to turn from their evil ways. We cannot stop the importation of
cigarettes, it read, but there is no need for our people to buy.

* * * * *

At Chao-t'ong I stayed with the Rev. Dr. Savin, and spent a very
pleasant two days' rest here in his hospitable hands. It was in this
district I first came across goitre, the first time I had seen it in my
life. It is a terrible disfigurement.

Poor indeed is the whole of this neighborhood. Poverty, thin and wanting
food to eat, stalks abroad dressed in a rag or two, armed with a staff
to keep away the snarling dogs, and a broken bowl to gather garbage.

Even the better class, who manage to afford their maize and bean curds,
are to be praised for the extreme simplicity which everywhere vividly
marks their monotonous lives. Indeed, this is true of the whole area
through which I have traveled. No furniture brings confusion to their
rooms, no machinery distresses the ear with its groaning or the eye with
its unsightliness, no factories belch out smoke and blacken the beauty
of the sky, no trains screech to disturb sleepers and frighten babies.
The simplest of simple beds--in most cases merely a few boards with a
straw mattress placed thereon--the straw sandal on the foot, wooden
chopsticks in place of knives and forks, the small variety of foods and
of cooking utensils, the simple homespun cotton clothing--much of this
finds favor in the eye of the English traveler. The Chinese, of all
Orientals, teach us how to live without furniture, without impedimenta,
with the least possible amount of clothing in the case of the poorer
classes, and I could not fail to be impressed by the advantage thus held
by this great nation in the struggle of life. It may serve them in good
stead in the struggle of the Yellow Man against the White Man, to which
I refer at a later period in this book; also does it incidentally show
up the real character of some of the weaknesses of our own civilization,
and when one is in China, living near the people, one is forced to
reflect upon the useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have
our daily stock of bread and butter and meats, glass windows and fires,
hats, white shirts and woolen underwear, boots and shoes, trunks, bags
and boxes, bedsteads, mattresses, sheets and blankets--most of which a
Chinese can do without, and indeed is actually better off without.[J]

This is not true in every class, however; for whilst there