at in the rows of chairs, sixteen of them, and some amahs
around the room, while I talked to them. I told stories about what the
American women did in the war and they stared with amazement. I had to
explain what a gas mask is, but they knew what killing is and what high
class is. Their giggles were quite encouraging to intercourse. A nice
young lady from the college interpreted, and when I stopped I asked them
to tell me something about their lives. So the governor's wife was at
last persuaded to give an account of how she brought up her children.
They are all free from self-consciousness, and though they have little
manners in our sense of the word, they have a self-possession and
gentleness combined which gives a very graceful appearance. The
governor's wife says she has two little boys, the eldest six years of
age. In the morning he has a Chinese tutor. After dinner, she teaches
him music, of which she is very fond. After that he plays till
five-thirty, has supper, plays again a little while before going to bed,
and then bed. At thirteen the boy will be sent away to school. I asked
her what about girls, and she said that her little niece was the first
one in her family to be sent to school, but this ten-year-old one is in
Tientsin at a boarding school.

PEKING, Sunday, June 1.

We met a young man here from an interior province who is trying to get
money for teachers who haven't received their pay for a long time.
Meantime over sixty per cent of the entire national expenses is going to
the military, and the army is worse than useless. In many provinces it
is composed of brigands and everywhere is practically under the control
of the tuchuns or military governors, who are corrupt and use the pay
roll to increase their graft and the army to increase their power of
local oppression, while the head military man is openly pro-Japanese.

There is a lull in our affairs just now. We agreed yesterday that never
in our lives had we begun to learn as much as in the last four months.
And the last month particularly, there has been almost too much food to
be digestible. Talk about the secretive and wily East. Compared, say,
with Europe, they hand information out to you here on a platter (though
it must be admitted the labels are sometimes mixed) and sandbag you with
it.

Yesterday we went to the Western Hills where are the things you see in
the pictures, including the stone boat, the base of which is really
marble and