for the MA. degree is approaching the end, the last of the three trials beginning yesterday and ending to-morrow, so that in a few days now the city will be cleared of its thousands of candidates, who for weeks before the time set for the examination gradually fathered in. from all parts of the province.
who number of candidates this year was much larger than usual, some three thousand more, I have been told, than are usually registered. This increase is said to be due to the good crops of this year, which have enabled more scholars to raise the money for the trip to the capital. The whole number whose names wore recorded as candidates was 14,000, out of which number only between eoventy and eighty can be successful in obtaining the coveted degree. Tye of the candidates are graduates of the college in 'Téngehoufu, in charge of Dr. Mateer and Mr. Hayes, one of whom obtained the first degree some years ago by examination, while the other, some weeks before competing for the M. A. degree, purchased the degree of for something over forty taels (exactly 'Tls. 47.52), which not only entitled him to enter the examination hall, but conferred upon him some privileges' denied to the neral crowd of aspirants who had won their degrees by merit. I find the Chinese themsel¥es do not look askance upon this method of obtaining a degree in fact it as a distinct act of grace on the part of the Emperor, who thus enables those who are able to pay, to compete for the second degree without going through the drudgery of passing examinations for the first degree. Our present Governor is said to be a while a young man from Chinanfu, whom I know, who is now a Hanlin, began his successful career by the purchase of the Kien-sheng degree.
While the students were going into the hall yesterday for the last time Messrs. Davies and Partch distributed several thousand books to them, which were very kindly sent up free by the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and' General Knowledge.
'One cannot help wishing at such times as this Chinan! such a museum that at Ch'uogchowfu, which has been successful in attracting' tens of thousands of students to the mission premises there and giving them at least " slight notion of Western progress. The field here for such work is immense.
ith September.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.