After a few months the mother-in-law made her daughter a visit as she passed through Sacramento on her way back to her native land.  What passed between mother and daughter we do not know, but a few days after her departure, Fong Bow returning to his home was shocked to find his little wife suspended by the neck in an attempt at suicide.  He rescued her, and when she was restored asked for the reason.  She acknowledged that she had a good home and a kind and generous husband, but there was no shrine in the house, no ancestral tablet, no Joss, and she was convinced that some great evil must be impending from spirits thus neglected and provoked.  She preferred to sacrifice her present comfort rather than incur the woes approaching,—­all the more dreadful in her apprehension because utterly unknown.  Whereupon Fong Bow told her that while he himself could not worship such things, and knew that an idol was “nothing in the world,” he did not and would not forbid her to do what she thought right, and thus she provided herself with a shrine and gods and was comforted.

Meanwhile, the husband lived a Christian life before her, and she herself was willing to receive instruction from Mrs. Carrington and others.  It is not improbable that she saw the difference between a home even half Christian, like her own, and those where heathen customs made of a husband less a protector than a lord.  Doubtless she thought much in silence before coming to the decision which changed the current of her life.  It is singular that the crisis came in consequence of her observing at a marriage of Chinese persons making no profession of Christian faith, the absence of the rites which had been, in her view, the only safeguards against evil.  This brought her to decision.  With her own hands she removed the shrine she had erected, and then declared her purpose to worship her husband’s God.  Those who know her—­both Chinese and Americans—­see in her the tokens of a real and radical change; and it was with great joy that I heard, some weeks ago, that she had been baptized and welcomed to the Congregational Church in Sacramento, to which her husband has belonged these many years.

WM. C. POND.

* * * * *

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO IN OUR COUNTRY.

Address at the Annual Meeting in Chicago,

BY THE REV.  C.H.  RICHARDS, D.D.

Deeper than the question, what shall we do with the Negro, lies the more fundamental question:  What does God mean to do with the Negro in our country?  Many a so-called solution of the “race problem” has been a foredoomed failure, because it ran counter to the Providential plan.  Some have hoped that time would settle the burning question; if people would only stop talking about it, especially meddlesome people far away from the real pinch of the trouble, they fancy that somehow the mere flight of years would adjust differences and secure to all their rights.