a daily account of the proceeding's of the General Convention, then in
session in Trinity Church, San Francisco, in the "Chung Sai Yat Po."

The editing of a Chinese newspaper is no easy matter. The printing of
the paper is difficult and requires great skill and patience. There
are, for example, forty thousand word-signs, all different, in the
Chinese language, and to represent these signs there must be separate,
movable type-pieces. It is said that it takes a long period of time to
distribute the type and lay out "the case." The typesetter must know
the word by sight to tell its meaning, otherwise he will make serious
blunders. Then it is a hard matter to find intelligent typesetters.
The editor, too, must be a man of business. The paper is watched by
spies of the Chinese Government, and if the editor expresses himself
in any manner antagonistic to the Emperor or the Dowager Empress or
any of the viceroys of the provinces, his head would be cut off if he
ever ventured to set foot in China. There is another obstacle in the
way of a Chinese newspaper of liberal views, like the "Chung Sai Yat
Po." It cannot get its type from China, as the Government is opposed
to every reform paper. The type for such a journal is cast in a
Japanese foundry in Yokohama. It is said that about ten thousand
word-signs are used in the printing of the newspaper. The type-case is
usually long, for the purpose of allowing all the type-pieces to be
spread out. The type runs up and down in a column, and you read from
right to left as in Hebrew or other Shemitic languages. The characters
are as old in form as the days of Confucius. The "Chung Sai Yat Po"
has a very large circulation and finds its way to the islands of the
Pacific Ocean and into China.

From the newspaper office we wended our way to a little Baptist
mission chapel for the Chinese. There were about forty persons