t be the only one to thank you for coming to the
front in this good work.... May the Gospel prosper!"

There are various grades of people in China, among which the scholar has
always come first, because mind is superior to wealth, and it is the
intellect that distinguishes man above the lower order of beings, and
enables him to provide food and raiment and shelter for himself and for
others. At the time when Europe was thrilled and cut to the quick with
news of the massacres of her compatriots in the Boxer revolts, the
scholar was a dull, stupid fellow--day in day out, week in week out,
month in month out, and year after year he ground at his classics. His
classics were the _Alpha_ and _Omega_; he worshipped them. This era has
now passed away.

At the present moment there are upwards of twenty thousand Chinese
students in Tokyo[H]--whither they went because Japan is the most
convenient country wherein to acquire Western knowledge. The new
learning, the new learning--they _must_ have the new learning! No high
office is ever again likely to be given but to him who has more of
Western knowledge than Chinese knowledge. And mere striplings, nursed in
the lap of the mission schools, and there given a good grounding in
Western education, these are the men far more likely to pass the new
examinations. In Yuen-nan, where little chance exists for the scholars to
advance, the new learning has brought with it a revolutionary element,
which would soon become dangerous were it by any means common. I have
seen an English-speaking fellow, anxious to get on and under the
impression that the laws of his country were responsible for keeping him
back, write in the back of his exercise book a phrase against the
imperial ruler that would have cost him his head had it come to the
notice of the high authorities.

One will learn much if he travels across the Empire--facts and figures
quite irreconcilable will arise, but even the man of dullest perception
will be convinced that much of the reforming spirit in the people is
only skin-deep, going no farther than the externals of life. It is at
present, perhaps, merely a mad fermentation in the western provinces,
wherefrom the fiercer it is the clearer the product will one day evolve
itself. Such transitions are full of bewilderment to the
European--bewildering to any writer who endeavors to tackle the Empire
as a whole. Each province or couple of provinces should be dealt with
separately, so di