thorough cordial relations with America. You wouldn't so much
object to having the servant at the door report his master not at home
to visitors, but you would object to having the door slammed in your
face; and John Chinaman is just about as human as the rest of us.
Moreover, our own friendliness for John should lead us to adopt the
more courteous of these two methods. Why should not our next exclusion
law, therefore, be based upon the idea of reciprocity, and provide
that there shall be admitted into America any year only so many
Chinese laborers as there were American laborers admitted into China
the preceding year?

Finally, it must always be remembered that the awakening of China is a
matter far more profound than any statistics of exports or imports or
railway lines or industrial development. The Dragon Empire cannot
become (as she will) one of the mightiest Powers of the earth, her
four hundred million people cannot be brought (as they will be
brought) into the full current of the world's activities, without
profoundly influencing all future civilization. For its own sake
Christendom should seize quickly the opportunity offered by the
present period of flux and change to help mold the new force that it
must henceforth forever reckon with. "The remedy for the yellow peril,
whatever that may be," as Mr. Roosevelt said while President, "is not
the repression of life, but the cultivation and direction of life."
The school, the mission, the newspaper--these are the agencies that
should be used. Japan has thousands of teachers in China and scores of
newspapers, but no other nation is adequately active. The present
kindly feeling for America guarantees an especially cordial reception
for American teachers, ministers, and writers, and those who feel the
call to lands other than their own cannot find a more promising field
than China.

Peking, China.

{116}

XII

A TRIP INTO RURAL CHINA

I can't get over (and I hope I never shall) my boyish interest in the
great strange animals that walk along behind the steam piano in the
circus parades. And the animals that I like to see most, I believe,
are the elephants and the camels. The elephant has about him such
quiet, titanic, unboasting strength, such ponderous and sleepy-eyed
majesty, as to excite my admiration, but the camel has almost an equal
place in my interest and esteem.

He is a funny-looking beast, is the camel, and he always reminds me of
Henry Cat