Chinese statesman; and Ting Yi Tcheang, then Governor of the Province of Kiang Su. Yet these men, convinced as they were by Wing's reasons and avowedly favorable to his project, with all their eminence of position and their influence, were not ready to venture the attempt to carry it through with the Imperial Government. All the forces of conservatism would be opposed to it; the time for it had not come.

In 1867, however, the Governor Ting, who was the most willing of the three, had made representations to an Imperial Minister named Wan Cheang, on the strength of which he was advised to address a memorial on the subject to the Imperial Council at Peking, Van Cheang undertaking to commend it to the attention of the Council. The situation was at this juncture moderately hopeful, but before the memorial reached the Council, the mother of Wan Cheang died, by which event he was, under the law of Chinese high official etiquette, retired from public life three entire years, and the whole business was set back to where it had been. These were years of great trial to Yung Wing. He was prospering, indeed, in one point of view, but the hope to which he was devoted was so long deferred that his heart was often sick. Understand

that he was leading there in China an essentially solitary life. He had, soon after his return in 1855, in accordance with his views of what was due to his purpose, resumed his native dress and identified himself not only thus externally, but also in large measure in every other respect with his own people. Especially from the time he became a Chinese Government official, he had dwelt in Chinese society, and had disappeared almost wholly from other society. He had his books and kept up diligently with what was going on in the world of learning and letters outside-it was his only resource-but he was exceedingly alone and lonely notwithstanding. The discouragements to his endeavor that faced him were so numerous and so solid that he was sometimes half disposed to give it all up; but only half disposed.

One of the things that held him to it was not of a nature of an encouragement exactly, but it did excellently well as an antidote to the effect upon his spirits of his discouragements. It began to come to his ears now and than that his American and English friends in China were whispering it among themselves that he was a failure, that he had had a noble chance and had not known how to improve it; that he was im

practicable; and that this scheme of his was utterly visionary and could never be successful. Whenever Wing heard of this, he set his teeth and took a new hold. But altogether his faith and manhood were put to an extreme test.

The end came though, as it always does in such cases, and came in a manner almost dramatic. In the month of June, 1870, occurred the woeful tragedy at Tientsin called the Tientsin Massacre, in which a considerable number of French Roman Catholic missionaries, male and female, were murdered by a Chinese mob. It followed that a commission appointed by the foreign powers, diplomatically represented in China, met that same year at Tientsin to investigate the outrage and determine the satisfaction that was to be required for it, together with a like commission appointed by the Chinese Government authorized to bring the affair to a settlement.

The Chinese Commission consisted of five, and three of these five were the three men of whom mention has been made,-the viceroys Tsang Koh Fan and Li Hung Chang, and the Governor Ting Yi Tcheang.

AN OPPORTUNITY SEIZED

Yung Wing was at this time under official control of the last named, who, on being summoned to Tientsin, sent him word, for he was at a distance from him, to join the Commission at Tientsin as soon as possible, for his services would be needed there. Wing, though hastening, arrived late on the scene and found the business concluded. But on receiving an account of the difficulties that had attended its transaction, and observing that the commissioners were conscious of their disadvantage in it, he perceived an auspicious occasion for making a stroke in behalf of his scheme, and he made the most of it. He restated his arguments, enforcing them by the illustration of the case at hand, and insisted with the utmost earnestness that there ought to be no delay. And this time he prevailed. The three friends of his idea being together and countenancing one another, then and there agreed that they would at once take action to have the thing he proposed done, and would cast their united influence with the Government in its favor. They kept their agreement. They set their names to a memorial recommending the education of a corps of young men abroad for

the Government service and at the Government expense. This memorial they forwarded to Pekin, where they backed it by all means in their power and to the effect that in the month of August, 1871, the measure recommended was adopted by the Imperial Government and a sum equal to $1,500,000 appropriated for its execution.

Mandarin Yung Wing was scarcely able to support the joy of his triumph. For two days, as he has told the writer, he could neither eat nor sleep. He walked on air, and he worshipped God. It was sixteen years after his return to China and twenty years after he set out for this goal that heaven had at last granted his prayer. To him the organization of the enterprise was principally committed. The feature of the long term of fifteen years resolved upon for the course of study and training to be pursued, is particularly due to him and reflects the size of the man, the type of his mind and character.

A school of candidates was at once opened at Shanghai from which the pupils were to be selected by competitive examination, and, as has been already stated, the first detachment of thirty arrived in the United States in 1872. The location of the Mission was also for him to deter