The man in the street has little idea of how the books of the C.L.S. fare produced. He has.a vague i that' they are "translator follo thre, but how vague an idea does that title express, They are not engaged, exactly, in translating Pooks, but they are engaged in translating ideas in such away Anat they can be put across to the Chinese. In travail of soul and sweat of brain, the work goes on and day out, rain or shine, and in this respect' differs, slightly from other forms of missionary labour. Mr, J. G. Holland, ina book called "Gold Foil," which was Popular some years ago,-has said the world haa no ear for anything aman has to utter that has not deen previously led inthe alembic of his own life." This forbids the machine-made -book. We lave first the work of the original thor, then the works on which it founded, then the work is finished by: the translator by the further! study of books on the. same topic.
fact, to produce this simple little Chinese book, there is needed the concentrated work of many thinking minds. It is.the object of the Society to supply only the best, being. constantly changed and modified to meet new situations and new exigencies. Seven ¢ tendencies may-be fairly traced:
(1) The Society produces books for all classes, both in.and outside the Church. The books, therefore, travel over the widest: field of literature.
(2) Controversial works, often offered to the Society, are uniformly rejected. In fact, the zone of common agreement is frequently mentioned in their cou Moreover, the great forefather believed in peace and the Society follows afar in his: footsteps.
(8) The Society believes in experimentation.
Its books, begun in] Wenli, hard and easy, are now writ-en the motion eapeare:
sutod in phonetic, in the one Phousand characters, inthe work for the blind, in-art calendars, in press bureau, in a woman's paper and horizontal: printing.
(4) It is part of its policy to as the aid of missionaries who live elsewhere to help in the work, beginning with the great Dr. Faber and tinuing with such men as J. Lambert Rees, Dr. W.A.P. Martin and many more. It supplements the work of its own staff by the work of these great. mien who are not on its staff Once upon a time, the Society: listed the services of Consuls and Commissiontrs of Customs, but of recent yenrs the demands' of ever-inerensing official burden have driven them off our field.
(5) It believes in the conservation of resources. In its fat years it re-years which may By fixing its prices at something. beyond the mere cost of printing, it has a turnover, unally, the result of which is that it able to print more books with the money.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.