verse are the conditions.

But if China, from the highest to the lowest, will only embrace truth
and love her for her own sake, so that she will not abate one jot of
allegiance to her; if China will let truth run down through the
arteries of everyday commercial, social, and political life as do the
waterways through her marvelous country; if China will kill her
retardative conservatism, and in its place erect honesty and conscience;
if China will let her moral life be quickened--then her transition
period, from end to end of the Empire, will soon end. Mineral,
agricultural, industrial wealth are hers to a degree which is not true
of any other land. Her people have an enduring and expansive power that
has stood the test of more than four thousand years of honorable
history, and their activity and efficiency outside China make them more
to be dreaded, as competitors, than any race or any dozen races of
to-day.

But New China must have this new life.

Commerce, science, diplomacy, culture, civilization she will have in
ever-increasing measure just in so much as she draws nearer to western
peoples. But the new life can come from whence? From within or from
without?

Luchow, into which I was led just before noon on the fourth day out of
Chung-king, is the most populous and richest city on the Upper Yangtze.

Exceedingly clean for a Chinese city, possessing well-kept streets lined
with well-stocked emporiums, bearing every evidence of commercial
prosperity, it however lacks one thing. It has no hotel runners! I
arrived at midday, crossing the river in a leaky ferry boat, under a
blazing sun, my intention being to stop in the town at a tea-house to
take a refresher, and then complete a long day's march, farther than the
ordinary stage. But owing to some misunderstanding between the
_fu-song_, sent to shadow the foreigner on part of his journey, and my
boy, I was led through the busy city out into the open country before I
had had a drink. And when I remonstrated they led me back again to the
best inn, where I was told I should have to spend the night--there being
nothing else, then, to be said.

May I give a word of advice here to any reader contemplating a visit to
China under similar conditions? It is the custom of the mandarins to
send what is called a _fu-song_ (escort) for you; the escort comes from
the military, although their peculiar appearance may lead you to doubt
it. I have two of these soldier people with me