In this special emergency we feel strongly the necessity laid on the Association for an enlargement of its administrative force.  Since the death of our lamented brother, Secretary Powell, the force at the New York office of the Association has been short-handed.  We hope that the earnest efforts which are being made by the Executive Committee to find a suitable person to become another Secretary of the Association may be at once successful.  An emergency is upon us, and we say this with the conviction that the demands of the Indian work are now so imperative as to require a large portion of the time and thought of such a Secretary.  It is a necessity that such a Secretary should frequently visit the field and be in constant communication with the workers.

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REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.

BY REV.  E.A.  STIMSON, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

This is the smallest and least conspicuous department of the work of the American Missionary Association, but the one that stands in the closest relation to ourselves, and the one also that can show the largest returns.  The Chinese in America are few in number, but they are scattered everywhere, as if God intended in them to put the spirit of our churches to a crucial test, and, where that test is endured, to give to his servants a prompt reward and an unanswerable confirmation of his promises and of their faith.

These strange little men from “the land of Sinim,” mysterious, silent, capable, incredibly industrious, money-making, with their pig-tails and their felt shoes, their “pidgin English” and their unintelligible “turkey tracks,” their wooden countenance and their “bias eyes,” their opium, and their “ways that are dark,” who, in spite of restrictive laws and brutal personal treatment, are filtering in everywhere, until they may be seen crouched in the corner of any street car, and are a familiar object in the village street—­why are they here? here just now and here so persistently?  It is no mighty immigration of men, such as De Tocqueville liked to dwell upon.  It is no conquering host, no familiar immigration.  Whatever may once have been the attractive force of the California gold fields, washing soiled linen can hardly be regarded as satisfying a national instinct, or thumping through the long hours of the night upon an ironing table a soul-filling amusement.  Much may be said of “the golden fleece,” but these are no modern Argonauts.  They are money-making as our friends the Jews, but no “high emprise” or “grand endeavor” fires their calm pulse, and much as has been written of the coolie system and the “Six Companies,” nothing has been adduced which seems adequate to explain the movement.