nor
impossibly good.

There is quite a large Tartar population in Chengtu, and the Manchu
quarter is one of the most picturesque parts of the city, with the charm
of a dilapidated village set in untidy gardens and groves of fine trees.
Loafing in the streets and doorways are tall, well-built men and women,
but they had a rather down-at-heel air, for their fortunes were at a
low ebb when I was in Chengtu. The military service they once rendered
had been displaced by the new modern trained troops, and three years ago
their monthly rice pension of four taels, about $2.50, was cut down by a
viceroy bidding for popular support. Although Chengtu is two thousand
miles from the sea, it is one of the most advanced cities of China, and
has no mind to put up with outgrown things, such as Manchu soldiers and
Manchu pensions. It boasts to-day a mint turning out a very respectable
coinage, a large arsenal, and a university of more promise, perhaps,
than achievement; and the pride of the moment was a new arcade of shops
where the goods were set out with all the artifice of the West in large
glazed windows. Although Japanese and Europeans are employed, yet these
are all truly native undertakings, and that, to my mind, is the best
part of Chengtu's progress; it shows what the Chinese can do for
themselves, not simply following Western leadership. And on the whole
they seemed last year to be doing a number of things very well. It
argued real efficiency, I think, that the officials at Chengtu knew at
every moment the whereabouts of the travelling foreigners in a province
larger than France. To be sure, we were only two, Captain Bailey and
myself, but all the same they could not have done it save by a very
up-to-date use of the telegraph. And again, the Chengtu police are
really guardians of the peace. I had a chance to see the order that was
kept one night when my chair-men lost their way taking me to a dinner at
the house of the French Consul-General, quite across the city from where
I was staying. For more than an hour we wandered about, poking into all
sorts of dark corners, finally reaching the consulate at half-past nine
instead of an hour earlier, and nowhere, either in thoroughfare or
alley, was there any rowdyism, and this though it was the night of the
Dragon Festival when all the people were making holiday. But then under
ordinary conditions the Chinese is a peaceable man; he has his own
interpretation of the rule of life: in o