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Show bolic pageant was presented by the students in the artistic old rockery. After that the first Teachers' Institute was held for a week, and nine of the twenty-four graduates were able to attend. They were an eager group that absorbed everything they could see and hear. Nineteen of the graduates are teaching; they had an interesting map of the Province that shows the location of each. Some are so far away that the dialect is entirely different, some are in lonely and trying places; but wherever they go they open new social centers, start thriving Sunday Schools, reach the mothers in neglected homes, and win and train the children who are the hope of China. The report of the China Educational Commission is that the number of kindergartens is disappointingly small. There is need for many more, and there is also need for the use of kindergarten methods in the first two years of the elementary course; so that kindergarten training should be given not only to prospective kindergarten teachers but also to those who are to teach the lower classes in the primary grades. This is exactly the plan they are hoping to work out in Foochow. PAOTINGFU This important city, one hundred miles southwest of Peking is a field of surpassing interest. It too has its Jubilee this year. It was there that Horace Tracy Pitkin gave up his life in 1900, and there our Mrs. Pitkin Evans lived during her missionary life on the field. Dr. and Mrs. A. P. Peck spent their first four years in China at Faotingfu and there Miss Abbie Chapin who calls Southern California her home is still at work. After Boxer days, we also had a hand in the rehabilitation, supporting for nine years. Miss Laura Jones of Riverside. Her work was hard, touring much of the time over bad roads in weariness and in discomfort; but she took cheer, and instruction, and inspiration to the noble native workers. It was seed-sowing, and the harvest almost passes belief, so wonderful that we wish we could have kept our sickle in; but Miss Jones was needed in her California home, to which she returned in 1912. [ 76 ] |