“What does she say, T’ong?”

“Oh, she b’long all same fool.  She wantchee makee talkee talk.  She have got velly long tongue, makee bad woman.  She say one piecee Japan man makee stay here t’ree night.  See?  She say what makee good one piecee Japan man makee good one piecee English man.  See?  No have got topside, all same bottomside have got.  Master, this no b’long my pidgin—­this b’long woman pidgin, and woman b’long all same fool.”  T’ong ended up with an amusing allusion to the lady’s mother, and looked cross because I rebuked him.

Gathering, then, that the lady thought her room good enough for me, I saw no other course open, and as the crowd was gathering, I got inside.  Before setting out to call upon the Canadian missionaries stationed at the place, I held a long conversation with a hump-backed old man, an unsightly mass of disease, who seemed to be a traditional link of Luchow.  I might say that this scholastic old wag spoke nothing but Chinese, and I, as the reader knows, spoke no Chinese, so that the amount of general knowledge derived one from the other was therefore limited.  But he would not go, despite the frequent deprecations of T’ong and my coolies, and my vehement rhetoric in explanation that his presence was distasteful to me, and at the end of the episode I found it imperative for my own safety, and perhaps his, to clear out.

* * * * *

The Canadians I found in their Chinese-built premises, comfortable albeit.  Five of them were resident at the time, and they were quite pleased with the work they had done during the last year or so—­most of them were new to China.  At the China Inland Mission later I found two young Scotsmen getting some exercise by throwing a cricket ball at a stone wall, in a compound about twenty feet square.  They were glad to see me, one of them kindly gave me a hair-cut, and at their invitation I stayed the night with them.

What is it in the nature of the Chinese which makes them appear to be so totally oblivious to the best they see in their own country?

It is surely not because they are not as sensitive as other races to the magic of beauty in either nature or art.  But I found traveling and living with such apparently unsympathetic creatures exasperating to a degree, and I did not wonder that the European whose lot had been cast in the interior, sometimes, on emerging into Western civilization, appears eccentric to his own countrymen.  But this in passing.

I duly arrived at Lan-chi-hsien, and was told that Sui-fu, 120 li away, would be reached the next day, although I had my doubts.  A deputation from the local “gwan” waited upon me to learn my wishes and to receive my commands.  I was assured that no European ever walked to Sui-fu from Lan-chi-hsien, and that if I attempted to do such a thing I should have to go alone, and that I should never reach there.  I remonstrated, but my boy was firm.  He took