o many a Chinese creditor.

The Chinese are at once the most practical and the most sentimental of
the human race. New Year _must not_ be violated by duns for debts, and
the debts _must_ be collected New Year though it be. For this reason
one sometimes sees an urgent creditor going about early on the first
day of the year carrying a lantern looking for his creditor [=debtor].
His artificial light shows that by a social fiction the sun has not yet
risen, it is still yesterday and the debt can still be claimed....

We have but to imagine the application of the principles which we have
named, to the whole Chinese Empire, and we get new light upon the
nature of the Chinese New Year festivities. They are a time of
rejoicing, but there is no rejoicing so keen as that of a ruined
debtor, who has succeeded by shrewd devices in avoiding the most
relentless of his creditors and has thus postponed his ruin for at
least another twelve months.

For, once past the narrow strait at the end of the year, the debtor
finds himself again in the broad and peaceful waters, where he cannot
be molested. Even should his creditors meet him on New Year's day,
there could be no possibility of mentioning the fact of the previous
day's disgraceful flight and concealment, or indeed of alluding to
business at all, for this would not be "good form" and to the Chinese
"Good Form" (otherwise known as custom), is the chief national
divinity. [Footnote: "Village Life in China," by Arthur H. Smith, 1907,
pp. 208-209.]

Yung-chang appears to be almost entirely inhabited by Chinese and in no
part of the province did we see foot-binding more in evidence. Practically
every woman and girl, young or old, regardless of her station in life was
crippled in this brutal way. The women wear long full coats with flaring
skirts which hang straight from their shoulders to their knees. When the
trousers are tightly wrapped about their shrunken ankles, they look in a
side view exactly like huge umbrellas.

One day we visited a cave thirty _li_ north of the city where we hoped to
find new bats. A beautiful little temple has been built over the entrance
to the cavern which does not extend more than forty or fifty feet into the
rock. But twenty _li_ south of Yung-chang, just beyond the village of
A-shih-wo, there is an enormous cave which is reported to extend entirely
through the h