Entering into a conversation intended for the whole village to hear, my bulky coolie sublet his contract for two tsien for the eighty li—­we had already done fifty.  The man hired was a weak, thin, half-baked fellow, whose body and soul seemed hardly to hang together.  He was the first to arrive.  As soon as he got in; this same man took a needle from the inside of his great straw hat and commenced ridding his pants of somewhat outrageous perforations.  Such is the Chinese coolie, although in Yuen-nan he would be an exception.  Late at night he offered to put a shoe on my pony.  I consented.  He did the job, providing a new shoe and tools and nails, for 110 cash—­just about twopence.

I could not help, thinking of the children I had seen to-day, “Sad for the dirt-begrimed babies that they were born.”  These children were all a family of eternal Topsies—­they merely grew, and few knew how.  They are rather dragged up than brought up, to live or die, as time might appoint.  Babies in Yuen-nan, for the great majority, are not coaxed, not tossed up and down and petted, not soothed, not humored.  There are none to kiss away their tears, they never have toys, and dream no young dreams, but are brought straight into the iron realities of life.  They are reared in smoke and physical and moral filth, and become men and women when they should be children:  they haggle and envy, and swear and murmur.  When in Yuen-nan—­or even in the whole of China—­will there be the innocence and beauty of childhood as we of the West are blessed with?

Roads here were in many cases of a light loess, and some of red limestone rock, with a few li of paved roads.  Many of the main roads over the loess are altered by the rains.  Two days of heavy rain will produce in some places seas of mud, often knee-deep, and this will again dry up quite as rapidly with the next sunshine.  They become undermined, and crumble away from the action of even a trickling stream, so as to become always unsafe and sometimes quite impassable.

Delays are very dear to the heart of every Chinese.  The traveler, if he is desirous of getting his caravan to move on speedily, has little chance of success unless he assumes an attitude of profoundest indifference to all men and things around him—­never appear to be in a hurry.

We are accompanied to-day to Kwang-tung-hsien by the coolie who carried the load yesterday.  He sits by staring enviously at his compatriots in the employ of the foreign magnate, who rests on a stone behind and listens to the conversation.  They invite him to carry again; he refuses.  Now the argument—­natural and right and proper—­is ensuing with warmth.  Lao Chang, with the air of a hsien “gwan,” sits in judgment upon them, bringing to bear his long experience of coolies and the amount of “heart-money” they receive, and has decided that the fellow should receive a tenth of a dollar and twenty cash in addition for carrying the heavier of the loads the remaining