how familiar the life of the village homes. Almost day by day the
confused sounds took form to my unaccustomed ears, and I was soon able
to differentiate quite clearly between the two inevitable questions,
"How old are you?" and "How many brothers and sisters have you?" I
ceased to cover myself with confusion, by answering that my brothers and
sisters numbered twenty-three, and that my age was six--though now that
the days of helpless shame are passed, I would not _not_ have made these
mistakes, so keen is the enjoyment still felt when some one repeats the
old joke, and all laugh merrily at the recollection.

Happy, irresponsible days, in which I learned to know and love the
Chinese. I saw them now to best advantage, simple, patriarchal,
industrious and thrifty, extraordinarily resourceful, and independent of
all that their own fields and farm do not supply. I saw the women's
activities, and how they picked the cotton in the fields, spun and
carded it, then wove it into strong cloth on the loom made for them by
their own husbands; how they dyed the cloth with indigo of their own
growing, and finally converted it into the garments, and even the shoes
and socks, worn by the whole family. I saw how those same garments were
wadded with a layer of cotton-wool as the cold season approached, and
behold, the whole family was made proof against the severe onslaughts of
the keenest frosts and bitterest winds. I saw how a measure of wheaten
or maize flour, a vessel of water, and a few vegetables dug from the
field were daily converted into the three meals on which young and old
alike thrived, the men showing a muscular development and endurance and
an agility unequalled by anything I had met in other countries. I
learned to recognise their simple, unexpressed joys, and to realise the
deep tragedies which lay beneath the surface of their laborious lives.

I was in the midst of the province which--in the very year when I was
born--had been swept by the horrors of a famine and pestilence which
left whole villages with no other survivor than perhaps two or three
wailing children, feeding on garbage torn from the grasp of the dead
hand.

My servant remembered the time well. His whole family had been wiped
out, and he had escaped as by a miracle. "In those days, dogs ate dogs
and men ate men," was the refrain of his tale, only too literally and
absolutely true, for no man dared to venture on the lonely path leading
from one village t