Kiukiang, China,

March 21st, 1874.

Dear Sister:

Your letter written soon after New Year's reached me a few days ago; and as our mail goes out to-morrow, I will answer it now. This has been a rainy, windy, disagreeable month, with scarcely one pleasant day; and all day the snow flakes have been mingling with the rain-drops, as they descended from the gloomiest of Celestial skies. I have become heartily tired of the weather for it has prevented us from taking pleasant walks or finding amusement out doors; and pent up as I have been in my room for some weeks, I have injured myself to some extent by excessive mental labor. I need a vacation of a couple of months, and shall take it before long.

Your letter was the only one which came by the last mail for me, although I was expecting six or eight. I was especially aggravated in not receiving the Advocate. One No., originally addressed to Peking, came some time ago, and I wrote to the P. M. in Shanghai to send them all to me direct, but he replied there were none there for me. So I neither know how I managed to get even one number, or whether any others will ever come or not; and it is a disappointment I chafe under every day, as there are so many things connected with the Ohio Conference in which I am interested, which I have no other means of learning except from the Advocate. And in this letter (as in all the previous ones), you never breathe a single word about the matter, so that I may know what to expect or what not to expect. If you knew how the Advocate would be relished out here, you would manifest at least some interest in the subject. -- But I find myself once more getting into a grumbling mood, and as perhaps I did enough scolding in my last letter to enliven somebody up, I think I had best change my train of thought.

I was very glad to hear of the very encouraging revival at Blue Run, and hope its results will be permanent. Since I left my home there to go to college, there have been several remarkable protracted meetings held there, and it would have been inexpressible pleasure for me to have attended them; but I have always been away somewhere, and now I am about as far off as I can get. But my interest in the society has always survived, and I pray that it may continue to flourish in the future much more prosperously than it has ever done in the past. Here we have English service every Sabbath Morning in our church, but we have to conduct it Episcopalian fashion to suit the people; and for the most part it is only a heartless, soulless, dead, and dry piece of formality. The only genuine Methodist meeting we have is our Sunday evening prayer-meetings, which are attended almost exclusively by the Missionaries. Sometimes a British man-of-war stops here for a Sabbath or two, and the religious portion of the crew are always glad to join us, and they make our meetings very pleasant and profitable.

In my letter to Joe a couple of weeks ago, I described one or two things I had witnessed in the city and suburbs of Kiukiang. Now I will tell you something about what I have seen since then -- nothing very strange, to be sure, but it will do to fill up a page or two of my letter. With Bro. Hart and his wife I was walking on a back street, when we came upon a man whose business seemed to be to make and peddle wax figures. Some of these, newly made, were set up conspicuously before him, and were quite ingenious.

His wax (or whatever it was) was rolled up in little rollers, of every kind of color, and was so tenacious that it seemed as though you could stretch it any distance. We came up just in time to witness the formation of a female figure. Taking a little wax, of the proper color, and about the size of the end of his finger, the old fellow rapidly formed it into the shape of a head, which he stuck on the end of a stick. Then, taking a sharp little instrument, he jabbed it into the center of the face, gave it a twist, and forthwith appeared a tiny nostril. Then he made the two eyes, putting some black wax in for the balls, put the eyebrows over them, looking exactly like a Chinese girl's, and cut open a mouth. Then he put on the body, drawing down the two lower corners for the limbs and feet, and fastened the arms to the shoulders. Next, taking a little wax of each color, he rolled it all together until it seemed like candy, and then he spread it out flat on his hand, and wrapped it around the body for a frock -- and a very pretty one it was, too. It took him only seven or eight minutes from the time he began until he had put on the finishing touches; and then the little image (which was much superior to many that you will find in American toy shops) was offered for 8 cash, or 3/4 of a cent. I know I have not described the dexterity of the operation graphically enough to make you wonder; but the interest with which I watched the performance rose to amazement and admiration before it was over. If the Chinese are a heathen people, some of them are very ingenious, and if their taste had been properly cultivated and developed for several centuries back, they would now be among the wonders of the world.

Well, I shall close this letter now, as I can't think of anything else to write. By and by I suppose my letters will become perfectly commonplace again, and be as dry and uninteresting as ever they were in America. I presume this is the China that I used to read about in my Geographies at school -- at least people say so -- but I don't see anything strange about it after all. The rain comes down just as it used to do in Ohio, and the mud sticks to one's feet exactly as it did when I was on Blue Run. But of course the folks at home would never have thought of such a thing!

Very aff. yrs.

A. Stritmatter