o them of business and they are all
attention. If you ever hear of a Chinaman who is not a thief and a liar,
do not believe it, Monsieur Morrison, do not believe it, they are
thieves and liars every one."

For eight years the priest had been in China devoting his best energies
to the propagation of his religion. And sorry had been his recompense.
The best Christian in the mission had lately broken into the mission
house and stolen everything valuable he could lay his impious hands on.
Remembrance of this infamy rankled in his bosom and impelled him to this
expansive panegyric on Chinese virtue.

Some four months ago the good father was away on a holiday, visiting a
missionary brother in an adjoining town. In his absence the mission was
entered through a rift made in the wall, and three hundred taels of
silver, all the money to the last sou that he possessed, were stolen.
Suspicion fell upon a Christian, who was not only an active Catholic
himself, but whose fathers before him had been Catholics for
generations. It was learned that his wife had some of the money, and
that the thief was on his way to Suifu with the remainder. There was
great difficulty in inducing the yamen to take action, but at last the
wife was arrested. She protested that she knew nothing; but, having been
triced up by the wrists joined behind her back, she soon came to reason,
and cried out that, if the magistrate would release her hands, she would
confess all. Two hundred taels were seized in her house and restored to
the priest, and the culprit, her husband, followed to Tak-wan-hsien by
the satellites of the yamen, was there arrested, and was now in prison
awaiting punishment. The goods he purchased were likewise seized and
were now with the poor father.

CHAPTER IX.

MAINLY ABOUT CHINESE DOCTORS.

Chaotong is an important centre for the distribution of medicines to
Szechuen and other parts of the empire. An extraordinary variety of
drugs and medicaments is collected in the city. No pharmacopoeia is more
comprehensive than the Chinese. No English physician can surpass the
Chinese in the easy confidence with which he will diagnose symptoms that
he does not understand. The Chinese physician who witnesses the
unfortunate effect of placing a drug of which he knows nothing into a
body of which he knows less, is no more disconcerted than is his Western
brother under similar circumstances; he retires, sententiously observing
"there is medici