Being the Tale of Her Long and Friendly Sojourning amongst a Strangely Interesting People

BY LUCY SOOTHILL

WITH A FOREWORD BY HER DAUGHTER

LADY HOSIE

16 ILLUSTRATIONS

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED LONDON

WARWICK SQUARE, E.C.4

MCMXXXI

FOREWORD BY HER DAUGHTER, LADY HOSIE

'My first experience of China was a Riot: my last a Revolution. Was living in China worthwhile? Well worthwhile.' So writes my mother in the final chapter of this book.

In the Three Character Classics, which Chinese schoolchildren used to learn by heart, is a famous story of a virtuous boy whose old parents longed to eat fish. The season being winter, he lay upon the ice, melted it with his body's warmth, and caught the fish! Never have I attained such heights of filial piety. Seeing, however, that my father has twice written introductions for books of mine, is it not right that I should now perform a similar office for my mother?

Indeed, it is only the payment of a debt that I should write. Was it not my mother who, after I went back to China as a grown-up young lady fresh from school, set pen and paper before me my first entrancing China New Year? Outside our haven of the White House in that Chinese city fire-crackers exploded all down Tilemarket Street." In and out of the room she passed, busy with Chinese friends and with the inter-change of mandarin oranges and red peppers, dyed eggs and smoked ducks, sweet persimmons and paper-white narcissi-or water-fairy flowers." On one of her incursions she found me sighing, confounded by that stumbling-block of the incipient author-the first sentence. "Then begin with the second!" quoth she gaily: advice which seemed inspired, and for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. In truth, she has been our family critic and help all along. A great reader herself, she brought a cultivated taste and a discriminating penetration which, though mingled with natural kindness, demanded difficult achievements of us. Lucidity in literature was her especial requirement and her search for the exact word was unremitting. The result, seasoned. with her spicy sense of humour, will be found in these, her own lively and living pages, with their theme of high endeavour founded on deep spiritual experience.

I once wrote in a book thus

A lady with white hair, luminous hazel eyes under arching eyebrows, and an expression of taking vivid interest in everything she saw, stood waiting outside Wing On's door.''

It was flattering that my mother's friends at once recognized her. In fact, they used to invite me to put her doings into all my books, quoting in particular the time when she sallied out to save the Lo family's silver hoard, carrying a revolver in a small red satin bag worked in blue forget-me-nots!

But I have mind-pictures further back than that: of a dark-haired hostess making life, even in an out-of-the-way Chinese Treaty Pod, seem vital and enriching. I see her, walking with the hill-born woman's springing gait over the glens and dales of South China, darting eagerly aside to pluck ferns, azaleas, roses. Or later, in North China, riding in more sedate middle-age on the fattest white horse ever seen roiling a broad back, which she flicked with innocuous whip. He grunted for breath as he responded to her incorrigible spirit of inquiry; scrambling safely with her in the precipitous loess along goat-tracks which alarmed me. I see her again, poring over intricate embroidery patterns for the benefit of her poorer Chinese women friends or lingering to correct a little Chinese girl's first essay, on a slate, the child in her variegated tunic halting between awe and affection at her knee.

During the European War, my mother and father led bands of young Chinese interpreters, ten at a time, about London, to behold its marvels. Lately we came upon poems written by them in acknowledgment saying how she had taken them upon "the rainbow buses flashing between the houses, and the moving glow-worms of the underground trains deep under the earth." When settling down in England, she was happy to be surrounded by Chinese objects and colours, the very woof and web of her life. Her natural background seemed blue-and-grey Peking Garrets, and temple tapestries with their swirling dragons, a cabinet from Shansi with painted panels and brass hinges, anti the carved blackwood chairs which she, as a good housekeeper, has often herself polished.

No Oriental "Woman without a Name" she! Her name, Lucy, is as pleasing as in English when transliterated into the Chinese language-spoken by her with such purity. Lu-Hsi, it runs: and it means, very aptly, Brightness-upon-the-Way. What could be more suitable for one so starry, so candid, so lovely-whose life has been spent in carrying "the Light"

DOROTHEA HOSIE.

"So they have sent me out another youngster to die," said the Veteran in our Service when he met the pale-faced, black-haired youth of two-and-twenty who stepped eagerly off the tender at Shanghai in the autumn of 1882.

"We must find this young man an anchor: or he will be all over China!" is what he ejaculated a year and a half later. And a more urgent petition than the Veteran ever sent on his own behalf went home to England, in which he recommended that the youth be allowed forthwith to marry, despite the fact that this would considerably antedate his period of probation. Wisely-or unwisely -the request was granted. In consequence, the youth-hereinafter called Sing Su, by Chinese mode of speech-entreated me to go out and act, not as an anchor of the soul, but apparently as a deadweight, a holdfast to the City-of-the-South. This city of China remains to the present day a Tom Thumb port in size from the Maritime Customs point of view. Its foreign, or Western, inhabitants are few, and its foreign trade has been slow in growth as to volume and value. But a hundred thousand Chinese dwell within its grey old walls and in its narrow streets.

Of course Sing Su did not put his startling invitation as baldly as that. Yet on receiving it, I knew instantly, and from internal evidence, that, whether I liked or not, I should have to go and do what I could to put a drag on the chariot wheels of so adventurous and exploring a spirit. In this particular I succeeded to perfection, as our long twenty-five years' residence in the City-of-the-South testified. Probably the cunningly devised letters that followed, hard after each other, confirmed my decision. They were enough to lure a duck oft the water. Anent these same epistles, on my arrival in Ningpo a man there Jocosely inquired if I had brought them with me.

"Some," I answered.

"Then read one aloud to him every day - to remind him of what he has promised you," was the advice.

An occasion arose when I deemed it politic to do this, and produced one. But he whose "Sing," or surname, was "Su" in Chinese, and whose career in life had been deflected from the study of law, was not easily trapped.

"Loving? Yes, always, but I never promised to be useful," came the quick retort which was what I wanted him to be at the moment.

As for me, it was easier to decide on going to China than to go. Difficulties arose, tile worst of which came after my boxes big and unwieldy as dromedaries-were packed, my berth taken, and myself ii' the very act of bidding farewell to my fiancés people. At that moment, with dramatic impact a cable arrived at the door which set me aquiver.

"European houses all burnt in the City-of-the-South no lives lost." Thus ran the laconic statement.

These evil tidings did indeed give pause; but in the and certain sympathetic spirits decided that it would be too discouraging for any young man to lose both wife and house at one fell blow. In later years the beneficiary of my devotion would tease me over this generosity on my part. "She was so anxious to go that not even a riot could stop her," he would assert.

The short interval before sailing was filled with a frantic effort to rid myself of my abysmal ignorance of the land whither I was going. Truth to tell, I had never altogether lost the childish impression that the Celestial Empire, which vied with Tibet in mystery, was surrounded by a monstrously high perpendicular wall, over which every one who would enter must first perform the well-nigh impossible feat of climbing There was no other entrance.

In the October of 1884 I set sail, knowing not a soul on board, and trusting - if ever I did in my life - in Divine Providence. The Bay of Biscay lived up to its reputation, and behaved abominably. For days I lay in my berth, too ill to move with the flagellations I received. Indeed I should have stayed there for ever had riot a kind German fraulein, returning to her work in India under the Church Zenana Missionary Society) come to my rescue. The battered passengers were collecting again on deck; a rumour went round that a young lady lay very ill in one of the cabins; so she went to see what she could do.

"Won't you come up on deck? It is better now," she said.

"I cannot dress," I forlornly replied.

"Do try, I will help you. Have you a long cloak?"

"Yes, fur-lined," I said.

"With that you need not dress even, and I will help you up.'

Thus encouraged, together we struggled to the top of the companion-way: just in time to be thrown violently down by a Wave in a heap on the deck Considerate fellow-sufferers rescued us, placed me in a long chair and fed me with Liebig-ate panacea of those days. But I have detested and shunned the Bay ever since.

In 1884 the hospitality of Shanghai was as generous as it was wide. I was received by people of whom I had never heard, who gave us a delightful wedding breakfast, to which we were free to invite whom we desired. An ideally handsome "father" not only gave me away, but also adopted me for all time. He made a happy breakfast speech, and afterward entertained us for a week in his comfortable house, although his wife was then at home in England. Our wedding hostess did her beet to encourage me by asserting tier conviction that my dart hair and rosy cheeks were certain to commend themselves to the Chinese who, apparently, had little use for blue eyes or fair hair,

Thus lapped in kindness, it was only when Sing Su and I married just two short week-stood solitary on the deck of the little coasting- steamer; waving farewell to our apprehensive Ningpo friends, that I realized to what a life I had comminuted myself. So far, all had gone well; but as the ship loosed from her moorings, a sudden mist blinded my eyes, shutting out shore and friends. I felt that I, too, had cut adrift, and was leaving all my known world behind. I was launching forth, not only on the uncharted sea of matrimony, but for a destination which might easily prove as inhospitable and perilous tome as it had already shown itself to Sing Su.

Our vessel, the Yung-Ning, or Eternal Peace, was the Smallest cockleshell driven by steam I ever saw, This may readily be believed when I append that she had been the mail boat from London to the Cape fifty years before t An upper deck had been added, which in stormy weather threatened to turn her turtle. On board were three European officers and a Chinese crew. The captain's was the only comfortable cabin.

"The lady shall have it," said he to Sing Su.

He and Sing Su spent the time discussing the recent Riot while we threaded our way through the numerous small islands down the coast. These looked lovely but the water, thick and turbid with the silt of the Yellow Seal needed to be redeemed, and was so, by the fleets of small fishing-boats. Their white sails flashed like silver as they flew along in the breeze and sunshine.

Hereabouts, I now learned, pirates were still possible. But in former years they had infested this part of the China coast until, indeed, British and Chinese cruisers, the latter captained at that time by foreigners, drove them out of action. Later an small of mine told me how, twenty years earlier, her own father was a passenger in a junk which was seized by pirates in these waters. With the rest of the passengers, he was thrown overboard. When he clung to the sides of the boat to save his life, they loosened his hold by stashing off his fingers with their knives. He fell back and was drowned. To Amah this seemed to be just another of life's trials, to be accepted with resignation.

It was the French war with China which caused the Riot that had taken place in the City-of-the-South two months before I reached there. The people had been in a restless fever of excitement for some time, fearing an attack from the French, who had attacked Foochow directly to the south. The city had been officially placarded with instructions ordering each householder to have ready, outside his door, a heap of big stones. Carpenters worked hard, both day and night, fashioning huge wooden cases, which were towed some distance down the bank of the river. When the watching fishermen gave the signal that the enemy was at the mouth of the river, these stones were to be carried by each householder and emptied into the cases, which were then to be sunk in mid-stream. Thus an impassable barrier would block the entrance to our river, the Ao-or Bowl River-from whose month our city is distant twenty miles,

But though the stones were collected, and the cases built, neither were put to their intended use. For years the huge tubs rotted on the banks; but in the Riot in which Sing Su suffered, some of the stones served as handy missiles, to the danger of the handful of Europeans in the city.

One Saturday night, twenty or thirty Chinese Christians met together for the usual service in a room on the premises adjoining Sing Su's house. Before the opening hymn was finished, a sudden attack was made on the front of his house. A mob had collected there, and finding the door unyielding, turned its attention to the back premises, and with greater. Soon those identical stones came hurtling through the doors and windows, and in a short time the back wooden gate. fell under combined effort, allowing the crowd to pour pell-mell into the yard. Meanwhile Sing Su had gone round to the front, but, seeing a dangerous blaze in his servants' quarters, ran back there, where he found a crowd of men gathered, many of whom were naked because of the hot weather. They carried sticks and were throwing stones, and were watching with approval the wooden floor merrily ablaze with the forthger's own limp-oil.

Calling to some of his friends to put out the fire, Sing Su approached the mob, which, when it saw him, incontinently fled. He followed, and began to expostulate. The only answer was a stone, which missed him but cut open the head of a Chinese Christian near him. Sing Su sent messenger after messenger hot-foot to the magistrate, asking help and protection. He made no mention of Treaty Rights, nor of Extra-territoriality he merely made the appeal of a peaceable citizen when attacked. But no help was forthcoming. The situation becoming dangerous, Sing Su set off in person, with only his riding-stick as protection, to inquire if the official had gone on a journey, or were asleep and must needs be waked. For a time the magistrate refused to see him but he relented in the end, and listened to what he had to say. After long delay, and then with great deliberation, the magistrate himself set off in PUS', Official chair on the unpleasant business of quelling the disturbance. Vain were his belated efforts. The mob, now realty augmented, warned him not to interfere, and they set about purposely to fire, first Sing Su's premises, and then the rest of the half-dozen European homes scattered in various quarters of the city.

When Sing Su bad proposed returning with the official to the scene of action, he was firmly told that this would not be permitted. He must remain in the yamen, where he was virtually a prisoner-but comparatively safe. Here, as time passed, be was joined by two other members of the little community who, in the effort to escape from their burning homes and the mob, had run the gauntlet of showers of stones combined with shouts of "Tae-sz-Beat to death!" One of the two was an old man, an American. The other was a Scot, and lame. When the canny Scot saw that the yamen gate was to be shut in their faces, to keep out the crowd, he cleverly inserted one of his crutches and retained an opening until it was made possible for them to push inside. After which, the massive doors were closed on the rioters. Thus it would seem that their own efforts saved their lives.

Other two young men, members of the Maritime Customs, escaped by dropping down over the city wall, some thirty feet. They carried their sporting guns, and with such aid to obedience, compelled the solitary boatman they were lucky enough to find to row them across to the British consulate. Here Her Britannic Majesty's consul sat in solemn state, having for the occasion donned his cocked hat and silverlaced uniform. Arrayed thus, he hoped to overawe the attacking force-which did not come: but only because the Taotai, or head official, had forestalled the rioters by ordering all the boats away out of their reach, to the far bank of the mile-wide river. In so doing he desired, doubtless, to avoid serious complications with foreign powers.

As may be imagined, the little company in the yamen - now increased to four by the coming of another Englishman-passed an anxious night watching the glare in the sky and trying to locate each other's burning houses. They wondered if the mob would not attempt to break in, and succeed in destroying them also, although as refugees they were ostensibly under official protection. Happily at this time there was not one white woman in the city, unlike during the Siege of the Legations at Peking sixteen years later, when the harassed men there succeeded in sending through their terse cable to London, "We have with us two hundred women and children."

Sunday morning dawned, bringing to Sing Su's side his servant, Chang, who with tears in his eyes took his young master's hand.

"Teacher! We did not know what had happened to you," he said. "We have spent the whole night searching and praying for your safety"

On that Sunday, with Sing Su under lock and key in the yamen, and their modest little sanctuary in ruins and smouldering from the fires of yesterday, a small company of Chinese Christians met bravely together in the house of one of them, and there worshipped the God so recently made known to them by the despised, detested foreigner. Nor should it be forgotten that in Chinese houses of the poorer type there is little privacy or protection from the public gaze.

Sing Su and his companions remained shut up in the yamen till evening, and were then escorted by a small band of soldiers over to the River's Heart, the island in the middle of the river on which to this day stands the British consulate. But with a difference. In those times the consul was housed in a temple, picturesque indeed, but riddled with white ants. Now, when a consul functions no longer in that City-of-the-South, the consulate, built with memories of those earlier, harder days, stands like a fortress, in stone!

In the consulate the refugees awaited the Eternal Peace-the steamship Yung-Ning-which took them away for a change of air and scenery. The consul went also, but he, poor man, was almost immediately sent a thousand miles up the Yangtsze, to open to foreign trade and residence the Port of Chungking. There his career was again interrupted by a riot, from which he escaped with greater difficulty this time and some damage, for his ankle was broken in his hasty escape over the city wall. The luggage of the Yung-Ning's passengers to Shanghai on this occasion was almost nil. Sing Su had only the white drill suit in which he stood, with the exception of a new Coarse red blanket supplied by the magistrate, and charged for by the said gentleman at an enhanced rate when accounts were finally settled between the British and the Chinese Governments.

The Veteran in our Service was wont waggishly to assert that when Sing Su left his blazing home for the yamen on that eventful fourth of October 1884, he bad, tied round his neck, his most valued possession, namely, a hand-painted plaque which had been sent him by me from England-a form of art in vogue amongst young ladies in Victoria's days. But no plaque survived in confirmation.

EARLY on New Year's Day, 1885, our Eternal Peace dropped her anchor in mid-stream, opposite to the busy North Gate of the City-of-the-South. Near her, also in mid-stream, lay the River's Heart, as the Chinese picturesquely call the island. Here, as I have said, lived the British consul, and Sing Su rowed off to ask the fulfillment of the consul's promise, which was that we might temporarily take up our abode in the consular office there on the island. To Sing Su's great relief, a couple of small rooms in what was nothing more than a detached cottage on the river's edge were granted to us, two distressed British subjects. This saved us the anxiety of not knowing where we should lay our heads that night. To tell the truth, Sing Su had not confessed to me the possibility of that other alternative. The same day, while struggling with the further problem of where to bestow all our goods, the sleep-mg-room being little bigger than my packing-cases, the consul himself appeared. An entire stranger to me, he abruptly opened communications.

"Come to tiffin," be said simply. were cordially welcomed by his wife, a young Swiss lady, a new arrival in China, which gave us much in common. Before tiffin was over, we were invited to dinner that night and breakfast the next day. Indeed, both our consul and his wife proved themselves to be true friends in need, the lady later on vigorously plying her needle to supply my hot-weather ward-role; for my own elaborate confections were not only unsuited but also unendurable in the heat of a semi-tropical summer. They both came and helped to unpack my boxes, and were as excited as ourselves when one article after another came forth:

mementoes of home and England.

Alas, the more difficult task of finding a place in which to all the things remained when they had departed. For days chaos reigned, amidst which was but one inspiring object an English vase holding a bunch of lovely pink monthly from the consul's garden, They stood, in their ordered beauty, a silent protest against the confusion. Meanwhile, we felt ourselves extremely fortunate in having this weather-tight brick-built shelter. A Chinese house was the only alternative, even if love or money could have procured one for us.

The city was a good quarter of an hour's row away, and this short distance created a sense of security. Often, while I slept, Sing Su would start up in the night and go out to listen: to assure himself that any unusual sounds coming across the water did not mean more mischief for us. Often, too, we planned how we could fly for our lives, with, I must say, scant hope of success. As it turned out, there was no occasion. One drawback to our life did I hate: the presence of the impudent rats, whose familiarity bordered on contempt, and who paid us dairy as well as nightly visits. At night they nibbled the candle close at my head, waking me with their gambols, and during the day they sometimes impelled me to jump on to the table. But this was better than the experience of the Chinese lad for whose thumb I made later a bread poultice. He came next day, minus the poultice, explaining that the rats had eaten it in the night while he slept. I believed him.

I was charmed with the scenery outside our door, This little island with its green trees, although not indeed "set in a silver sea "the water was too muddy for that was a pretty object, methought, as it lay almost in the centre of the mile-wide tidal river which encircled it. At each end was a big grassy mound, whereon, sentinel-like, to this day stand two ancient pagodas, which were erected ages ago, "to keep the River's Heart from floating away." The typhoons of centuries had failed to uproot them, but the relentless hand of time was urging to a surer if slower decay.

The ancient history of the River's heart, and that of the City-of-the-South-the latter divided from it by half a mile of water-digs deep in China's past. More than six hundred and fifty years ago, when China was disrupted and the Emperor Kang carried from his capital, Hangchow, to Peking by the conquering Mongols, his two younger brothers were sent to the City-of-the-South for safety. Here the elder of the two boys was enthroned in Kang's place under the title of Tuan Tsung, and here he reigned for a short time before fleeing south. In temporary safety, here also rested the Ancestral Tablets of his imperial forefathers. Tuan Tsung soon died of illness, caused by his having fallen from his war-junk into the sea. His younger brother, Ti Ping, was enthroned in his place when but eight years of age, and he also soon perished in these waters of the Southern China seas. Their faithful friend, Admiral Lu, who had fought bravely Ti Ping's battles, lost heart. He ended the unequal contest by first ordering his own wife to jump over-board, and then leaped himself into the blood-stained waters, bearing on his back the child-Emperor. In such calamitous fashion have dynasties in China a habit of ending.

In days previous to ours, it had been made possible by an earlier British consul for the sturdy to climb up the hundred and fifty spiral steps to the top of the pagoda at the southern end of the island, and out on to its tiny root. The view was glorious; and we celebrated New Year's Day by mounting to see it In those precarious times, with no telegraph-wires to us to the outer World, our consul was wont to carry his tale-SCOPE up the pagoda, in the hope of being the first to catch of the thin line of smoke out at sea which heralded the a-ad' of our one link with that world-our steamer. In later yen', alack, some vandal spoiled the fine appearance of this south pagoda by removing its tier upon tier of surrounding outside wooden galleries with their curving roofs. Worse still, the whole towering edifice was covered from top to bottom with thick white plaster! Thus can a beloved and noble landmark be reduced to the semblance of a mill-chimney. Nothing is left for a circling bird to lodge upon, or a crevice in which to teat its young. I heard the whisper that a British consul was concerned in this change for the worse. If so, could even the safety of the new consulate, erected under its age-long shadow, be a sufficient excuse? Today, our little home of 1885 has disappeared, and the consulate is closed down for lack of business; but the spoiled pagoda, that blot on the fair landscape, remains.

Across the river, running parallel with the bank for a long stretch rises the formidable old city wall, built of huge of stone or granite, and having its top battlemented. Opposite the island is the landing-place for vessels, behind which stands the principal entrance to the city-the North Gate. Further up the bank of the river, with its road under the lee of the wall, is the Salt Gate, where the boats which carry that valued commodity up-stream on its journey into the interior must stop and pay their dues, or woe betide them. Here there is occasionally a serious passage of arms in which, mayhap, some would-be salt smuggler or excise officer loses his life. Another length of fine wall brings us to the West Gate with its high ting-erh, or pavilion; after which the wall turns inland and is lost to view from the island.

The river continues its meandering among range after range of bare but beautiful bills, some of which have temples perched on their lofty summits. Some ranges were so high, albeit snowless, that we began to give them alpine names, until we found that we had been anticipated by our old American resident, who had already bestowed names we could not presume to alter. Grace Mount was well known, and named after the plucky earliest British lady who came to the City-of-the-South. To me was quickly allotted the lofty Lucy Range, in which the highest peak, with a temple built on its tiny plateau, and visible from long distances, became known as Dorothy Peak when my baby daughter arrived. only one mountain, and that down-river, could be spared to a man-but what a man! The famous British organizer of the Chinese Maritime Customs stands memorialized there in "Hart Peak."

Quite early during our residence on the island I received a shock. I want you to cut my hair," Sing Su said to me in a casual tone.

But," I cried, "I cannot! I have never done such a thing. I am quite incompetent, and should make you look as if you had had a basin put round your head."

My protests were in vain. I was informed, and rather peremptorily as I thought, that my worst would be better than the uninstructed Chinese barber's best, even if such an operator existed.

In mock despair I accepted the scissors, and for one hour snipped away cautiously at the thick dark crop, for the time oblivious of seven keenly interested Chinese women who had come over from the city to "look-see" rile, With noses flattened against the window-panes, they became as engrossed as myself in my performance. They then and there came to a decision, loud enough for us to hear:

"In the outside barbarian red-haired country, evidently the women are the barbers," said they.

So much for hasty judgments.

But mark the sequel. My friend, the consul's wife, had an "Eton crop," and urged that I should follow her example. It was so dean, and cooling in the heat, to be able to put one's head into a bowl of water, day or night, she urged. It was a tempting suggestion. But such a fashion, then unheard of especially among Chinese women, raised grave doubts as to the expediency of my yielding. So Sing Su and I went into the city to consult the doyenne of our ladies, she being the original of Grace Mount. After due deliberation, the lady pronounced judgment.

"It seems to me," she announced; "that we are strange object in Chinese eyes whatever we do; and a little hair more will not alter their opinion. So do as you like."

'That settled it and enabled to turn the tables on Sing Su. If I consented to cut his hair, he could not in all conscience refuse to cat 'nine. Nor did he. For dose on eight years we both wore Eton crops, and I only began to grow long locks again when I was coming home to England and must appear decorous in the eyes of my countrywomen. After these many years, another sequel may be told. In December 1928 a letter reached me from the City-of-the-South, sent by an old school girl of mine, now a married woman. To her" beloved Mother," myself-her own Chinese mother having died in infancy-she mites:

"My hair is already bobbed. There are many here who have also cut off their hair, following the example of Mrs. Thanks" (an Englishwoman in our apostolic succession in the city). As it is forty odd years since I ventured to wear short I cannot be held responsible for the fashions of New China. But I may add that in 1927 I myself reverted, with content, to that same mode of cut hair which I had found so comfortable 1885!

During our six months' stay on the River's Heart, and indeed long after that, the man I came to sympathize most with was the British consul. His service demanded, in the first place, that he be a man of attainments, at the head of the list in examinations before leaving England. Yet, as likely as not, in China he would find himself stationed in some quiet, far-distant spot, or on a little island like the River's Heart. Here, usually, his duties were few, unlimited time was on his hands, and he was thrown entirely on Iris own resources. These sometimes sufficed. One of our consuls bailed his monotonous existence as a glorious opportunity for writing books on his former travels. Another seized the chance and became an authority on the fauna and flora of the outlandish corner of the empire to which he was sent.

Having passed through the various stages of Assistant, Vice-consul, etc., a consul was at last fully-fledged, and was appointed-in those days with the imprimatur of Queen Victoria-to a Port. This was designated as his, although as likely as not he might never do duty there, but in some other consul's Port. which seems strange and paradoxical.

Unlike Sing Su, our consul had generally no particular interest in the city, or the people. His dealings with the officials were normally limited to periodic visits, and the exchange of presents and courtesies at the New Year. Is it to be wondered at that occasionally the consul developed eccentricities, and had to fight to keep his soul alive? One consul, little in stature but great in spirit, religiously put on his dress-suit every evening for dinner, whether at home on the River's Heart or up-stream in a primitive house-boat: to remind him-self that he was still a clean English gentleman. Yet another made a hobby of taking the time of day by the sun; after which he would rush into the city, walk unannounced into the one or two foreign houses there, make a bee-line for the clock, open and correct it, and stride out again. His only salutation to the occupants of the house would probably be)" Two seconds slow!"

To keep himself fit, this same man once or twice a day would forge rapidly round the River's Heart, eight times to the mile. If a fellow-countryman came over to see him on business, he would pound past him, with coat and waistcoat off. "Wait! Only three times more to go," he would call, with never a halt.

One new consul arrived with the nickname "Mad" before his Christian name. He was sane enough when he called on us, only the frayed edges of his overcoat announcing him to be superior to outward show. Needless to say, he was unmarried. It was he who invited the captain and steamer officers to lunch it' unusual terms:

"If there is little to eat, there will be plenty to drink!" Was he referring to the river water?

Yet it was not this so-called "mad" consul who employed his redundant leisure in practicing the old-fashioned art of netting, and who boiled his own handkerchiefs in a little copper pan, but another.

Not that eccentricities are the distinguishing monopoly of consular officers.

Missionaries, you know, can be very trying," said a well know missionary to me lately. When I asked how, he in stanced the man who, on however mundane business, signed himself invariably, "Yours in Christ." And I recalled the which a consul and his wife received from the unmarried missionary lady whom they invited to dine, with the flit of the British comminuting, at the consulate on the River's Heart the occasion being Queen Victoria's birthday.

"No," was her blunt response. "I did not come to China to go out to dine. I will stay at home and pray for Her Gracious Majesty." which drew from the consul the rejoinder that he did not see what that had to do with his dinner-party.

Many years ago, in a South Kensington hotel, a name in the letter-rack arrested me: the name of Margary. The letter was claimed by two ladies in black who mounted the stairs at the same time as myself.

"Excuse me, is your name Margary?" I ventured to ask.

"Yes," came the reply.

"Did you ever have a relative?" I hesitated; and the St-Ice was finished for me:

"Who was killed in China? He was our brother."

Margary was a young promising consular officer who was on the borders of China and Burma, at Manwyne, in 1873, at the instigation of Chinese officials. He was m Peking on that five months' journey by the British Government to be the guide and interpreter of a British Commission which was surveying the trade route. Margary crossed the border into Burma and met the Commission. But they then received rumours of possible trouble and resistance to a further progress into China, although under Imperial sanction. Speaking Chinese, and hoping to ensure the safety of the Commission, Margary returned alone over the border. He fell into an ambush and was killed-a tragic fate for a brave young spirit.

In later talks with the sisters, I learnt more about Margary. On that long solitary journey to the Burmese frontier from which he never returned, young Margary wrote to his mother "On this long, long trek I have found myself, in the highest sense of the words."

This came to be their supreme consolation and so they felt they had never really lost him. Once, they told me also, when stationed in Formosa, a Chinese junk was wrecked off the coast. Margary swam out to the doomed boat in an attempt to save the lives of the crew. On nearing the ship a big black cat sprang oft the ship on to Margary's shoulders, as keen on saving its life as any human. But, oh, the claws

All down the years I was indebted to our consuls and their wives for unexpected pleasures, as, for instance, when the ill-fated German gunboat lids came up our Bowl River and anchored near the River's Heart. Sing Su was, as usual, up in the country, but I went over to the River's Heart and lunched at the consulate with Captain Braun and his officers. I was impressed by the exceeding stiffness of the deportment of the German officers, from which they allowed themselves not a moment's respite, either while at lunch or when, later, they duly paid a call on us in the city.

Alas From the City-of-the-South they went straight to their death, only one surviving to tell the story. Off the Shantung coast they encountered a terrific typhoon, and knew the Iltis was doomed. The story goes that, gathering on deck, they all joined hands, sang of their devotion to the Fatherland, and then sank into the terrible deeps. A fine monument was erected on the Shanghai Bund to the Jitis and to the memory of these brave men-representatives, like us, of a far country.

THE first time I went to church was on this wise. It rained. Some people say it always does in the City-of-the-South; and when I admit we have had five inches in twenty-four hours, and that I have known it rain for nearly three weeks on end without stop, there would seem to be justification for the accusation. The Chinese speak of their heavy rain as "coming down in strings," and it actually seems to do so. Until the little street church was rebuilt, the Sunday services were held in brave Chang's house-or, rather, compound or enclosure. This was partially covered in for the occasion with bamboo mats, and supplied with stools from any who would lend. Soon the small yard was so chock-a-block that the doors had to be closed and barred. The foreign lady was, of course, the prime object of attention; more so than was agreeable to her, or advantageous to the preacher. The" Outsiders," as the would-be Christians polity calls the disaffected, pressed close upon me. They criticized my garments so minutely that their examination of than violated even their own standards of politeness as well as 'nine. In the end, I had to indicate firmly: thus far, and no farther, should they go. Probably our then tight-fitting clothes accounted for some of this continued curiosity concerning my clothing, seen and unseen Years later, away in the country, a Chinese lady of manners, while not presuming to turn up my skirt as so many had essayed to do, asked me point-blank a question.

Have you anything on underneath? "she queried.

It was my pleasure to demonstrate to her that, despite appearances to the contrary; I had on underneath even more garments than she herself wore. Where at she seemed agree-ably surprised and relieved.

At this first Christian service-and remember it was soon utter the anti-foreign riot-I was indeed a rara avis. The People gazed at me with unwinking eyes, and many with mouths It same time literally opened to the fullest extent: and for an interminable time. It was as much as my gravity would stand. That, and many similar experiences, led me to claim Chinese as the champion starers of the world-perhaps another case however, of hasty judgments!

There was an afternoon service which reduced me to imbecility. Mr. Tang preached, and remained. sublimely, or perversely, unconscious of Sing Su's efforts to induce him to bring his remarks to an end. Pressure on his foot, the last hymn ostentatiously placed open before him, were in vain, and both native and foreigner had to endure to the long-delayed end. When that arrived, what Sing Su could do, he did. You spoke just one hour too long I" said he to Mr. Yang.

Work had to be resumed with caution. We tried to be in evidence as little as possible. Daily expeditions had to be made into the city, but we kept to the side streets, and for a long time avoided the rowdy suburbs outside the East Gate. The first time we ventured there, more things than bad words were thrown at us. Cantonese soldiers filled the city, still awaiting those tardy French and we feared them more than the citizens. They would rudely push against us in the street, and once Sing Su narrowly escaped capture by them, when he came back to the island one day I asked

What has become of your pearl button? It looks as if it had been torn from your jacket."

He told me the story. He had been on a business appointment with two Chinese gentlemen outside one of the seven gates of the city On finishing his business, he left them, intending to come home the nearest way, which was through the East Gate. He was on his pony, a mettlesome little Mongolian creature. Now the ordinary folk were always civil to us, and they had also good reason to dislike headily those Cantonese soldiers, who a few nights before had all but killed five poor harmless junksmen. The last time our consul went to a certain part of the city, they had shouted after him Kill the foreigner! Kill the foreigner!"

Sing Su was a little way up the street when he found himself in the midst of a band of these Cantonese soldiers. It was at once Marci plain to him that they were excited and not friendly. One soldier seized his reins, another his leg and his jacket. Being defenseless, he thought it wisest to cut and run; so, urging his pony forward, he broke free, leaving his button in their hands. But further up the street, he saw a larger number of soldiers in front of a temple where, probably, a play with direct incentives to violent hatred of foreigners was proceeding.

Fearing more trouble, he instantly decided to avoid this second group by turning back. Winding the reins round his hands, to prevent them being caught, and spurring his willing pony to gallant effort, he dashed swiftly through the soldiers who had previously laid hands on him and taken prisoner his button. For their own safety's sake, they had now to stand aside as the pair rushed through. But they yelled and re-yelled their chagrin and, after the fashion of the baser sort, in base vocabulary.

Our worst trial was that for the first three months-which seemed like three years-the outside world would have nothing to say to us. Not a single communication from England or Shanghai; and only one letter arrived from Ningpo, brought overland by a running Chinese postman. Nor did we much the news it contained. Major Watson, an Australian resident Ningpo, who had fought under General Gordon during Taiping Rebellion, wrote:

"Here we are hourly expecting a rising against us. Every foreigner, British or European, living on the bank of the river has a e sampan' at Ms door, packed with food and clothing for Ma wire and Children, ready at a moment's notice, day or night, to hurry them off to the English gunboat lying as near as possible in the river."

This happened forty years and more ago, but I can still see the gleam in brave Madam Grace's blue eyes, and hear her con-strained laugh when she read us this letter as we three met on the site of our projected buildings. Not a comment was made, but each knew what the other thought. We had no such protection. One at least of the three wished there had been; and all felt very much like rats in a hole.

During my twenty-five years in the City-of-the-South I never heard a single protest against the rare visits of a British, or other foreign, gunboat. If the officials were friendly, its presence helped them in their duty of protecting the foreigner. When superstitious ignorant mobs exceeded their power to Control, the gunboats at least represented law and order. The personnel were like lambs in a field for quiet behavior, unless law and order were violently set at naught. But alas! in those days very often the officials were not friendly, and it was this attitude of theirs which constituted our real need of outside protection. The citizens, on the other hand, hailed with satisfaction their chance of disposing of their produce and manufacture at enhanced prices to the visiting crews.

The sailors on the small gunboat which came perhaps once in three years were allowed occasionally to stretch their legs on shore, and usually comported themselves with credit to the foreign residents. Sad to relate, there happened one exception. A handful of them, and as I can vouch-from a splendidly disciplined British gunboat, made too close an acquaintance with the strong waters, probably Bass, of a certain shop in our Big Street. With profit to the dealer, but disaster to them-selves, the tars cleared out his stock. In their subsequent rolling back to the ship they came in sight of a young English lady missionary, whom they vociferously hailed as a fellow-countrywoman. Seeing her terror, kindly Chinese interposed their persons, enabling her, ready to weep with shame and humiliation, to escape down a side street. But mark the denouement. Their captain let loose the vials of his righteous wrath, forbade further leave ashore during the rest of their three weeks' stay, and every night Chinese and foreigners heard,, across the quiet waters, the delinquents hauled out of their berths at 2 A.M., to dress ship!

The continued absence of Eternal Peace, coupled with the lack of stores which she normally would have brought us, such as beef and mutton, potatoes, white sugar, butter, wheat-flour, etc., began to take toll of me. I felt starved. I had not then had enough experience of native produce to know how to make the best of it. Consequently we made far too intimate an acquaintance with the various sections of a Chinese pig and the undersized local chickens. Both became nauseating.

Stores of all kinds ran so low that we instituted an exchange and mart. The consul would appear at our door, in his hand a tin of French butter which he was willing to sacrifice for Scotch canticle, and so on. The community inside the city, consisting of the Commissioner of Customs and his assistant, and the four or five missionaries, were in no better plight. They met daily on the hill, till'" the old time and the old place" passed into a byword. As they strained their eyes seaward, looking for the faint blue line of smoke, constant disappointment led them to fear that Eternal Peace would never steam up the river again;

Our enforced isolation on the River's Heart had one advantage. It gave us better opportunities to explore the neighbour-hood than we ever had again. The City-of-the-South is considered to be one of the most picturesque of Chinese cities, and I have heard it grandiloquently called the Venice of China. We certainly made the most of its river, charming scenery, and encircling hills, thereby provoking sarcastic comments from the Commissioner. "You cannot eat hills. A dub would be more satisfying," he said.

Our city was also said to be among the cleanest of Chinese cities. Faint praises this perhaps, and I doubt the truth of it. Open cesspools are frequent in the streets, and, at certain season of the year especially, fertilizing operations thicken and pollute the air, for the farmers make use of their malodorous contents on their fields. But I spare you. Sanitation is unknown, and drainage, save into the canals, is non-existent. Even in 1920 an Englishwoman visiting the city used to cry out to tin 'core hardened hostess, as buckets of night-soil were being carded past: "Tell me, dear, when I can take my hand kerchief from my face!"

It is not surprising that epidemics of cholera and dysentery an. common, and sweep away multitudes almost yearly.

To vary the monotony and stifle the longing for letters and a good square meal, we crossed the river one afternoon, went through the city, and made an expedition to Cemetery Valley, a picturesque Chinese burial-ground lying betwixt the low hills situated about a mile outside the Hill-foot Gate. As we sat there, I, for one, not a little disconsolate, a whistle broke the silence, so shrill, so penetrating and prolonged, that it seemed to say, "Behold me-at last!'. We sprang to our feet.

"Eternal Peace! The Yung-Ning!" we exclaimed.

True enough: for over the distant city buildings we could discern the top of her masts, whereat we shouted "Hurrah!"

In less time than it takes to write, Sing Su was off like the wind on his pony, leaving me to follow as fast as the willing legs of my two Chair-bearers could swing along.

Alack! Our fears were realized. As Sing Su approached the North Gate, outside which the steamer lay, he met every servant he knew hurrying home with legs of mutton, roasts of beef, and other precious "stores," including my much-desired potatoes. He went aboard. "Everything has gone in the way of provisions except potatoes," he was told.

In vain he besought the Chinese steward.

Mississee ill: I must indeed have something for her."

The steward insisted that his larder had been cleared out, and he had barely enough left to feed the European officers on the return journey to Shanghai. As Sing Su turned sadly away, the heart of the steward relented, for he added I might, perhaps, let you have a brace of woodcock."

"Anything," was the eager rejoinder. The small birds were brought home in triumph, and ever since" woodcock "has been a name to conjure with in our household. Potatoes I feasted upon three times a day as long as they lasted. Nor must I neglect to add that when our lack was made known, other members of tile community gladly shared their beef and mutton with us.

Given time, one learns how excellent Chinese food can be, though the exhibition of it, as seen in the streets, does not appeal to the foreigner. In the Big Street, narrow and crowded as it was, one's olfactory nerves were anything but gratified by the rank odours arising from the open cooking-stoves. The look of their pans of mahogany-coloured boiling fat, the oil of the tea-plant berry, in which so many of the cakes and the ducks and the chickens were fried, was decidedly unappetizing. Add to this the smell and the blinding smoke, and one had a combination which produced dislike as well as blurred the vision. The moment one stepped ashore and entered the North Gate, there was the open market for dried fish with its clinging smell. Huge barrels of fish, thickly encrusted with coarse salt or lying in brine, lined both sides of the congested narrow street. There were baskets of sun-dried shrimps, too tiny ever to be skinned, and producing merely a slight flavour in the mouth. There were open trays of "tape fish," just a few inches wide, yet so long as almost to be sold by the yard.

Further on came the butchers' stalls, with pork thereon, which, particularly in the hot weather, presented a measly and inflated appearance. Under the stalls might be a black brother porker, unwittingly striving to fit, or fat, himself for the board above by means of any unsavoury remnants he could pick up beneath it. Dried ducks and geese, saffron-coloured fried chickens, strings of repellent queer-coloured beef, cakes of some dark brown composition like burnt parkin, great slabs of dingy looking blancmange-made from beans, and which I learned to like all these and more met the eye as we walked along the principal street. To the new arrival, these viands appear still, as to me then, eminently disagreeable, and shout for the sanitary inspector. But time modifies one's ideas, and I have eaten with pleasure some formerly despised dainties-such as "field chicken," as frogs are euphemistically called. Nor do I forget the emphasis with which a dainty Chinese woman friend once said:

There are delicious eatables to be had here in our City-of the-South."

The quiet implication was:

"Of which you, dear madam, are in total ignorance."

I HAD a fright about this time on one of our daily peregrinations to the city from the River's Heart. We both had though neither confided it to the other.

After crossing the river we set out for the temporary Chinese quarters of Madam Grace and her redoubtable husband. As we proceeded along one of the quieter streets, which are more like lanes for narrowness than streets, we came to a group of men who stood furiously gesticulating, without apparent reason. As we passed them, their demeanour to us was more than unpleasant: it was belligerent. I was far from reassured when we saw-a little ahead-another and similar group also loudly declaiming and standing as if awaiting us. Not a word passed between Sing Su and myself: but I felt my face growing redder anti redder.

We are between the devil and the deep sea," thought I.

When the first group, now behind us, started running in our direction, I expected nothing less than that they were bent on our destruction. The strength completely left my limbs. How I walked on, I knew not. When, close at our heels, the two groups joined forces and rushed pell-mell up a side lane, on some other ploy, my relief was unspeakable. In extenuation of my fears, may I plead that the Riot was yet only six months behind us and that I was a tenderfoot?

Meanwhile the great concern of rebuilding made progress. The property destroyed in the Riot had been bought at a price a heavy one, too. With the compensation given by the Chinese Government, additional funds from home, and some of our own, we vastly improved on our former position the proper sequence after one has been burnt out! "Petticoat Lane" was an admirable center for work, but unhealthy and almost impossible as a dwelling-place for Westerners with views about fresh air. In the terrible heat of summer the street was close and ill-smelling. The high walls of the surrounding buildings kept off good air, but freely admitted bad from the constant supply of night-soil boats. Some of these were anchored in that locality, and others were continually being propelled along the canal which ran parallel to the lane and thence away off into the countryside. Also Sing Su wanted the ground on which his house had formerly stood for a future large city church, of which he dreamed dreams.

The buying of land for a new house in an open part of the city, coupled with the building of a moderate-sized church on the old site, was a frantic business for twenty-four-year-old Sing Su. His total lack of architectural knowledge, of con-tracts, of Chinese workmen, and-last but not least-his imperfect acquaintance with the language, was enough to daunt the stoutest heart. One evening, eight or ten master-workmen came over to the River's Heart to settle contracts, and filled, standing, our small room to overflowing. As they shouted and argued with each other and Sing Su at the top of their strident voices, it was Bedlam. I feared they would come to a free and what then? How a soft-toned foreigner could evolve the slightest sense out of such Babel-like proceedings I could not comprehend. Apparently he succeeded. Doubtless them were the methods whereby Sing Su acquired his acknowledged mastery of the dialect. And years later a Chinese scholar On a visit to England announced triumphantly, but in public:

"Sing Su! Why, he can outslang any of us I"

Another was anxious to impress his Chinese listeners with his foreign friend's proficiency.

He even understands our swear words," he remarked, Save us from our friends!

He, however, thoughtfully saved Sing Su's face by adding:

Yet he never uses them."

Lazy incompetent foremen, dishonest contractors, and bad workmen all combined to make the building period one of disquiet and incessant unpleasantness. But the buildings grew.

Meanwhile on our island I had my own adventures. One day I had a strange experience all to myself. It was a frequent occurrence for devout Chinese to come over from the city to worship at one or more of the pretentious temples on River's Heart. Built up to our cottage, however, was what I suppose I must name a temple, though it was nothing better than a bare neglected shed in which an old dirty table did duty as an altar, and on which were a number of big, gaudy, decrepit old gods.

Looking out of the window, across the river, I spied a number of boats approaching, full of people and of priests, whom I recognized by their long yellow robes. Evidently something of importance was afoot, and being greedy of new happenings, I watched to see what would transpire. Being alone, I took the precaution of pulling down the blinds so as to see and yet remain unseen.

On the little grass plot in front of the shed the priests proceeded to put tip their own table. Upon it they spread various offerings as sacrifices, such as fruit, wine, dried fish, confectionery, etc., and with them had come a big strong man, clad in a clean white robe. After a number of prayers chanted by the others, this man took his seat in the chair, which they had placed, inside the narrow shed of the temple. The priests and the people then knelt down on the little grass plot in front, and the head-priests again began to chant prayers. They drawled out the object of their visit in a sing-song voice, the people at regular intervals bowing their heads to the ground in confirmation of the utterances.

This continued for some time. Then the white-robed man in the chair began to move uneasily. The priests took no notice, but chanted on monotonously. By and by he began to roll about and throw his body into every sort of contortion until, with purple face and eyes starting out of his head, he seemed in an agony. I grew alarmed, expecting him to have a fit. He looked like one possessed. Yet still, apparently heedless, the priests drawled on.

At last, and suddenly, the man sprang out of his chair and rushed wildly about. The priests seized and tried to control him. In the end he gave one final spring and sank, utterly exhausted, into his chair. Next he stretched himself out, and lay as stiff as a board. Presently he began to yell out, in a startling voice, a few monosyllables, to which the priests listened with strained attention. When he had ceased speaking, lighted paper-the imitation silver paper money-was waved over and around him. This apparently restored him to his normal condition, upon which the whole company packed up their accessories and took their departure.

In one respect the Chinese are far more generous than we are. To each person we allot one soul: they portion out, not one but three souls, with seven animal spirits in addition. When a man is ill it is because one of his three souls has been seized by one of the myriads of demons with which, as an old Chinese gentleman asseverated to Sing Su, China swarms.

"Christianity having driven the devils out of England," so his commentary ran, "they have all fled to China!

The lost soul, when a man is ill, has been carried off to the cave where the demon lives. But demons are too crafty for ordinary people to know which particular one has wrought the evil, and priests must be called to help in finding out. They, in their turn, often resort to a spirit medium, such as the one I saw. He is doubtless prompted beforehand which temple he shall indicate, and plays his part well: with the astounding effect which I had witnessed., It was his duty to discover, by the aid of a superior god, exactly where the lost soul was held in durance. Like our monks of old, the priests in China in bygone years erected temples in beautiful spots, and also in places where evil spirits were supposed to live. When that distraught medium shouted those few words, I found out later that he named a temple where there is a cave in which lived a demon. The priests directed the distressed family to that temple, where they would have to make further efforts and offerings to induce the evil one to release the captive soul.

It is touching to see, as I have seen, mother, wife, or daughter, or perhaps all three, crying earnestly into such a cave at the back of a temple the name of the lost one's soul, beseeching it to return. The necessary incantations having been gone through at the front of the temple, the relatives go to the cave at the back, hold out a coat belonging to the sick member of the family close to its mouth:

"Come back! Come back!" they call.

Garment in hand, they wait until they think the soul has entered it, and then, hurriedly putting the bundled-up coat beneath their own clothes, and holding an open umbrella closely over themselves to protect it still further, they hasten back to the sick-room. On the way they walk close together to prevent the soul's escape; they talk to it audibly to comfort and calm it. When home is reached, all doors and windows being shut, and the bed-curtains let down, they throw the precious coat over the sick one, in the pathetic hope that its supposed living inmate will re-enter the patient and all will be well.

If all is not well, then it is evident some mistake has been made. They have sacrificed to the wrong demon, or gone to the wrong temple-cave. If they have money, or can borrow, they try to rectify their mistake by doing the same things over again elsewhere. A costly, nay, at times a ruinous business but-all that a man hath will he give for his life!

Sing Su and I once made an expedition to Dorothy Peak, a hard precipitous climb. On the top we found a tiny plateau whereon stands a temple, visible for a long distance. While resting and feasting our eyes on the wide prospect, we saw a man come toiling up. Baskets hung from his shoulders, containing the usual objects offered to idols. Curious as to why he had made such a difficult journey, seeing that temples and shrines abounded below, we questioned him. This, he informed us, was a last resort, on behalf of a sick member of his family. Having failed to obtain a favourable reply from the numerous temples, which he had tried below, he had come hither also. Verily the Chinese are willing to pay for their religion: though rather from fear than love, one gathers.

When I watched from behind my drawn blind that early day on the Riverts Heart, I had no idea of what I had been the spectator. It was later that I learned it was a Chinese spiritualistic seance. A few years afterwards, I woke to the fact that the same kind of seance went on in a little temple just over the wall of our new White House in the city. On the second occasion I could not see, but only hear, the brass tinkling instruments and the shrill voices. This spirit medium, I was told, was a woman, who had two female divinities inhabiting her shrine. From the varying, penetrating sounds of her voice, I gathered this medium in her trances held a conversation impersonating first one of these spirits in a high falsetto voice, and then the other in deeper tones.

So it went on. And so it still goes on. And have we not something very much akin to it in the West?

MEANWHILE, like the farmer's wife, I was dumb, dumb, dumb. I could neither speak nor be spoken to, apart from the few Europeans. And I needed to talk. oh, how I needed! Sing Su gave me my first lesson in Chinese, which consisted in counting up to ten. The sounds I had to imitate there weird in my ears, and seemed unhealthy to my throat. I made little progress with "five" until told that in our dialect I must pronounce it "as if a pig were grunting." One, seven, eight, and ten pleased me better: each of these requiring a sort of run up the scale. The word "cow" was the cause of excessive stumbling, for it began, and seemed to end, gutturally.

As a Yorkshire woman, I thought I knew something about uncouth sounds, but in "cow" I failed miserably. At last Sing Su made me a speech, rather brusquely, I thought.

It is no use expecting to speak Chinese with a cultured English accent. What you must do, is to speak it as the people of the place speak it. The word for "cow" they utter almost after the call of the animal itself: that is, in the throat, and with the mouth wide open.

Sing Su soon cast me off as a pupil, leaving me to sink or swim. I did both. Indeed, he had more pressing business superintending our new buildings in the city, and he returned to the River's Heart only for meals.

He found me a Chinese substitute, but one more inadequate to my needs it were hard to imagine. In the first place, I could speak no Chinese, he could speak no English. There was no primer or simple book with which I could start; so we just sat. In front of us we had a Mandarin Bible, a book which bore no relation to the needs of our daily life in word or sound, being in the Chinese official language, which is entirely different from the dialect spoken in our City-of-the-South. Sing Su had taught himself to talk by going round his room with his so-called teacher, pointing at the various objects and asking in Chinese fashion, "Called what name?"

There was no book in existence which could tell him the answer, when the cook demanded of a new-comer what he would eat for dinner, he might draw his hand across his throat and crow lustily. Such difficulties led Sing Su to begin jotting down how he thought the names of things in Chinese could be written if spelled with our Western alphabet, or roman letters, as had been attempted elsewhere.

The only teacher available for me had the demerit of also being an opium-smoker; and this, aided by the unutterable dreariness of the lesson, caused him frequently to fall asleep. Whereupon I would pull his sleeve-on which I occasionally beheld creeping things which impelled me to shrink away.

"Waken, Teacher!" I would cry.

He died but not, believe me, until some time after he and I had parted company.

There are certain difficulties in China which well-nigh pass the wit of the Westerner to circumvent. Ordinary people like myself, and perhaps sinologues too, will say the Chinese language is one of them, that is if any one proposes to read, write, or speak it well. It is true the" characters," as we generally call the ideographs, have well-defined meanings, and can be read and understood all over China. But one great drawback is that only a tiny fraction, not five per cent., of the people are sufficiently educated to read and write their own tongue. Possibly this accounts for the almost superstitious reverence paid by ignorant and unlearned Chinese to their "characters" or written words. Paper on which they have been inscribed must not be put to ignoble uses. Indeed a man is paid to go about the streets picking up with a long fork all stray pieces of paper on which characters have been written, to save them from the desecration of being trodden under foot. Ultimately these are burnt, ceremoniously, and with incense.

The spoken language has its difficulties also. In the first place there is "Mandarin" or the court language. This is the spoken tongue of the Northern half of China, but with very varying pronunciation in different localities, that of Peking being considered the best. Mandarin can also be written in character," but until recent years there was no extensive literature in Mandarin, because it formed no part of a scholar's equipment. Lately, however, an earnest attempt has been made to raise the spoken Chinese various dialects, especially Mandarin, to the status of a literary or book language. It is certain, in the process of time, that these spoken dialects must form their. book or literary language. Such has been the case in Europe. Centuries ago, Latin was the written language of Europe, but it was superseded by the gradual formation of literatures in the vulgar tongue of the various nations. In like manner, Wenli, the book language - the "Latin" of China-also promises to be superseded by at least one of the important dialects of China: probably by some form of Mandarin.

Not content with the spoken Mandarin of the North of China, the South bristles with a formidable array of these so-called dialects. But each is in effect worthy the name of a language, for each is spoken by millions of people. Offhand I can count seven of these "dialects" of the South: Shanghai, Ningpo, Wenchow, Fukien, Swatow, Amoy, Canton. Numerous resemblance, in word-sounds may be discovered, but the total difference m most sounds is so great that no speaker of any one of can understand a speaker of another.

When Sing Su reached Hong-Kong in 1882, it was Sunday, and he went to a Chinese church by way of introducing him-self to the Chinese language. The preacher was a Cantonese. The hop, skip, jump, and bite of his talk so appalled the solitary young man that in the middle of the sermon he bowed his head in his hands.

"Oh God, however shall I learn such a jerky language?" he ejaculated to himself. But, after all, Cantonese was not the language given him to learn!

Fortunately the idiom, or construction of sentences, is the same everywhere. Books are written in Wenli, the "Latin" of China. Thus in South China, the most populated half of the country, a Westerner desiring to serve the people has the necessity laid upon him of learning practically two languages. First there is Wenli for his book-lore, and then there is the everyday speech of the people among whom he elects to dwell, be they Ningpoese, Cantonese, Wenchowese, etc. A few of the dialects had already been reduced to writing by missionaries "to used our A B C as their medium; but not so with the dialect of the City-of-the-South. There Sing Su had practically virgin soil for his efforts in that direction. Moreover, the Mandarin spoken tongue is unknown in South China. Strangely enough, however, the New Testament translated into Mandarin by missionaries was found easier to read and understand, both by Chinese and foreigners, titan was the orthodox Wenli or classical language. Consequently this Mandarin New Testament was used by Christian Chinese in the churches and it was with a copy of this that I and my opium-smoking teacher started work.

In North China this language of the Mandarin New Testament is the everyday speech of the people. Happy are those Westerners whose easier fate sends them in that direction. An English friend from Hankow expatiated on my lack of wisdom in choosing the City-of-the-South wherein to dwell.

As for me, I can learn a sentence from a Mandarin book, go out in the street and repeat it to any one I may meet, and be understood-which you, with your terrible dialect, cannot possibly do," she remarked.

"True, too true," I told her; but there are compensations my dialect is more endurable than the excessive heat of your summers!

It was the dialect into which we had first to grope our way; and by ear only! The idiom appeared very peculiar, and totally different from our English idiom. If there is such a thing as a Chinese grammar, I have never seen it. I have been told that there are rules, but I do not know any one who cart tell me what they are. My pressing need was to be able to direct the flu-enlightened labours of the two raw Chinese men who served us during the day but conveniently disappeared into the void at night, since we had no sort of sleeping accommodation for them on the River's Heart. Happily Sing Su had a good ear, and could learn easily through that gate, but mine automatically closed before such unknown sounds as our dialect produced. Also I must needs see with my eyes what the written equivalent of the sound looked like on paper, in black and white, before I dared attempt to tell the coolie to wash the floor, or the cook to buy fish. Thus, largely for my benefit, a handbook of everyday phrases sprang into being, written with the aid of our friendly old English A B C, but with continental pronunciation.

Thus, out of our own exigencies and with the continued use of our roman letters, there grew a primer, then a hymn-book, and last of all a translation of the New Testament itself all in the dialect of the City-of-the-South. On the completion of the last, the two of us danced rather than plodded along our usual walk outside the East Gate. But much water flowed under our bridges before that auspicious day.

Before leaving this subject, altogether too recondite for simple explanation, let me add that Sing Su's system of writing the colloquial speech was so simple, so easily grasped, that both Chinese and Westerners learned it rapidly and used it largely. Ten years later, when an English colleague joined us, he could take the hymn-book and straight away, though not under-standing, sing hymns with the best, to the great puzzlement of the Chinese.

"How comes it," they queried, "that Mr. Sea can sing, but cannot talk, Chinese?"

The Chinese have the amiable quality of saving the face of the Westerner by themselves keeping a straight one even at his most ludicrous mistakes, when we should have been convulsed laughter. We all have a store of these mistakes, and I my reminded of the lady who told her cook to buy, as she thought, a dish of strawberries. At long last he reappeared, and presented with what difficulty he had obeyed tier behest, and Presented her with a dish of-sheep's tails. These in China are both large and fat. But she received that for which she asked. And I would bespeak your sympathy. Sing Su said he could always tell when I had been studying Chinese because of the dazed look on my face. Small wonders, facing, as I did, two languages, the spoken and the written. Either of them alone would have been sufficiently upsetting to a beginner. As I have shown before, there was no medium at the outset whereby teacher and learner could exchange even the simplest greetings.

Previously Sing Su had had a servant who knew how to cook English food and understood foreign ways of service. It was in 'the nature of things," as enunciated by Mr. Mantalini, that this servant should commit some uncondonable offence and have to be dismissed just before I arrived on the scene. Consequently, for a couple of years the trials of housekeeping were to me a e., The incredibly difficult task I had of procuring even ordinary bread that we could eat nearly brought me grey hairs. It was humiliating: for, in North-country fashion I had been drilled, at the instance not of my mother but of my father, prophetic soul, in almost everything pertaining to a household, including the mysteries of bread-making.

The drawing-room in the afternoon, but the kitchen in the morning," had been his aphorism concerning his only daughter.

In the City-of-the-South my difficulty lay in the production of the yeast, which could not be bought, but had to be made afresh every baking occasion. Cook and I knew the ingredients to perfection." A pinch of hops, a slice or two of potato, and a teaspoonful of sugar" these innocent items had to be boiled together, put into a bottle with a little of" the old leaven," and left to ferment till the next day, when the mixture should, properly speaking, have been ready for use. All we produced by our combined efforts was bread too bad and sour to eat!

The dough refused to rise in the tins. Eat the bread we could not. I borrowed bread from all possible lenders, with small hope of repayment, until I was ashamed. Yet how we tended, as it were with our lives, that bottle of yeast! It received more attention than many a babe. In the cold weather it was encased in flannel and kept by the stove for fear of a chill. It was studied and turned upside down occasionally, and sometimes given a drink at night. All in vain. I began to look upon yeast-making as the greatest chemical achievement of time. Sing Su's description of one of our loaves was literally true. "So hard that not a chopper could cut it!" he declared in later years. "Where upon it served as a footstool. After that we threw it into the fire but it refused to burn. A brick it went in; a brick it came out."

To me, the ambitious and would-be-honoured bread-giver, those were bitter and mortifying days. Of many failures this was the least understood, and one that to this day rouses in me a deep sense of impotence and injury. I want to rise and try again.

One evening, while seated at our unavoidably frugal board, Chang-boa, our then cook-save the mark!-rushed in like a whirlwind. He had a sadly pock-marked face and such protruding eyes that a visitor once remarked that he certainly was not behind the door when eyes were given out. In real but comic despair he spread his hands. Another failure with the bread I." he announced. I can swallow it down no longer," that is, his failures, not the bread. And he forthwith proposed to stop trying. We let him.

Then, one day, out of the blue there stepped in a Celestial who asked nothing better than to come and do for us what was common knowledge throughout the city that we were unable to do for ourselves: make yeast as well as bread. Sing Su broke this news with excited mien. Ah Djang, I was told, had been brought by a friend of his who explained that he had repented of the delinquencies which had caused his dismissal from a Miner foreign master. Moreover, his peccadilloes had paid so badly that even the nether garments in which he now stood had been borrowed!

Ah Djang was installed in our kitchen-on due promise of future upright dealing. His advent was as the coming of Spring. He proved to be the happy solution of our commissariat troubles. He made bread, and other things, fit for a king.

Do not be surprised if he reappear in our domestic annals; for he and later, his wife also, earned our gratitude by years of good service. I gladly lay this affectionate tribute at their devoted feet-one pair of which had been, fashionably but cruelly, bound.

It is the custom," she apologized.

IN the piping heat of June 1885 the house that was to be a dear home for twenty-five years was sufficiently ready for habitation. We were impatient to be out of our cramped quarters and on to our job. Joyfully, but with affection, we bade adieu to our helpful friends on the River's Heart and, our household stuff having preceded us, we were once more rowed across to the City-of-the-South.

Not that worries or annoyances were left on the island When I had come across to the buildings to mark progress, I often found the workmen sitting smoking, contentedly contemplating the work they had not done. Sing Su had imported a Ningpo man to varnish floors and doors, because of superior skill and more lasting material, Ningpo varnish is famous all over the country. One day this man. pointed out to us blemishes, and angrily charged the men of the city, whom Sing Su had bargained he should employ, with purposely spoiling his work. He also was a foreigner in their eyes!

It would be rash to recommend riots as a daily habit, but the one I knew most about had in it a soul of good. People said I could not possibly have lived in the house in Petticoat Lane, which Sing Su's predecessor, also youthful, had bought with much difficulty. Probably its site and insanitary situation accelerated his death after less than three years service. We now had spacious rooms and wide verandas, on the east side of one of which I stole many a good night's sleep, despite the terrible heat of our summer weather. We rejoiced in a beautiful view of the hoary, moss-grown, fern-fringed city wall which, though broken here and there, climbed up one hillside and ran down another, and had ting-erh, or small pavilions, built on its highest points. We could not see the river itself, but from our upstairs veranda, with the thickly clustered low houses of the east suburb lying between, we had a glorious vista of the long stretch of bare mountains running sharply down to the unseen river's brink on the further bank, amongst which towered Hart Peak. Perhaps even more appealing than the beauty of the view was the fact that from our back window upstairs we could see the masts of s.s. Eternal Peace. So we knew when she arrived and when she left, even if we failed to hear her cheerful hoot on approach, or blast of farewell on departure.

Being young, and having come to stay, we adventured several of our halfpennies, and in our front garden made good concrete paths and a grass lawn for tennis. To this lawn the little community, including consul and commissioner, did cheerfully resort, save when torrential rains turned the lawn into a swamp. A fast set or two did more to generate a cheerful out-look on life than did the only alternative exercise, a monotonous in badly flavoured walk. Even the dear souls whose consciences hindered them from making a tennis-court of their own came and fought on ours, and were doubly welcome. We planted trees, willows and oranges and mulberries, some of which almost while we watched. We ate of the fruit thereof in a very time, so rapid is production and fruition in the Turkish-seas on of South China. I being chief gardener, we grew $p finest and best tomatoes in the world: bathed, as they were, in intense sunshine.

We named our dwelling the White House; for it was white outside and too far away from its more famous namesake to seem impertinent. For years the walls inside were also plain whitewash, and against the dark shining floors and doors these did not look amiss, especially with a few water-colours to break the spaces. As time passed, we progressed, colouring and even painting our wails. The sting of whitewash lies in its having to be often repeated, and the mess made by the workmen, with their futile little brushes, appalled me, and lasted almost until the process needed to be repeated.

Soon after settling in the city, Sing Su disappeared into the country. I perforce spent the nights alone in the house, with the exception of my little simple-minded amah. In the middle of the night on one of these occasions I was suddenly awakened by blood-curdling shrieks. I listened intently, expecting to hear wild rushes to the rescue. Nothing happened, nobody stirred. So I too lay still, letting I dare not wait upon I would the shrill cries came again, I could bear it no longer, but up and went out on to the veranda, expecting that some misdeed was happening. It was a beautifully clear night a moon illumined the sleeping city, which evidently refused to share my alarm. All I could discern was the moving light of a lantern, carried by some person invisible to me walking along under the wall of our adjoining narrow street. Presently the invisible one again emitted the same weird cries, which, coupled with no other demonstration of alarm, reassured me. I decided to leave the solution of the mystery till the morning, and went back to bed, but my first question when Amah appeared was as to the meaning of the hideous sounds.

I was told that a Chinese gentleman near by had a son dangerously ill. To rid him of the evil spirits supposed to be the cause of his condition, the father had risen in the night, put everything eatable outside, and closed all the doors and windows of his dwelling, then had gone about the streets at midnight trying to frighten away the evil spirits by the sounds I had heard. He deserved to succeed.

There was no escaping the fact that, once in the city, real life began. Crowds, mostly women with their attendants, came daily and stayed half a day," that is, an interminable time. The rich were clad in silks and satins, their black hair was gummed down and neatly adorned with pearls, gold pins, and artificial flowers. Their faces, from which every misplaced hair had been plucked, by women trained for the purpose, were thickly coated with powder. Their lips were so carmined that one suspects the present Western fashion was adopted from theirs of forty years ago. On their fingers and wrists were often ornaments of solid gold and silver; for a Chinese woman's dowry was usually sunk in these items, which could easily be turned into cash again if required. A Chinese woman once told me she thought little of our foreign jewellery. Was it not often hollow, and was it not always made of alloyed gold or silver: unlike theirs, which, at its best, is almost pure solid precious metal?

There came to us also the poor, with unadorned homely faces. They were clad in clean cotton homespun cloth, and neat trousers. Nor were the latter always covered by the short pleated skirt of greater respectability. Rich or poor were alike in that all had, in different degree, the tiny feet which represented so much pain and suffering, yet of which they were proud. The smaller the better. Their shoes were hand-made and prettily embroidered, and were often the work of their own fingers, for a woman was useless indeed if she could not make her own sloes, soles included. It was an effort for many to walk up our easy bedroom stairs but they did it, bent on seeing everything. We had to disabuse our minds of the idea that an Englishman's home is his castle. And who knows what evil reports and rumours and real fears of the machinations of the "foreign devils'" were dispelled during those drawn-out visitations? Long afterwards we once called in a bricklayer to a smoky chimney upstairs. As I watched him at his work he turned with a grin:

"Twenty years ago I helped to build this chimney. What do you think we workmen said you would use such a dark hole for? 'To hide stolen babies in, and make medicine of them,' he announced. Was not electric light stolen from human eyes?

He could smile now, however, over the exploded fallacy, for he had apprehended. something of the True Light.

Once I went to visit our devoted Tsang-ling's wife. She had a visitor from the country. "Tomorrow I will take you to see as SW No's Muse," she presently said to her. Turning to me, she added, "To us your house is heaven."

As I walked home I put that remark into my stomach-as is the Chinese phrase digested it. I vowed that I would never again groan over the double rows of nose-marks on our newly cleaned windows, put there by those who feared to come inside, but dared to look. We represented sweetness, cleanliness, light-in short, ingredients of an earthly Paradise which was our accustomed heritage, but which was as yet unattainable by them.

About this time we made the acquaintance of a young man of twenty whom we learned to know well, and whose influence in the right direction became considerable. his home was a large house in a small family village tucked away, as so many lit, in a ravine in the hills. When Ah Shah first came to see us, he examined our possessions with the vigilance of a detective.

I was really concerned when he lighted upon our canteen, and I had taken the precaution to lock it up. The rows of shining steel knives therein displayed were palpably for diabolical use-on the babies stored in the chimney!

Nothing stopped Ah Shah. But when he took hold of the ornamental cover of our American stove, and it came off in his hand, he was terrified and dropped it like a hot brick. The bang ought to have broken the only nice thing about the stove, but did not. Ah Shah's companion urged the flight of time and the existence of other city joys. So at last he left but regretfully.

" I could take pleasure here all day," said he.

On Sunday Ah Shah went with us to church, to hear the strange doctrine. The bold foreign woman walked ahead, whereas she ought to have come toiling painfully behind bet menfolk on her 'two and a half inch golden lilies "-her bound feet. Unheard by me, Ah Shah asked Sing Su an embarrassing question. "What is the queer thing Mrs. Su wears sticking out behind? Our women don't It have it. Would it not look better in front?" he queried.

I never elicited the reply he received; but from that day my recently imported "dress improper," my bustle-then in vogue in England-disappeared for ever. I burnt the silly thing:

with difficulty, for the pieces of steel refused to melt.

I now began to know some of the women who became, as time moved on, my fast friends, Dear little neat, plump, round-faced Pai-loa Na-so called after her eldest son, Pai-loa-was a good soul who withstood every temptation to desert us or our cause. She and I have often chuckled together as site has told me of the bodily fear with which she first came to hear what we had to say, and of the dreadful possibilities her neighbours prophesied for her. They warned her that if she came once, we should give her medicine that would compel her to come again. This we did Before she learnt to trust the foreigner's one God, her fear of evil spirits led her a fine dance. As dusk approached, she would shut herself up in tier house, not daring to open the door till daylight, lest the demons lurking in the dark streets should rush in and destroy her household. She lost her terrors, because a Vision of the Holy One, Whom she described as "white and glistening," appeared to her, she said, driving away the evil spirits for ever.

Pai-loa's mother kept the faith until she died and life, no less than death, was robbed of its fears for her. She was a good companion to me on many a subsequent country journey. Paiba's father seemed of small account in the world. It happens so, sometimes-in Chinese families.

But all were not of Pai-loa Na's calibre. In the latter half of my first six months, just when the external machinery was complete and we were hoping for sure, if slow, progress, there arose the cloud which for years darkened our skies and poured many bitter drops into our cup. Persecutions may produce prosperity, and a riot do little but burn up old buildings; but what one great man called envyings, strife, and divisions worked havoc in our day as well as in his. And a so-called down-trodden Chinese woman was the head and front of it all! I had already given her the misleading name of Lydia, because she made cotton stockings for a living, and she retained the name in spite of everything that happened. A woman of fierce and determination when she took umbrage at some-is- of the congregation, she showed her resentment actively, both to them and to us. She ended by leaving us and the Italian diutch the other side of the city. In this of course she was at liberty to please herself, but that did not &&&Mace Dc-te all right efforts on our part, Lydia left no stone unturned to cause a declension in our numbers, and she succeeded in carrying away with her some twenty or thirty out thirty our small fifty. Some of them we grieved to lose, because we believed them sincere, and we thought they would have done well to remain in our fold, where they had started their new life.

"Lydia the stocking-maker did us much harm. The Lord reward her according to her works!" I was tempted to say.

One item at which she took offence was that at that time the Italian church gave a free meal every Sunday morning to all who attended Mass. Some of our congregation, not wishing to be left behind, urged that we too should try to increase our numbers by doing likewise.

"No," said Sing Su. "That plan of attracting attention b- been tried elsewhere, and failed. We do not want 'Rice Christians.'"

The method had been tried in Ningpo, with none too pleasant There, one Sunday, the crafty American finally told his congregation that on the following Sunday there would be no dinner, but that he would present each of them with a basket in which to bring their own!

Caring as we did almost more for the trust and confidence of our Chinese than anything else on earth, it was grievous when we began to feel they were suspicious of our motives. We denied ourselves many simple comforts in those days lest they should think, or say, that we cared more about our own wellbeing than about supplying needy Chinese with a free meal once a week. One incident reveals the state of my mind at that time. At the end of the week I asked Sing Su what I should arrange for our Sunday dinner, he having been longer on the spot than myself.

I am tired of feeble, skinny chicken," he cheerfully replied "buy a goose!

As matters were, this rather alarmed me. From the Chinese standpoint a goose was a luxury, though from ours not an extravagant one. The cost then, but not now, was about one and sixpence. However, I kept my objections to myself, and told the cook to buy the goose, carefully instructing him to prepare it all on the Saturday. I expected that thus it would be safely hidden away out of sight in our safe, knowing that our kitchen would be, as it usually was, a rendezvous for a number of our flock. Imagine my consternation when I saw at seven o'clock on Sunday morning that detestable cook proudly putting the finishing touches to the goose, and surrounded by an interested group of those whom I least wished to know of its existence.

We went to church, and after the service called in at the adjoining church-house provided for country visitors. Here, amongst others, was the distant, stand-offish Lydia. Here, too, was Z-loa, a friendless man we had taken on to our premises and nursed when attacked by typhoid, and who was out for the first time that day.

Is Z-loa staying here for dinner?" asked Sing Su, happy that Z-loa could thus go a-visiting after his illness.

There is no p'ai "-that is, "nothing to eat with the rice"-answered Lydia disdainfully, "for him."

We went home, and I felt discouraged to the last degree. I went upstairs, lay on my bed, and let the waters overflow me. At one o'clock the bell rang, and hungry, expectant Sing Su sat down at table and waited, but no Sz Mo appeared. Ultimately he sought me, and found me lying there, still in tears.

"What is the matter?" he cried. Man-like, he had been untouched by the things that had cut me to the heart.

It is that goose," I sobbed. "I will not touch it."

Then my meaning dawned on him, and sitting down beside me, he began:

"Now look! Don't be foolish. We cannot live like the people here, and we are not going to try. We shall do what we think right, and leave the consequences.

In the end I was persuaded to go down and partake of the ad-, than which bitter herbs had been more palatable. But it was a sobered meal, and at its close the remainder of the goose was cut into portions, and sent round to one and another s-se most likely to need it. This cheered me considerably. In after years, if I wished to illustrate to Western friends the hardly won confidence of our Chinese friends, I would exclaim:

"Nowadays, if I think fit to hang out half a dozen legs of n-non from Shanghai, I can do it with impunity!"

But the result of the various troubles was a defection, which we could ill afford, Yet a decrease may be the very best that could happen, though hard to bear at the time if the nucleus left be as small as ours was. when we gathered in the new church, which we then accounted large, the congregation was so small. and the atmosphere seemed, to me at least, so chilly and depressing, that I turned coward. Had we not better return to the small street chapel until our numbers increase?

I queried.

Sing Su treated this policy with the contumely it deserved. "What! Discourage the loyal ones in that way? Never.

The difficulties were increased a thousand-fold by the perfect understanding which Sing Su then possessed of the People mentality. It was incredibly hard, if not impossible, to reach the bottom of any happening. Privately we each asked ourselves if we, personally, were to blame for this apparent withdrawal of God's sunshine. The only cause I could of was the removal of the house from close, ill-smelling Petticoat Lane to a healthier, and vastly pleasanter, part of the city. If that were it, then the White House might burn. Had it been devoured by the fiery element which yearly destroys so many homes in the City-of-the-South, I should have rejoiced, and been content to live in any miserable building we could obtain. Such is the blessed abandon of youth.

Happily the house did not burn. Its occupancy has long ceased to disturb my mind, for it was certainly a great instrument in keeping us, and others too, alive to carry on.

The prospects darkened rather than lightened. when we left the city for the first time, compelled to visit Ningpo, one of us wondered as we walked down to our little s.s. Eternal Peace, on an October evening, if it were ever possible to wish to return to such a heart-breaking place and people. In a moment of deep despondency, even Sing Su exclaimed:

If Chang deserts us, I'll go home."

Then, as if ashamed of such faint-heartedness, he quickly added:

No! If he too goes, I will start afresh."

And Chang did not desert us; nor did we turn tail.

DO you ask who is Chang?

One of the best men that ever lived. He it was who, during the Riot, spent the night in prayer and a vain searching of the streets till, at length, he discovered Sing Su in the yamen where the official had compelled him to stay while the mob, undeterred, worked its sweet will on his premises.

When Sing Su went to Shanghai for change of scene, and to meet his future "anchor," Chang went too, and there on arrival I made his acquaintance. Now Chang was not as good-looking as an. many Chinese; but as he stood before me with the deferential air with which he always so mistakenly regarded me, I saw man who carried well his tall bony frame. He was clad in the orthodox loose garments, and was shod with the thick clothsoled working-man's shoes of China. Not only was his face clean-shaven, but the front half of his head also, as was the custom: and his unruly black hair, plaited into a queue or pigtail, was finished off with a black tassel which reached almost to his ankles.

His. face was plain and yellow, his cheek-bones high, his mouth wide. Indeed, Inland China was writ large on every line of him.

How we loved and respected him! Increasingly so as the years rolled on, revealing his worth and his unswerving devotion, not So much to us as to a cause he accounted great. Chang, or Gold, was his surname, and had we tried, we could not have invented a better, or one. more indicative of his nature. Even at first sight there was something about Mr. Gold which impressed me and gave me confidence. Was it the look of other-worldliness, the faculty of, as it was, appraising the value of things in this life in the light of the larger life? Yet later he also proved himself no mean judge of men or motives in this world.

Mr. Gold owed little or nothing to education or social standing. Indeed he was illiterate until he began to study Christian literature so far as I ever learnt, he had not a single relative in the world. In business he used to earn two hundred dollars a year, a respectable livelihood in those days. He had been a maker of the gold and silver paper money which, when burned at the. grave, provides money for the use of the departed in the next life. One cannot tell which to admire most, the ease with which the spirit world could be deceived, or the credulity of the devotees. These believed that their gilt paper money, made by the ton, and which no bank or person would accept for practical purposes, was by the mere act of burning transformed into valuable coin of the spirit realm. Nor do I know if it was the untamable discourses of Mr. Yang - Mr. Willow, in English or the short ones of young Sing Su that opened the eyes of Chang's understanding. What is certain is that, after a short period of listening, his spirit was so stirred by the new ideas that he found he could no longer make his idolatrous paper money. To continue would, metaphorically, be to burn his own soul also. The eventful day came when Chang with one bold stroke divested himself of his two hundred dollars a year and began life again: and as a pedlar.

But Chang had a young wife and her mother to feed. They, naturally, were up in arms against this summer madness which would assuredly bring the spectre of want to their door. If my knowledge of women is correct, they gave him a roasting which was far from metaphysical. In Mr. Gold's efforts to provide his inside ones with their bowls of rice, all pride of place and position went by the board. With bamboo tarrying-pole slung over his unaccustomed shoulder, from which hung the two baskets containing his simple wares, he made long journeys into the country on foot. Consider the hardship of it. In addition to these tedious journeys taking him out of his well-worn artisan city groove, his absences also deprived him of his much-needed spiritual sustenance. Working thus, long and late, he could only earn about sixty or seventy dollars a year. Yet he ever contended that, from a worldly point of view, he was now better off. When I earned more, I lost it in gambling and signaler vices," he said: which I personally find hard to believe from my experience of him.

The stars in their courses fought for Chang. About this time Sing Su needed help in his house. Not a Boy for the nicer work of the house, but a common coolie to wash the floors, sweep the yard, carry the water, clean the shoes, bring in burdens from the steamer-in a word, to perform every menial task in a house where there was nothing whatever "laid on," and in a land where coolies are literally beasts of burden because there are no other means of getting things done except by man-power. Believing Chang to be honest, Sing Su offered the post to him at the customary wage of fifty dollars a year, and the post was gladly accepted.

Thus, from being a respectable tradesman, Chang accepted duties in the service of the despised foreigner, in order to have die privilege of regular attendance at divine service. After wards; while living on the River's Heart, our own exigencies led to Chang's being promoted to the position of our cook.

"It is a shame to keep a genuinely good man like Chang biding his light under the bushel of our kitchen," said Sing Su gin day. "I want to send him out into the country as a colporteur."

No framed servants were to be had, and where to find another man wining even to attempt our foreign cooking we had no idea, Nevertheless Sing Su called Chang into our little room overlooking the river.

"Chang," said he, "we need a new colporteur. The wages are the same that you have as our servant, but the work is header often be dangerous, and you will have to bear will you undertake it?"

I had been there but a few months, and did not know enough of the language to understand what Chang replied. But I knew by the sudden light from within which glorified his face what the reply was in essence.

"What did he say?" I asked, when he had gone.

"He says that he rejoices to have the privilege, and will go into the Den of Lions if need be."

He had his wish, and was oftener there than was pleasant to us. We found a worse cook, and later, on one of their journeys together, Chang confided in Sing Su.

"It is difficult to be honest in a foreigner's kitchen," said he.

In the cook's hands was the buying of all that was bought. This carried with it the great opportunity of over-charging, or a percentage on every article purchased; which percentage varies with the avarice of the cook. We will not enter into the moral of squeeze." I have heard a Westerner defend it, on the ground of its being a recognized custom, a commission, a percentage, and consonant with inadequate wages. I know of a servant who, on being charged with it, retorted that were he serving a Chinese master he should do it to a larger extent; neglecting to state that under a Chinese master he received less than a living wage, and therefore squeezing was expected of him. I also know that every Western housewife in China strives to eliminate it to the utmost of her power, that with honest Chang it was a difficulty, and that its practice from the highest to the lowest Chinese officials has been, and still is, the bane of Chinese life. Of course, reasons can be given, and excuses, for it. During another epoch of rioting in the City-of-the-South-this time against their own mandarins-the wife of one of them came to see Inc, and during our talk told me some interesting things. One was that her husband only received as his salary eight hundred dollars, Mexican, a year. It was impossible for them to live on this. Hence the necessity to squeeze, and together we bemoaned the system that compelled it.

I do not know what first drove Sing Su into the countryside. Was it a sort of prescience or was it disappointment with the sophisticated city folk eternally set on gain? Certain it is he went thither as soon as his acquaintance with the language enabled him to avoid a few of the thousand and one pitfalls into which it invites the foreigner to fall. On those early expeditions Chang was his one constant companion. Together they went in every possible direction in boats, on foot, up hill and down dale. When distances were too great, they each rode in a three-piece mountain chair. This was made simply by tying three pieces of smooth wood together with string, one for the seat, one for a back-rest, and the third, with lengthened string, for a foot-rest. This provided a comfortable collapsible seat when hanging between light bamboo poles from the shoulders of a couple of sturdy hill-men, one in front, the other behind.

Together Chang and Sing Su shared the same drenchings, and ate the same local produce with a zest inspired by sharp hunger and long intervals. Chang was as much without the superiority complex as are some Westerners. To him the Good News was never a foreign importation, and lost none of its value because brought to him from a far-off country, and by the hands of a stranger. Whenever an inquiry came-and often without-the two would hie them to one or other of the villages of the plain or hamlets in the hills. A countryman out of curiosity would visit us in the city, leaving behind a suggestion that a call on him in his distant home would not be unacceptable. The slenderest human dues were eagerly followed. Some broke beneath the strain, but more often they ended in what was sought-an open-minded community responsive to the best that called to them.

Physically it was killing work. Not an ounce of comfort or a moment of quiet: except when on the road from one place to another. Life was a long working picnic, and Sing Su had enough picnics to last him the rest of his days. They had irregular meals, and little, sometimes no sleep. They needed tongues of silver and throats of brass when addressing those big, swaying, curious, pushing, noisy, and-it might easily be-dangerous crowds, in village streets or enclosed ancestral temples. Once Chang was out alone, breaking new ground. On his return I asked what success he had had.

~ "Oh, splendid," was his reply. "They would not allow me to go to bed at all!"

They had kept him busy the whole day and night, telling this astonishing story of God's love for every man. Yet Chang was no orator. Most of his knowledge was gained from his study of the Bible and hymn-book. When standing up to speak, especially in the city, he would humbly apologize for his lack of culture and ability, until at last Sing Su suggested he had better stop, or they would begin to take him at his own valuation.

Chang was selfless. I never knew him ask anything for him-self personal considerations lay outside him. I can picture him taking, deprecatingly, what was offered, and which was his just due. But never by any stretch of imagination can I imagine him asserting his claim to be put on a level with his young Elder Brother" and beloved friend, in any particular. Rather he would pray:

Oh, that I may be counted worthy to wash the disciples' feet!"

On persecution was too violent, no station too distant, to frighten Chang. When he became a regular in the Christian army, and a servant to his own people, the rule was three weeks in the country and one week at home. Again and again, on arriving in the city after an arduous time, Sing Su had to tell him that an imperative cry for help had just come in from some far away place in precisely the opposite direction. Without a moment's hesitation would come Chang's response.

"I must go there," he would say.

But you are tired, worn out," urged Sing Su; though, truth to tell, he knew of no other to send. To go himself would be to make matters worse very often, like flaunting a red flag in front of about. Chang would go home happily to a now sympathetic household-change his clothes, and be off again.

In one place, on Sunday, men stood with guns at each end of the village, threatening the lives of any who came to service. The people naturally said they were afraid.

" Come," said Chang, "and whoever hurts you shall first lay me low." Taking their courage in both hands, they came. Chang used the emollient of gentle persuasion, and once more the situation was saved.

Alas, at the end of five years a stop was forcibly put to his activities. One evening, on reaching the river, after a long tramp that tired him to the point of exhaustion, he found no boat to bring him back the further twenty mires to the city. After waiting some time he espied a water-barge crawling its tardy way city wards, where the drought had dried up the wells. He was granted a passage, but the only available seat was the narrow thwart on which stands the mast. The boat itself was full to the brim with water. A weary Chinese can sleep almost anywhere. So Chang in his recumbent position had no difficulty in that. Alack, the boat gave a jerk I Poor Chang found himself head over heck in the cargo of water. Drenched through, as was also the change of clothing he carried in the double-ended cotton bag which the travelling Chinese slings over his shoulder, Chang had no choice but to sit for hours in his sodden garments, facing the chilly night wind.

Inflammation of the lungs followed, consumption supervened. Sad the day and dark the forebodings when, for a month, Chang lay at the point of death. He won through and lived eight or ten year longer; but never again, spite of valiant attempts, was he able to do that which he loved best on earth. In his retirement he was still a tower of strength, and his little house was the rendezvous of those who needed wholesome advice or warm sympathy. Nor did men in higher positions disdain to visit him and seek his counsel. Many a mystery was elucidated by his knowledge and judgment. When Sing Su failed to fathom a perplexity he would wait till evening, then quietly find his way the the-by-ways to Chang's little domain; almost certain to receive there the guidance he needed. Once in our own house something went wrong There was a spirit, an atmosphere we 'fired nor understood. What could be the matter? Whilst we were puzzling, along came Mr. Midnight Chang-so because he rarely paid us a visit before. 10 P.M. or left before. Chang had sent a message by him.

"Get rid of your cook," he said.

We took his advice, and speedily the barometer rose.

No one entered the narrow gate into the church without his imprimatur, any disputes that might have grown to trouble some dimensions he settled. Yet withal, he was himself beyond reproach, and no breath of scandal or suspicion touched him. No marl or woman spoke ill of him, to the best of my knowledge. His enforced retirement was a terrible loss. In the course of the years, other and abler men came on the scene but his was the devotion and faithfulness that was eager for the laborious post, the forlorn hope, and when we badly needed such zeal. When the people at Crag Head attacked our newly formed station, destroyed the furniture, beat the Christians, leaving one on the ground for dead; and when none dared go from the city to gather the scattered flock together again, it was Chang who said

"let me go!

Though we cannot say Chang has, like the centurion, ,' built us a Synagogue," we can say that he helped largely in the founding and building up of forty: ten in each of four large districts.

Sad to say, Mrs. Chang died some years before him, leaving behind three little girls. One day he slowly toiled the well-worn road to Sing Su's study, and into his listening ears poured the tale of her long and tender nursing and devotion during his drawn-out illness. The tears rained down his thin cheeks as he detailed instances of hey devotion. When he followed her to the grave, their three young daughters came under our protection, and formed a nucleus for further expansion towards girls' education.

Dear Golden Heart had one lack, for which he could not be held responsible. he had no funny-bone in his mental composition no sense of humour. Life was too big and momentous a thing for laughter or jokes or light comments. Can one wonder? I have lingered over Chang and antedated some of the events by years, because Chang, Sing Su, and I began a new life together on the picturesque River's Heart. Moreover, his whole soul was with us his heart was as our heart, Those six months on the River's Heart together were, so to speak, a vestibule to the lively experiences on which we entered when we moved over to start our twenty-five years' life in the City-of-the-South.

AFTER a month in the City-of-the-Peaceful-Wave, that is Ningpo, during the late autumn of 1883, I for my part returned home to the City-of-the-South with a totally different outlook on life there. The reason was not far to seek. With us journeyed our infant daughter on the first of her many future travels up and down the great Flowery Land.

How the Chinese admired her white skin! They said:

"How white! White as snow, white as snow!" But of her little Anglo-Saxon nose they said: "How high is her nose! High than any grown woman's in our city."

Yet in the City-of-the-Peaceful-Wave I had temporarily an ad Chinese flume with a beautiful Roman nose. Where she obtained it is still a mystery ethnologically: but there it was.

We reached home on Christmas Eve, with no possibility of at was fare. To add to our joys, the next day I began to Slake with ague. Outwardly circumstance remained unpropitious, but with courage strangely reinforced by the presence of a helpless babe I could face them all. Typhoons of aggressive disaffection fl-it rage around us, the chilly blasts of indifference vex us. None of these things mattered, for were they not out-side our charmed circle and incapable of harming the love, peace, and joy which dwelt securely within?

The Chinese yield to none in the love of little children. They are far-gone in frenzy before they will harm a hair of a child's head. Rather they will over-indulge them; and so great is the intense interest a foreign child has created that it has, on occasion, saved its parents from violence. This happened in the proud, contemptuous anti-foreign City-of-Auspicious-peace near us. Some British friends used to find their necessary passage through this city of haughty scholarship anything but peaceful. They would breathe a sigh of relief when they succeeded in scurrying through unhurt. What a changed attitude when new Baby Olive accompanied them I Stones, curses, insults, vile names, applied alike to consul and missionary, were forgotten in the eager desire to look upon that marvel of their world-a foreigner's infant,

During the awful upheaval of 1891 the whole Yangtsze Valley was ablaze with the burning of foreign buildings, riots were the order of the day, and it was impossible for Western people to walk safely in the streets, An Englishwoman, with whom I had travailed out, was seeking to escape from an incited mob down a quiet lane, when a Chinese woman appeared at her door, infant in arms. Realizing instantly the Englishwoman's peril, she held out her child.

"Take it!" she cried.

The exquisite gift was thankfully accepted. Clasped together, the two found a safe asylum in the house of another friendly Chinese. Verily, it could be said of China that a Little Child shall lead her.

At home in the White House my small amah heard me say Darling" so often, that when the women asked the child's name she responded "Da-ling." And "Da-ling Miss" she remained: till this day to many of them. I did not correct Amah, knowing that none of the folk could twist their tongues round her English name: for there is no letter in our Southern dialect. Baptized "Dorothy" by the Veteran in our Service in Ningpo, that she was to be registered, Sing Su decreed, as a British subject in his own port of the South; and on arrival he communicated this wish to our consul. Back came the certificate of our country, duly stamped and signed, but inscribed Dorothea." We let it stand, as providing the young lady with her choice of names in the future. On meeting the consul, how-ever, Sing Su ventured to suggest that his instructions had been altered.

"Oh," replied the consul, "I thought Dorothea, Gift of God, the better name: nearer the original Greek, you know!"

But it was "Da-ling" that became the household word. When a little daughter appeared in golden-hearted Chang's household, s