ould not be difficult,
though it might not be so easy to secure an honest administration.

Trains from Peking now reach Hankow (600 miles) in thirty-six hours.
When the grand trunk is completed, through trains from the capital
will reach Canton in three days. Set this over against the three
months' sea voyage of former times (a voyage made only once a year),
or against the ten days now required for the trip by steamer! What
a potent factor is the railroad in the progress of a great country!

The new enterprises in this field would be burdensome to enumerate.
Shanghai is to be connected by rail with Tientsin (which means
Peking), and with Nanking and Suchow. Lines to penetrate the western
provinces are already mapped out; and even in Mongolia it is proposed
to supersede the camel by the iron
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horse on the caravan route to Russia. "Alas! the age of golden
leisure is gone--the iron age of hurry-skurry is upon us!" This
is the lament of old slow-going China.

When China purchased the Shanghai-Woosung railway in 1876, she
was thought to be going ahead. What did we think when she tore up
the track and dumped it in the river? An aeon seems to have passed
since that day of darkness.

The advent of railways has been slow in comparison with the telegraph.
The provinces are covered with wires. Governors and captains consult
with each other by wire, in preference to a tardy exchange of written
correspondence. The people, too, appreciate the advantage of
communicating by a flash with distant members of their families,
and of settling questions of business at remote places without
stirring from their own doors. To have their thunder god bottled
up and brought down to be their courier was to them the wonder of
wonders; yet they have now become so accustomed to this startling
innovation, that they cease to marvel.

The wireless telegraph is also at work--a little manual, translated
by a native Christian, tells people how to use it.

Over forty years ago, when I exhibited the Morse system to the
astonished dignitaries of Peking, those old men, though heads of
departments, chuckled like children when, touching a button, they
heard a bell ring; or when wrapping a wire round their bodies,
they saw the lightning leap from point to point. "It's wonderful,"
they exclaimed, "but we can't use it in
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our country. The people would steal the wires." Electric bells
are now common appliances in the houses of Chinese who