ABSTRACT
Experience has shown that, with very rare exceptions, the Chinese youth who have been taught English by missionaries have gone out of their control, and have become servants and compradores in non-Chinese-speaking families, or have become Government interpreters, or agents of foreign merchants. If English had not been taught to them, most could doubtless have been retained under missionary influences, if desirable, after they left their schools. Wherever the missionary goes, there is always a great deal of unprofitable excitement and idle curiosity on the part of those with whom he mingles. The native helper can move noiselessly among his countrymen, without attracting notoriety or exciting curiosity. The missionary must spend much of his time in learning the language, spoken and written, and, at the best, even after many years of study, has an imperfect, not to say an inadequate, knowledge of it. The native helper speaks his mother tongue.
