--the light hollowed silver enamel--he wanted
fourteen dollars for; he seemed rather glad finally to sell it for four,
though you can't say he seemed glad; on the contrary, he seemed
preternaturally gloomy and remarked that he and not we would eat
bitterness because of this purchase. The funniest thing was once when,
after getting sick of bargaining, we put the whole thing down and
started to walk away. His movements and gestures would have made an
actor celebrated--they are indescribable, but they said in effect,
"Rather than have any misunderstanding come between me and my close
personal friends I would give you free anything in my possession." The
blood rushed to his face and a smile of heavenly benignity came over it
as he handed us the things at the price we had offered him.

The students' committees met yesterday and voted to inform the
government by telegraph that they would strike next Monday if their four
famous demands were not granted--or else five--including of course
refusal to sign the peace treaty, punishment of traitors who made the
secret treaties with Japan because they were bribed, etc. But the
committee seemed to me more conservative than the students, for the
rumor this A.M. is that they are going to strike to-day anyway. They are
especially angered because the police have forbidden them to hold
open-air meetings--that's now the subject of one of their demands--and
because the provincial legislature, after promising to help on
education, raised their own salaries and took the money to do it with
out of the small educational fund. In another district the students
rioted and rough-housed the legislative hall when this happened. Here
there was a protest committee, but the students are mad and want action.
Some of the teachers, so far as I can judge, quite sympathize with the
boys, not only in their ends but in their methods; some think it their
moral duty to urge deliberate action and try to make the students as
organized and systematic as possible, and some take the good old Chinese
ground that there is no certainty that any good will come of it. To the
outsider it looks as if the babes and sucklings who have no experience
and no precedents would have to save China--if. And it's an awful if.
It's not surprising that the Japanese with their energy and positiveness
feel that they are predestined to govern China.

I didn't ever expect to be a jingo, but either the United States ought
to wash its hands e