large and varied reading, and sharp perception of human folly and weakness.  It was a case of conversion in the fullest and divinest sense.  He never fell from the wonder-world of grace to which he had been lifted.  His youth seemed to be renewed, and his life had rebloomed, and its winter was turned into spring, under the touch of Him who maketh all things new.  He was a new man, and he lived in a new world.  He never failed to attend the class-meetings, and in his talks there the flashes of his genius set religious truths in new lights, and the little band of Methodists were treated to bursts of fervid eloquence, such as might kindle the listening thousands of metropolitan churches into admiration, or melt them into tears.  On such occasions I could not help regretting anew that the world had lost what this man might have wrought had his path in life taken a different direction at the start.  He died suddenly, and when in the city of Los Angeles I read the telegram announcing his death, I felt, mingled with the pain at the loss of a friend, exultation that before there was any reaction in his religious life his mighty soul had found a congenial home amid the supernal glories and sublime joys of the world of spirits.  The moral of this man’s life will be seen by him for whom this imperfect Sketch has been penciled.

Ah Lee.

He was the sunniest of Mongolians.  The Chinaman, under favorable conditions, is not without a sly sense of humor of his peculiar sort; but to American eyes there is nothing very pleasant in his angular and smileless features.  The manner of his contact with many Californians is not calculated to evoke mirthfulness.  The brickbat may be a good political argument in the hands of a hoodlum, but it does not make its target playful.  To the Chinaman in America the situation is new and grave, and he looks sober and holds his peace.  Even the funny-looking, be-cued little Chinese children wear a look of solemn inquisitiveness, as they toddle along the streets of San Francisco by the side of their queer-looking mothers.  In his own land, overpopulated and misgoverned, the Chinaman has a hard fight for existence.  In these United States his advent is regarded somewhat in the same spirit as that of the seventeen year locusts, or the cotton-worm.  The history of a people may be read in their physiognomy.  The monotony of Chinese life during these thousands of years is reflected in the dull, monotonous faces of Chinamen.

Ah Lee was an exception.  His skin was almost fair, his features almost Caucasian in their regularity; his dark eye lighted up with a peculiar brightness, and there was a remarkable buoyancy and glow about him every way.  He was about twenty years old.  How long he had been in California I know not.  When he came into my office to see me the first time, he rushed forward and impulsively grasped my hand, saying: 

“My name Ah Lee—­you Doctor Plitzjellie?”

That was the way my name sounded as he spoke it.  I was glad to see him, and told him so.