special jobs for which they were paid in coin, and showed the same eager interest and delight in their earnings and offerings.

They fully understood how other Juniors helped them by their gifts, and how they sent to Anvik the presents for

I

the Christmas-tree festival each year. I think our boys and girls were much pleased that others should in turn be helped by their efforts. There were always happy times at our meetings, and they are among my happiest recollections of the days spent in Anvik.

Na small village not far from the city of Shanghai there lives a school boy, nicknamed Didi, which means "Little Brother." As is the way with Chinese boys, he has more relatives than you might count upon a centipede's fingers, let alone your own. They are mostly village folk, farmers by trade, and poor, indeed, as compared with our common notion of farmers. But, perhaps, the very poorest of all is a great-uncle of Didi's, named Dan Yuisan, a cigarette peddler by trade, who, by industry and much effort, is able to make sometimes as much as a hundred cash a day, which may amount to a $1.25 a month. Dan Yui-san is sixtyone years old, and has a wife and a son and six grandchildren, and he and the son are the entire support of the family.

But they are not all so poor as old Yui-san, Didi's relatives. For instance, there is that prosperous and somewhat famous uncle who lives 'way up in the city of Shanghai and is cook in the household of a foreign man from America, a very venerable Si-sang, named Archdeacon Thomson. Everybody in the village knows of this uncle, and they gather around when he pays a visit home, to hear him tell about the strange foreign people that he has seen and actually lived among.

Didi was getting along pretty well in school and learning to read and write a bit when one day last year he found that his eyes were itching frightfully and were quite red and painful. He

did not think much of it at first, but day by day they grew worse and worse, until he had to leave school. The village doctor could do nothing to help matters, and when a month or two had gone by the eyelids began to turn in and the lashes to rub up and down on the eyes, and they hurt frightfully. Finally, they became so dim that he had to be led about, or else sit at home with his head in his hands to keep out the light. Didi was going blind.

It happened that about that time the uncle from Shanghai came home for a visit, and was told the bad news that Didi was going blind. Now this uncle had a friend He-ling, who is known as "Old Father," because he is the most distinguished man of a neighboring village. For many years He-ling has been a nurse in a hospital in Shanghai, called "Dong Sung I-Yoen," or "St. Luke's" for short, where he made $10 a month. Didi's uncle remembered that he had often heard from He-ling that they certainly had some wonderful foreign "fatsuh" at that hospital, by which people. who were actually blind sometimes got back their sight. So he suggested to Didi's father and mother that they should let him take Didi up to Shanghia and "have a try at what the foreigners might do."

It was a terrible proposition to the parents, who had hardly seen a foreigner in their life, and never spoken to one, and it required a lot of "saung-liang"ing; but they finally consented, with

much fear and many doubts. "A blind person get back his sight! Whoever heard of anything so absurd?"

Finally, Didi did go up to Shanghai, however, and was landed one day in a big room with twenty beds in it, and every one there seemed to be as sick as he, or more so, and he was dreadfully scared and did not sleep a wink the first night. But nothing much happened to terrify him, and next day two ever-sokind Chinese doctors, named Dr. Day and Dr. Tyau, took him into the funniest room he had ever been in all white and glistening-and there he fell asleep and when he awoke he never had any more pain in his eyes. And in four weeks he went back to his village well and able to see and go again to school.

"DR. DAY SAID THE OPERATION WAS A SUCCESS, WHATEVER THAT MIGHT BE"

Didi never knew just what did happen, but heard someone say that Dr. Day had "operated on him," whatever in the world that might be.

One day Didi was turning a somersault in the mud outside his house when old Uncle Yui-san was led down the street, slowly and carefully, by Cousin Kwen-sung, his oldest grandson. "Look out, Didi," said Kwen-sung. "You'll upset grandfather."

"Well," said Didi, "why doesn't he get out of my way when he sees I have my feet up in the air, and can't walk on my head?"

"He cannot see you," replied Kwensung; he's blind."

"Blind!" said Didi. "Why, his eyes don't look sore."

"No, they are not; but three years ago a white spot started to grow in the pupil of each eye and at first his eyes were only dim, and then gradually he went stone blind. And oh, Didi, he cannot earn anything and we are terribly poor, and I am so awfully hungry. Do you suppose your mother would give us a bit of burnt rice-scrapings from the pan in which your dinner was cooked?"

"I dare say," said Didi, "but I can tell you where to get something a lot better than rice-scrapings. I know of a place where they give blind people sight."

It was all talked out, and it proved easy to persuade old Yui-san, for the village had had some experience since Didi's return. And Yui-san was led by the hand all the way to Shanghai. And there, in the glistening room, without any pain, after three years of blindness, suddenly the glorious light of God's beautiful world rushed in once more, and he saw bending over him two faces -a strange foreign face, the first he had ever seen, and the face of Dr. Day.

In a few weeks Yui-san was measured for glasses, and he was absolutely astounded to find that with them he could actually read again.

"But," he said, "I can

never earn

H

OW do the children in Brazil differ from children at home? In looks they are much the same. The dark type predominates, it is true; but is not exclusive. Really, children are children the world over.

The child must grow in order to take on certain distinctive marks that will characterize him as a Brazilian. Just so soon as the boy can he will grow his mustache and curl it at the ends, and will learn to talk with his eyes and arms, as only the Brazilian can do to perfection. Two Brazilians, be they men or women, engaged in a quiet, but serious, conversation, seem to be at war one with another. One unaccustomed to their violent gestures looks expectantly for the first blow, and perhaps a murder, and is not a little surprised to see them part with a friendly embrace. The children soon copy their parents in so fascinating a custom.

When in the streets we see a boy armed with two huge horns and pursued by boys wildly waving old sacks or any other rag that the desperate horned beast may mistake for scarlet, we recognize the famous and favorite bull-fight. In imitation of the dog-catchers, the boys go on their own hunts, lassooing, not often dogs, but one another, and are very happy when a poor cat falls a victim to their snares.

The boys seem to be rather lacking in originality as to games; for except for these two and the flying of kites and catching of birds, I have witnessed no. other games of consequence, though I doubt not that they exist. A favorite occupation of the boys is kite-flying. They make them of various sizes and colors, and in the forms of circles, diamonds, squares and stars; but here inventive genius stops. Of course must remember that Santos Dumont is a Brazilian.

we

There are few Brazilian boys or girls that lack training in certain respects. They are taught to be polite on the whole; they reverently kiss the hands of their parents and godparents, and take off their hats with due respect when a funeral passes. One would think that excessive ritual and splendor of service would create awe and reverence for things divine. The boys here have little or no respect for the Roman clergy, as they themselves constantly tell me, and so they learn to have none for the Roman Church.

Children naturally imbibe the superstitions of their parents. Look at the pictures of the two little girls, dressed up to represent, the one "Our Lady of the Conception"; the other, "Saint Michael." They were so decked out to take part in the great religious processions characteristic of Latin or Roman countries. The mother of the girl with the crown on her head was formerly, as she told me, one of the most superstitious of the Romanists. I asked her one day to tell me, as an intelligent woman of the higher social class, whether she used to worship the images of her former faith. Her reply was: "Why not? Of course I did."

Under the pure light of the Gospel that she embraced for herself and her children, the little girl has now grown up to be a Christian woman instead of an idolater. She is a sister of two of the native clergy, and the wife of another. Her name is Dona Eulalia Barcellos da Cunha Mello, called by her friends Yáyá.

The other little girl, now also grown to womanhood, lives in Santa Maria. I was at her house there one day; her parents were giving quite a large and delicious banquet, and I was much struck by the charming manners and Christian bearing of the various members of the family. The little "St. Michael" was