NTER'S DAY.]

It is the pest of an American seaman's life, for even a seaman hates to
see a human being drowned.

To an American mind this seems ridiculous. It even seems humorous. I
shall never forget how the passengers laughed when the captain told them
why he had had to reverse his engines to keep from crushing the frail
Chinese sampan. But suddenly the thought came to one of the passengers;
that to the poor Chinaman the fear which made him do that foolish thing
and the fear which made him take that awful risk was very real.

"Under God, the poor Devils must have an awful life if they have such a
fear as that in their souls day and night!" said an Englishman.

"They never start out for a day's work that they are not haunted every
minute of that day by a thousand devils, ill-omens, and bad spirits
which are constantly hovering about to leap on them and kill them!" said
a missionary. "The whole Orient is full of the thought of fear!"

This missionary was right. Paul Hutchinson, Editor of the _Chinese
Christian Advocate_ and one of the real literary men of the Americans
who are permanent residents of Shanghai, told me of a Chinese boy who
was graduating from a Christian College in Nanking. The boy had been for
four years under the influence of Americans. He could speak good
English. He was about ready to go to America to school when he had
completed his work at Nanking.

He, with a younger brother, was at home for the Christmas vacation. On
the way back to college the younger brother fell overboard into the
river. The older brother was not a coward. Everybody will testify to
that. In fact he was unusually courageous. But in spite of the fact that
his puny brother was able to swim to the side of the small boat, and in
spite of the fact that he begged his older and stronger brother to pull
him back into the boat, that older brother refused to do so.

"Why?"

Mr. Hutchinson says that the English teacher heard the tale in terror,
but that the brother took it as a matter of course, explaining that the
River Devil would most certainly have caught and dragged into the water,
any person who should have dared to attempt a rescue of his brother.

It is an established thing in China; that if a native falls into the
river, he never gets out unless he pulls himself out. Nobody will help
him, for if they do, that will incur the wrath of the River God and the
rescuer also will be dragged down to his death.

It is assumed th