ced by the magistrate of Chinkiang, at the instance of the local
general, to a bambooing for rowdy behaviour. This is what followed:--

"The friends of the prisoners, to the number of about three hundred,
assembled at the city temple, vowing vengeance on the magistrate and
general. They proceeded to the yamen of the general, wrecked the wall
and part of the premises, and put the city in an uproar. The magistrate
fled with his family to the Tao-t'ai's yamen, where two hundred regular
troops were sent to protect him against the fury of the Manchus, who
threatened his life."

This is what happened to another magistrate in Kiangsu. He had
imprisoned a tax-collector for being in arrears with his money; and the
tax-collector's wife, frantic with rage, rushed to the magistracy and
demanded his release. Unfortunately, she was suffering from severe
asthma; and this, coupled with her anger, caused her death actually in
the magistrate's court. The people then smashed and wrecked the
magistracy, and pummelled and bruised the magistrate himself, who
ultimately effected his escape in disguise and hid himself in a private
dwelling.

Every one who has lived in China knows how dangerous are the periods
when vast numbers of students congregate for the public examinations.
Here is an example.

At Canton, in June, 1880, a student took back a coat he had purchased
for half a dollar at a second-hand clothes shop, and wished to have
it changed. The shopkeeper gave him rather an impatient answer, and
thereupon the student called in a band of his brother B.A.'s to claim
justice for literature. They seized a reckoning-board, or abacus, that
lay on the counter, struck one of the assistants in the shop, and drew
blood. The shopkeeper then beat an alarm on his gong, and summoned
friends and neighbours to the rescue. Word was at once passed to bands
of students in the neighbourhood, who promptly obeyed the call of a
distressed comrade, and blows were delivered right and left. The
shopkeepers summoned the district magistrate to the scene. Upon his
arrival he ordered several of the literary ringleaders, who had been
seized and bound by the shopkeepers, to be carried off and impounded.
In the course of the evening he sentenced them to be beaten. A body
of more than a hundred students then went to his yamen and demanded the
immediate release of the prisoners. The magistrate grew nervous, yielded
to their threats, and sent several of the offending st