooked. Merchants are, as a rule, not only better housed; they nearly all live where there are sundry means of amelioration to the discomforts of the summer. Without ice, and without the supplies of fruits and vegetables that are obtainable in most of our treaty ports, the summer is a much more formidable foe.

(Perhaps I may be forgiven here for interjecting a remark on the skimpy use of punkahs by missionaries. In many homes the punkah is used only for meals. The cost of punkah coolies is not so great as to render the comparative ease of writing and studying under a punkah unobtainable for the ordinary missionary. I have never hesitated to urge the employment of night punkahs by those who, unlike myself, fear to sleep in the open air.)

The differences between us physically and constitutionally render it about as absurd to lay down a rule to which every missionary should conform in his use of a summer resort, as it would be to say how many miles every man should walk, or how many ounces of food he should consume a day. I believe there are cases of what I should not hesitate to call a shameful misuse of mission funds where healthy men simply dawdle on at a summer resort to avoid a bit of discomfort, and yet a colleague who goes up and comes back on the same day as these men, has taken an unwisely short holiday. His too early return to work results in a breakdown.

I would add a word of caution in regard to arguments about breakdowns. Nowhere is there such a misuse of the "post hoc, propter hoc" argument as in the matter of a break

down on the plains. Any missionary who holds that there is need of care in the amount of time spent at Kuling would be convicted right off of attempted suicide if he were to break down on the plains and were then called to face a jury of missionaries not holding these opinions. Yet there are cases of breakdowns-and pretty bad ones-at Kuling, and of breakdowns on the plains of men who have returned from a long holiday in the hills. When a man breaks down let his case be fairly tried by a professional man who can weigh all the circumstances and whose judgment will be just. By all means let one who has been unwise in not using a summer resort be rightly cautioned. But merely off-handed chatter that So and So deserves to be ill because he stayed down all through the summer, is quite as objectionable as the similar chatter of the lower class of English newspapers on the other side.

I am not now engaged in high or primary school work, but teaching was my profession before entering the ministry, and I have had the privilege of spending a few years in teaching Chinese boys since coming to China. I feel therefore I may be allowed to say a word on behalf of missionary school masters. I am strongly of opinion that they need a longer holiday than their colleagues in ordinary evangelistic work. Whether part of such holiday may not be well spent in visiting country stations is worth considering, but I should like to protest against any school master being required to pass any part of the ordinary two months' summer vacation on his school compound. The argument on behalf of those engaged in theological or even normal school training is not so strong as on behalf of those engaged in teaching boys and girls.

Many missions adopt the plan of limiting the time spent by the missionaries at the summer resorts. I have heard criticisms on this plan which do not seem to me to be well founded. Where a man receives an annual stipend as most of us missionaries do, there is a lack in the sense of fitness if he wishes to act as an independent merchant is fully justified in acting. No consular or other officer ever imagines that he is free to fix the conditions of his holidays. I fail altogether to see why a missionary should consider that he must be his own judge as to the amount of holiday he may take. Whether the holiday be long or short, annual or less frequent, certainly it seems to me it should be reported to the Mission Board. A Mission Board should be in a position to say to any man: