The Christian Herald's famine fund envoy to China seems to have found open hearts as well as open hands in his tour of North China with relief for the famine sufferers. Describing his progress and the attention paid him by Chinese officials and others, he says:— “I have been received with the utmost courtesy and outspoken expressions of gratitude from the Chinese officials, and at times my progress has taken on almost the form of an ovation. Nothing could be more polite than the treatment accorded me by the mandarins. If I wanted an expert pony for the day's stage, I always received it. If donkeys had to be substituted for the heavy lumbering cart over the mountain roads, all I had to do was to ask for them, and I found them waiting in the courtyard early the next morning. At the town of Shou-Yang, the Herald commissioner was met by an old official and by Chinese soldiers carrying the flags of the different regiments stationed in that prefecture. It was from this place13that Mr. Piggott, an English missionary, was taken handcuffed, with his wife and children, into Tai-Yuen to be murdered. As I review the odd procession, it seems evident to me that the inhabitants of Shou-Yang realize now that they committed a great crime and have no mercy to expect at the hands of foreigners. That a foreign newspaper should aid the starving ones of their country by sending bread instead of bullets, was the sort of return which they did not expect, but for which they wished to express their gratitude. For more than fifty miles beyond Shou-Yang the villages are strangely dilapidated. Stone walls are crumbling and tiled roofs are falling to pieces. The inhabitants are clad in tatters and have the appearance of beggars. By the mandarins I was told the reason. A collection of tumble-down walls means that the opium habit has the village in its grip. Altho this awful vice claims thousands of victims every year all over the empire, the province of Shansi is perhaps the greatest sufferer. Its peculiarity here is that the habit overwhelms whole communities. Into a peaceful, contented village a supply of opium will be brought, and all the inhabitants will begin smoking it simultaneously. The motive at first is the charm of a new sensation, to break the monotony of village life. Soon, however, the habit becomes permanent, and the village is doomed. Men, women, and children alike are slaves of the imported drug. They eat little food, neglect their work, become slovenly in their habits, and practically devote their entire time to opium-smoking. The end is the death of the majority of the villagers, if not directly from the drug, from the exposure and neglect which follow in its wake. In every large city in Shansi there are several private hospitals and retreats for the cure of the opium habit. Overhead, in front of many of the Chinese drug stores, are signs announcing that “opium remedies are sold here.” The new governor of the province has recently issued an order that any mandarin who is addicted to the vile opium habit will be degraded from his rank. On the walls of Tai-Yuen, capital of Shansi, are proclamations of eulogy from the governor of the province, praising the famine relief work of the Christians. It was in front of this governmental palace two years ago that forty-three Romanist and Protestant missionaries and their families were put to death by the Boxers or their official sympathizers. The governor who connived at or ordered this slaughter was among those who were ordered to be decapitated when China was making amends for the Boxer outrage. The new governor has had an excellent English education, speaks English fluently, and is more favorably inclined toward the Christians than his predecessor. “On his shoulders,” says the Herald’s representative, “has devolved the difficult task of settling the indemnity claims. He has performed it in a spirit of genuine sorrow for the crimes his countrymen have committed, and he has shown a real friendliness for Christians which has endangered his popularity with some of the ultra-conservatives, who still cherish the Chinese dislike of foreigners. His expressions of gratitude and surprise at the readiness of Americans to forgive would fill several columns of your paper. When his secretary called on me later, he said: ‘When we Chinamen think of last year, and then of what Americans are doing for us now, we want to hide our faces for shame.’”