'7th October.
Ir is doubtful if one-tenth of the residents of Shanghai know or appreciate at all what a splendid educational institution St, John's College at Jessfield has become, and how enormously its field of action has been extended in the last ten years under the energetic aod careful management of Dr. Hawke Povt. From a comparatively small collegiate school for boys, the College has grown into an institution fully deserving that name, with ay attendance at the present time of some three hundred students, The large peninsula, bounded on three sides by the Svochow Creek, is now almost filled with buildings, Dr. Hawks Pout, the " benevolent autocrat " as he was called at last Satard ceremony, took charge of the cullage, and a very anxious charge it was at that time, in 1886, "Though the students were comparatively few, yet teachers there were hardly any; the President had to take on himself all capacities and duties—hend-master, preacher, professor of English and science, drillmaster, and playmate." In 1889 Mr. Swalley came to his assistance, und he was able to make a imp to the Unived States, where he collected the sum of $19,000 gold for the cunstruction of an adequate building. With this sum and $1,000 gold contributed in China, he put up on his return the large quadrangle which is now entirely used as dormitories. There were at that time only seventy studerite in the college but the new Bevruacy 1895, provided accommudauudrangle, which was uponed in
tion for one hundred and fifty.
The defeat of China by Japan in 1894 brought home to the minds of all thinking Chinese the necessity for education in the modern sense, and would-be students thronged to St. John's, Incidentally it may be remarked that the d>terioration iv the race of "buys" of which old residents complain is largely due to the existence of educational establish ments like St. John's. In the good old days, compradores and well-to-do middle-class Chinese sent their sons and nephews out as " boys" in foreign families in order they might learn foreign languages and fureigu ways. These boys are now sent to St. John's and similar centres of education, and we are reduced to find our servants in alower social stratum. The demand for accommodation became so insistent, that another building was surprise; while the photographs and Hall was erected, and opened and the so-called Science the original sketches it contains lighten its 127 pages, not one of 1899, at a cost of $17, gold, of which, however, can be accused of which $13,000 was ountributed in-dullness. Finally, it should be noted the United States and $4,000 in that the Faculty now comprises China. With this the capacity of seven Professors in the School of the College was enlarged to two Arts and Science, four in the School hundred and thirty students. of Theology, and four in the School The Boxer rising of 1900 accent of Medicine, all foreigners, in addition tuated in the Chinese the conviction to the Treasurer, Mr. 8. E. Smalley, that ignorance is the paramount and twenty-one Chinese, This is cause of China's weakness, and with excluding the large colony of laties $22,000 collected in the United at St. John's, who have not yet found States, and $7,000, all gold, raised by a "vates sacer." Of the students the old students, the splendid pile we are told that about one-third are that was opened on Saturday, Yen Christians, and St. John's is not a Hall, has been built, raising the proselytizing institution, capacity of the College to three hundred. as this work is, it by no means exhausts the facilities that St. John's College offers to studious young China, In a large
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.