ars, the piles of rails--
you too are of to-morrow, grafted with an alien
energy.
You wear the costume of the west, you speak my
tongue as one who knows; you talk casually of
Sheffield, Pittsburgh, Essen....
You touch on Socialism, walk-outs, and the industrial
population of the British Isles.
Almost you might be one of us.

And then I ask:
"How much do those poor coolies earn a day, who
take the place of carts?"
You shrug and smile.
"Eighteen coppers. Something less than eight cents
in your money. They are not badly paid. They
do not die."

Again I ask:
"And is it true that you've a Yamen, a police judge,
all your own?"
Another shrug and smile.
"Yes, he attends to all small cases of disorder. For
larger crimes we pass the offender over to the
city courts."

* * * * *

"Conditions" you explain as we sit later with a cup
of tea, "conditions here are difficult."
Your figure has grown lax, your voice a little weary.
You are fighting, I can see, upheld by that strange
graft of western energy.
Yet odds are heavy, and the Orient is in your blood.
Your voice is weary.
"There are no skilled laborers" you say, "Among
the owners no cooperation.
It is like--like working in a nightmare, here in China.
It drags at me, it drags"....
You bow me out with great civility.
The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and
glow, gigantic machinery clanks and in living
iridescent streams the white-hot slag pours out.

Beyond the gate the filth begins again.
A beggar rots and grovels, clutching at my skirt with
leprous hands. A woman sits sorting hog-bristles;
she coughs and sobs.

The stench is sickening.

_To-morrow!_ did they say?

Hanyang

Spring

The toilet pots are very loud today.
It is spring and the warmth is highly favorable to fermentation.
Some odors are unbelievable.

At the corner of my street is an especially fragrant
reservoir. It is three feet in diameter, set flush
with the earth, and well filled.
Above it squats a venerable Chinaman with a face such
as Confucius must have worn.
His silk skirt is gathered daintily about his waist, and
his rounded rear is suspended in mid-air over the
broken pottery rim.
He gazes at me contemplatively as I pass with eyes in
which the philosophy of the ages has its dwelling.

I wonder whether he too feels the sp