s being
dissected two feet from the table at which they ate their steaming rice
was a detail of not the slightest consequence in the world.

Hungay is an old-time capital of one of the original kingdoms,
destroyed in the year A.D. 749. The road leading out towards Chao-chow
was built some considerable time before that year, and has never been
subject to any repairs whatever (for this fact I have drawn upon my
imagination, but should be very much surprised to know that I am far out
in my reckoning). Villagers have appropriated the public slabs and small
boulders which comprised the wretched thoroughfare; reminiscent puddles
tell you the tale, and the badness of the road renders it necessary for
the traveler to be out of bed a little earlier than usual to face the
ordeal. The road to-day has been practically as bad as walking along the
sides of the Yangtze. But as I studied the patience and physical
vitality of my three men, laughing and joking with the light-heartedness
of children, with nearly seventy catties dangling from their
shoulder-pole, without a word of murmuring, I felt a little ashamed of
myself that I, whose duty it was merely to _walk_, should have made such
a fuss. These men were prepared to work a very long time for very little
reward, as no matter how small the rewards for the terribly exhausting
labor, it were better than none at all,--so they philosophized.

That quiet persistence and unfailing patience form a national virtue
among the Chinese--the capacity to wait without complaint and to bear
all with silent endurance. This virtue is seen more clearly in great
national disasters which occasionally befall the country. The terrible
famine of 1877-8 was the cause of the death of millions of people, and
left scores of millions without house, food or clothing; they were
driven forth as wanderers on the face of the earth without home, without
hope. The Government does nothing whatever in these cases. The people
who wish to live must find the means to live, and what impressed me all
through my wanderings was the absolute science to which poverty is
reduced. In such calamities the Chinese, of all men on the earth's
surface, will battle along if there is any chance at all. If he is
blessed, he once more becomes a farmer; but if not, he accepts the
position as inevitable and irremediable. The Chinese race has the finest
power in the world to withstand with fortitude the ills of life and the
miseries which foll