ry great city in the Empire, and from
the vast numbers of tramps, who wander over the country on the highways
and byways with pale and sodden faces and with garments nearly falling
to pieces, picking up a scanty livelihood from the benevolent as they
pass from village to village.

Whatever may be their inmost thoughts, the Chinese bear their terrible
hardships and privations with a splendid heroism, with little
complaining, with no widespread outbreaks of robbery, and with no
pillaging of rice-shops and public granaries by organized mobs driven
mad by hunger.

There is one beautiful feature about the Chinese that has been an
important factor in steadying the nation. They are imbued with at
least one great ideal, which touches their common life in every
direction. Every man in the Empire, rich or poor, learned or
unlearned, has a profound respect for what he calls Tien-Li, or Divine
Righteousness. By this the Chinese judge all actions. It is the
standard by which Kings and Princes and common people direct their
conduct, whether in the highest affairs of state, or in the ordinary
engagements of common every-day life.

In addition to this, the minds of the Chinese are filled with romance
and poetry, so that to them the invisible world is peopled with fairies
and all kinds of spirits, both good and bad, the former relieving in
mysterious ways the dull greyness that sorrow and disaster often shed
upon the lives of men.

The story of Kwang-Jui is a remarkable evidence of the unbounded faith
which the Chinese have in the intervention of these mysterious beings
to deliver men from calamities which would otherwise prove fatal to
them.

When we first meet with Kwang-Jui, he is living with his widowed mother
in a retired part of the country. His father had been dead for some
time, and Kwang-Jui was now the only one upon whom the fortunes of the
home could be built. He was a very studious lad, and was possessed of
remarkable abilities, the result being that he successfully passed the
various Imperial Examinations, even the final one in the capital, where
the Sovereign himself presided as examiner.

After this last examination, as the men were waiting outside the Hall
for the names of those who had satisfied the Emperor to be read out a
considerable crowd had collected. Most of these people had come from
mere curiosity to see the Imperial Edict, and to discover who the
scholar was that stood first on the list. The ex