dore in China, Uncle Sam would be Sam Uncle; where fractions
are written upside down, as 8/5, not 5/8; where a bride wails bitterly as
she is carried to her wedding, and a man laughs when he tells you of his
mother's death.

Chinese life, or the phases of it that you see along the highroads of the
northwest, would appear to be a very simple, honest life, industrious,
methodical, patient in poverty. The men, even of the lowest classes, are
courteous to a degree that would shame a Frenchman. I have seen my two
soldiers, who earned ten or twenty cents, Mexican, a day, greet my cook
with such grace and charm of manner that I felt like a crude barbarian as
I watched them. The simplicity and industry of this life, as it presented
itself to me, seemed directly opposed to any violence or outrage. Yet only
seven years ago Shansi Province was the scene of one of the most atrocious
massacres in history, modern or ancient. During a few weeks, in the summer
of 1900, one hundred and fifty-nine white foreigners, men, women, and
children, were killed within the province, forty-six of them in the city
of T'ai Yuan-fu. The massacre completely wiped out the mission churches
and schools and the opium refuges, the only missionaries who escaped being
those who happened to be away on leave at the time. The attack was not
directed at the missionaries as such, but at the foreigners in general. It
was widely believed among the peasantry that the foreign devils made a
practice of cutting out the eyes, tongues, and various other organs of
children and women and shipping them, for some diabolical purpose, out of
the country. The slaughter was directed, from beginning to end, by the
rabid Manchu governor, Yue Hsien, and some of the butchering was done by
soldiers under his personal command. But the interesting fact is that the
docile, long-suffering people of Shansi did some butchering on their own
account, as soon as the word was passed around that no questions would be
asked by the officials.

Apparently, the Shansi peasant can be at one time simple, industrious,
loyal, and at another time a slaying, ravishing maniac. The Chinaman
himself is the greatest paradox of all. He is the product of a
civilization which sprang from a germ and has developed in a soil and
environment different from anything within our Western range of
experience. Naturally he does not see human relations as we see them. His
habits and customs are enough different from ours t