a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and
roused him. He too was down and in the hold like a flash--brave
fellows that they are, these "true British sailors." I waited the
result, knowing that if fire had really started, a general
stampede of Chinamen would soon come from the hatches; but all was
still. How long those few moments seemed! In a short time the
captain returned, looking, in his night-clothes, like a ghost. One
of the crazy men had broken loose from his chains, and the
Chinamen were panic-stricken. The watchman wanted the most
startling alarm, and found it, undoubtedly, in that word fire. It
is all over; but when he next has to sound an alarm let him "take
any form but that."

We have a reverend missionary and wife, with two young lady
missionaries in embryo, who are on their way to begin their labors
among the Chinese. They are busily engaged learning the language.
Poor girls! what a life they have before them! But apart from all
question of its true usefulness, they have the grand thought to
sustain them, and ennoble their lives, that they go at the call of
what seems to them their duty. We watch the Chinese eating and
laugh at their chopsticks, but we forget that one reason why John
Chinaman prides himself upon being at the pinnacle of civilization
is that he uses these very chopsticks. (None of the races of Asia,
and until recently he knew no other, have ever got beyond
chopsticks, the use of which was first taught China, while most
of them don't even have them yet.) Let us not forget that our
ancestors were using their fingers--barbarians that they
were--when the Chinese had risen, centuries before, to the
refinement of these sticks, for the fork is only about three
hundred years old. Shakespeare probably, Spenser certainly, had