ey might cook, but
green-grain stalks would not burn. Fuel was thus deficient; and
was it wonderful if, as they stood round the pot, and the fuel was
deficient, their patience should fail them and they should fall
upon the food half cooked? That was bad enough; but that is not
all. The Chinese have nearly as little self-control as children;
and is it to be wondered at if, when at last, after long months of
the slow torture of unappeased hunger, they found a full meal
before them, they should have eaten to the full? When a man
emaciated from having gone through a famine, and further enfeebled
after repeated prostrations by ague, at length rises up and gorges
himself with farinaceous food, half ripe and half cooked, the
consequences are not difficult to divine. Diarrh[oe]a and dysentery
set in, and became fearfully prevalent--not only prevalent, but
peculiarly fatal. To make matters worse, medicines in that part of
the country are dear; the people were too poor to get medical help,
and great numbers who had lived to see the famine end and
prosperity return lived only to see the prosperity, and to die when
it touched them. The famine fever in summer seems to have been
fearfully prevalent. It is said that in a single courtyard two or
three people would be lying about the gate, two or three under the
shadow of some house, two or three more inside the house--all
stricken down with fever. The air of some villages is said to have
been loaded with the effluvia to such an extent that one riding
along the street perceptibly discerned the taint in the atmosphere.
The fever was deadly too, but evidently not so deadly in proportion
as the autumn dysentery. Frequently, when talking to a boy, we
would hear he was an orphan, and, on inquiry, he told that his
father had died in autumn; frequently, in talking to a woman, we
would hear that she was a widow, and, on asking when her husband
died, the reply was, "Autumn."

'We reached Hsiao Chang in a snowstorm on Saturday afternoon. A few
of the people, doubtless, heard of our arrival; but those of the
other villages probably did not know we had come; so that our being
there, perhaps, did not materially increase the number of the
congregation that assembled next day (Sunday). Sunday was a dull,
uncomfortable day; t