ghest to the lowest. The spring is opening, and my hard-worked
coolies doff their heavy padded winter clothing, parade their naked
skin, and are quite unconscious of any disgrace attending the exhibition
of the itch sores which disfigure them.

I remember, however, that I am in China, and must not be disgusted.

And should any reader be disgusted at the disjointed character of this
particular portion of my common chronicle, I would only say in apology
that I am writing under the gaze of a mystified crowd, each of whom has
a word to say about my typewriter--the first, undoubtedly, that he has
ever seen. This machine has caused the greatest surprise all along the
route, and it is on occasions when the Chinese sees for the first time
things of this intimate mechanical nature that he gives one the
impression that he is a little boy. The people crowd into my room; they
cannot be kept out, although at the present moment I have stationed my
two soldiers in the doorway where I am writing, so as to get a little
light, to keep them from crowding actually upon me.

It has been said that all of us have an innermost room, wherein we
conceal our own secret affairs. In China everything is so open, and so
much must be done in public, that it would surprise one to know that the
Chinese have an inner room. The European traveler in this region must
have no inner room, either, for the people seem to see down deep into
one's very soul. But it is when one wanders on alone, as I have done
to-day, doing two days in one, no less than one hundred and forty li of
terrible road through the most isolated country, that one can enjoy the
comfort of one's own loneliness and own inner room. The scenery was
picturesque, much like Scotland, but the solitude was the best of all. I
had left office and books and manuscripts, and was on a lonely walk,
enjoying a solitude from which I could not escape, a reverie which was
passed not nearly so much in thinking as in feeling, a feeling to
nature-lovers which can never be completely expressed in words. It was
indeed a refuge from the storms of life, and a veritable chamber of
peace. And this, to my mind, is the way to spend a holiday. Robert Louis
Stevenson tells us in one of his early books what a complete world two
congenial friends make for themselves in the midst of a foreign
population; all the hum and the stir goes on, and these two strangers
exchange glances, and are filled with an infinite content Some