insolent when I'm sure they don't mean it they're ignorant, that's all.''[6]

[6] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' p. 116.

A call that I made upon a high official in an interior city developed a curious interest. He was a pale, thin man, apparently an opium smoker and a mandarin of the old school. But he was intelligent enough to ask me not only about ``the twenty-story buildings of New York,'' but ``the differences between the various Protestant sects,'' and in particular about ``the Mormons and their strength!'' Who could have imagined that the Latter Day Saints of Utah could be known to a Chinese nobleman of Chih-li? Verily, our own idiosyncrasies are known afar.

It will thus be seen that mutual recriminations regarding national peculiarities are not likely to be convincing to either party. Human nature is much the same the world over. From this view-point at least we may discreetly remember that

     ``There is so much bad in the best of us,
     And so much good in the worst of us,
     That it hardly behoves any of us
     To talk about the rest of us.''

I do not mean to give an exaggerated impression of the virtues of the Chinese or what Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop calls ``a milk-and-water idea'' of heathenism. Undoubtedly, they have grave defects. Official corruption is well-nigh universal. A correspondent of the North China Herald reports a well- informed Chinese gentleman of the Province of Chih-li as expressing the conviction that one-half the land tax never reaches the Government. ``But that is not all,'' said he.

``There are other sources of income for the hsien official. Thus here in this county, thirty-five or forty years ago, the Government imposed an extra tax for the purpose of putting down the Tai-ping rebellion, and the officials have continued to collect that tax ever since. Of course if the literati should move in the matter and report to Paoting-fu, the magistrate would be bounced at once; but they are not likely to do so. The tax is a small one, my own share not being more than five dollars or so.''

China's whole public service is rotten with corruption. Offices with merely nominal salaries or none at all are usually bought by the payment of a heavy bribe and held for a term of three years, during which the incumbent seeks not only to recoup himself but to make as large an additional sum as possible. As the weakness of the Government and the absence of an outspoken public press leave them free from restraint, China is the very paradise of embezzlers. ``Any man who has had the least occasion to deal with Chinese courts knows that `every man has his price,' that not only every underling can be bought, but that 999 out of every 1,000 officials, high or low, will favour the man who offers the most money.''[7] Dishonesty is not, as with the white race, simply the recourse in emergency of the unscrupulous man. It is the habitual practice, the rule of intercourse of all classes. The Chinese apparently have no conscience on the subject, but appear to deem it quite praise- worthy to deceive you if they can.

[7] Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, Peking.

Gambling is openly, shamelessly indulged in by all classes. As for immorality, the Rev. Dr. J. Campbell Gibson of Swatow says that ``while the Chinese are not a moral people, vice has never in China as in India, been made a branch of religion.'' But the Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, of Peking, declares ``that every village and town and city—it would not be a very serious ex- aggeration to say every home,—fairly reeks with impurity.'' The Chinese are, indeed, less openly immoral than the Japanese, while their venerated books abound with the praises of virtue. But medical missionaries could tell a dark story of the extent to which immorality eats into the very warp and woof of Chinese society. The five hundred monks in the Lama Temple in Peking are notorious not only for turbulence and robbery, but for vice. The temple is in a spacious park and includes many imposing buildings. The statue of Buddha is said to be the largest in China—a gilded figure about sixty feet high—colossal and rather awe-inspiring in ``the dim religious light.'' But in one of the temple buildings, where the two monks who accompanied us said that daily prayers were chanted, I saw representations in brass and gilt that were as filthily obscene as anything that I saw in India. There is immorality in lands that are called Christian, but it is disavowed by Christianity, ostracized by decent people and under the ban of the civil law. But Buddhism puts immorality in its temples and the Government supports it. This particular temple has the yellow tiled roofs that are only allowed on buildings associated with the Imperial Court or that are under special Imperial protection. Mr. E. H. Parker, after twenty years' experience in China, writes,

``The Chinese are undoubtedly a libidinous people, with a decided inclination to be nasty about it. . . . Rich mandarins are the most profligate class. . . . Next come the wealthy merchants. . . . The crapulous leisured classes of Peking openly flaunt the worst of vices.

Still, amongst all classes and ranks the moral sense is decidedly weak. . . . Offenses which with us are regarded as almost capital— in any case as infamous crimes—do not count for as much as petty misdemeanours in China.[8]

[8] ``China,'' pp. 272, 273

More patent to the superficial observer is a cruelty which appears to be callously indifferent to suffering. This manifests itself not only in most barbarous punishments but in a thou- sand incidents of daily life. The day I entered China at Chefoo, I saw a dying man lying beside the road. Hundreds of Chinese were passing and repassing on the crowded thoroughfare. But none stopped to help or to pity and the sufferer passed through his last agony absolutely uncared for and lay with glazing eyes and stiffening form all unheeded by the careless throng. Twenty-four hours afterwards, he was still lying there with his dead face upturned to the silent sky, while the world jostled by, buying, laughing, quarrelling, heedless of the tragedy of human life so near. And when in Ching-chou-fu, I stopped to see if I could not give some relief to a woman who was writhing in the street, I was hastily warned that if I touched her unasked, the populace might hold me responsible in the event of her death and perhaps demand heavy damages, if, indeed, it did not mob me on the spot. Undoubtedly the Chinese are often deterred from aiding a sufferer because they fear that if death occurs ``bad luck'' will follow them, a horde of real or fictitious relatives will clamour for damages, and perhaps a rapacious magistrate will take advantage of the opportunity to make a criminal charge which can be removed only by a heavy bribe. And so the sick and poor are often left to die uncared for in crowded streets, and drowning children are allowed to sink within a few yards of boats which might have rescued them. But everywhere in China, little attention is paid to suffering and many customs seem utterly heartless.

In spite, too, of the agnostic teachings of Confucius and their own practical temperament, the Chinese are a very superstitious people and live in constant terror of evil spirits. The grossest superstitions prevail among them, while beyond any other people known to us they are stagnant, spiritually dead, densely ignorant of those higher levels of thought and life to which Christianity has raised whole classes in Europe and America.

Some people who are ignorant of the real situation in China are being misled by an anonymous little book entitled