ouraged,
far from it; it was the missionary who was dismayed to hear that in the
United States this particular Epistle is always reckoned a part of the
Pentateuch.

I paid an early visit of courtesy to my nominal host, Li Pi Chang, the
Chinese manager of the Telegraphs. He received me in his private office,
gave me the best seat on the left, and handed me tea with his own fat
hands. A mandarin whose rank is above that of an expectant Taotai, Li is
to be the next Taotai of Mungtze, where, from an official salary of 400
taels per annum, he hopes to save from 10,000 to 20,000 taels per annum.

"Squeezing," as this method of enrichment is termed, is, you see, not
confined to America. Few arts, indeed, seem to be more widely
distributed than the art of squeezing. "Dives, the tax-dodger," is as
common in China as he is in the United States. Compare, however, any
city in China, in the midst of the most ancient civilisation in the
world, with a city like Chicago, which claims to have reached the
highest development of modern civilisation, and it would be difficult to
assert that the condition of public morals in the heathen city was even
comparable with the corruption and sin of the American city, a city
"nominally Christian, which is studded with churches and littered with
Bibles," but still a city "where perjury is a protected industry." No
community is more ardent in its evangelisation of the "perishing
Chinese" than Chicago, but where in all China is there "such a supreme
embodiment of fraud, falsehood, and injustice," as prevails in Chicago?
An alderman in Chicago, Mr. Stead tells us (p. 172 _et seq._) receives
only 156 dollars a year salary; but, in addition to his salary, he
enjoys "practically unrestricted liberty to fill his pockets by
bartering away the property of the city." "It is expected of the
alderman, as a fundamental principle, that he will steal," and, in a
fruitful year, says the _Record_, the average crooked alderman makes
15,000 to 20,000 dollars. An assessorship in Chicago is worth nominally
1500 dollars per annum, but "everyone knows that in Chicago an
assessorship is the shortest cut to fortune."

Squeezing in China may be common, but it is a humble industry compared
with the monumental swindling which Mr. Stead describes as existing in
Chicago.

Besides being manager in Yunnan City, Li is the chief telegraph director
of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow. That he is entirely
innocent of all