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Show A NATION RIPENING TO HARVEST i? comes the typical crowd : the old grandmother, the gaily-dressed bride, a few young girls, and mothers with babies ad lib. One woman was actually seen weighing wisdom, carefully balancing a book in either hand, to be sure to get the most for her monev In PEKING, each fair was crowded with its throngs of sightseers and pleasure seekers, for such seem to be still more numerous than those who come to burn incense and worship At oue large fair, the temple building itself, which is much dilapidated, was almost entirely neglected. It was a contrast to see how the patrons surrounded the tables where playthings were sold, and how they bought fruit and cakes, or modern co°ol drinks of remarkable concoction and coloring, while still more crowded about the doors of the side-shows and the tables of the fortune tellers. It is at the temple fair in the East Suburb of Peking that the worship seems to be kept up most fully, and many devout women are to be seen, kowtowing and burning incense. Yet, even there, the worship seems to be less from year to year, and the numbers who come to the tents and listen to the preaching are greater. The immediate results of such fair preaching are often disappointing, but there is undoubtedly a vast deal of leavening going on through this process. In TAIKUHSIEN, two men came to the book shop to buy a Bible. Inquiry elicited the fact that the preceding year, at the Tenth Moon Fair, one of them had bought a gospel of Luke and had taken it home to his shop, in a city ten miles away. Reading it through, he became interested, went to the local chapel, of another mission, and upon further investigation, decided to become a Christian. The man with him was one of his fellow-clerks who had become interested through him. These curio-dealers had bought the pearl of great price for less than a third of a cent! A day or two earlier, a Mohammedan from Kausu, who had heard the preaching iu this year's fair, had called and purchased all four of the gospels. At the LINTSING Fourth Moon Fair the foreign church and homes prove attractive " s i g h t s " for people A temple that draws large crowds : Taikuhsien |