ot wait for tickets; they have
strong and willing feet.) I am afraid that His Excellency, although of
the old China that I love, was touched with this new spirit of each
member for himself that has come upon this country.

It is the good of the one instead of the whole, as in the former times,
and there is much that can be said upon both sides. The family
should always stand for the members of the clan in the great crises of
their lives, and help to care for them in days of poverty and old age. It
is not just that one should prosper while others of the same blood
starve; yet it is not just that one should provide for those unwilling to
help themselves. I can look back with eyes of greater knowledge to
our home, and I fear that there are many eating from the bowl of
charity who might be working and self-respecting if they were not
members of the great family Liu, and so entitled to thy help.

It is the hour for driving with the children. We all are thine and think of
thee each day.

Kwei-li.

3
My Mother,
I have such great news to tell thee that I hardly know where to begin.
But, first, I will astonish thee-- Ting-fang is home! Yes, I can hear thee
say, "Hi yah!" And I said it many times when, the evening before last,
after thy son and the men of the house-hold had finished the evening
meal, and I and the women were preparing to eat our rice, we saw a
darkness in the archway, and standing there was my son. Not one of
us spoke a word; we were as if turned to stone; as we thought of him
as in far-off America, studying at the college of Yale. But here he
stood in real life, smiling at our astonishment. He slowly looked at us
all, then went to his father and saluted him respectfully, came and
bowed before me, then took me in his arms in a most disrespectful
manner and squeezed me together so hard he nearly broke my
bones. I was so frightened and so pleased that of course I could only
cry and cling to this great boy of mine whom I had not seen for six
long years. I held him away from me and looked long into his face. He
is a man now, twenty-one years old, a big, strong man, taller than his
father. I can hardly reach his shoulder. He is straight and slender, and
looks an alien in his foreign dress, yet when I looked into his eyes I
knew it was mine own come to me again.

No one knows how all my dreams followed this bird that left the nest.
No one knows how long seemed the nights when sleep would not
come to my eyes a