Chapter IV: THE CHINESE POPULATION in America is, I believe, increasing. I

cannot prove this, and I state it only as an impression. The Exclusion Law at its best is a leaky dike, and the tide washing up against it leaps through and sometimes overflows. How this comes to pass I have not space to tell, but while I do not believe that _all_ men have their price, I suspect that some Custom House officials have not always been proof against temptation, and are not now. And perjury in the view of a non-christian Chinese is a venial offense except when so clumsily committed as to lead to detection. But, no matter how these new comers get here, once among us they are fish for our fishing, and when one of them becomes a Christian and tells me he has been in the country five or six or eight years, I do not feel bound to make him confess the method of his entrance. He was a heathen then. There is no probability whatever that the work of our mission will cease for lack of material to work upon, till long after the present workers have passed to their reward.