. It is
the easiest thing in the world to criticise--the West criticises the
Chinese because he is a heathen, because they do not understand him.
Hundreds of millions of the Chinese race hate and fear the man of the
West for exactly the same reason as would cause us to hate the Chinese
were the situation reversed.

I do not need to go into history from the days when the Chinese first
began to show their suspicion, contempt, and fear of foreigners, and
their interpretation of the motives and purposes which took them to the
Celestial Empire; it would take too much space. But if we of the West
did our part to-day, as we rub up against the Chinese everywhere, in
charitably taking him at his best, things would alter much more speedily
that they are doing. Because the Chinese bristles with contradictions
and seemingly unanswerable conundrums, we immediately dub him a
barbarian, do not endeavor to understand him, do not understand enough
of his language to listen to him and learn his point of view. However,
it is all slowly passing--so very slowly, too. But still China is
progressing, and now this oldest man in the world is becoming again the
youngest, but has all the accumulations and advantages of age in all
countries to lean upon and learn from.

Chao-chow gave me a very decent inn, the top room in front of which was
provided with a well-paved courtyard, with every convenience for the
traveler--that is, for China.

The inn cook and water-carrier was out playing on the street when we put
in an early appearance. My men lost their temper, ground their teeth,
foamed at the mouth, and got desperate. The only man on the premises was
a poor old fellow, who foolishly bumped his uncovered head on the ground
on which I stood, as an act of great servility and a secret sign that I
should throw him a few cash, and then resumed his occupation in the sun
of wiping his already inflamed eyes with the one unwashed garment which
covered him. I pitied him; he knew it, and traded upon my pity until I
invoked a few choice words from Lao Chang to fall upon him. When the
cook did put in an appearance, he and everybody dead and living placed
anywhere near his genealogical tree underwent a rough quarter of an
hour from the anathematical tongues of my companions. The Old Man--by
virtue of the growth on my chin, this epithet of respect was commonly
used towards me--wanted to wash his face and drink his tea. He was tired
with walking. He was a forei