* * * * *
The Canadians I found in their Chinese-built premises, comfortable
albeit. Five of them were resident at the time, and they were quite
pleased with the work they had done during the last year or so--most of
them were new to China. At the China Inland Mission later I found two
young Scotsmen getting some exercise by throwing a cricket ball at a
stone wall, in a compound about twenty feet square. They were glad to
see me, one of them kindly gave me a hair-cut, and at their invitation I
stayed the night with them.
What is it in the nature of the Chinese which makes them appear to be so
totally oblivious to the best they see in their own country?
It is surely not because they are not as sensitive as other races to the
magic of beauty in either nature or art. But I found traveling and
living with such apparently unsympathetic creatures exasperating to a
degree, and I did not wonder that the European whose lot had been cast
in the interior, sometimes, on emerging into Western civilization,
appears eccentric to his own countrymen. But this in passing.
I duly arrived at Lan-chi-hsien, and was told that Sui-fu, 120 li away,
would be reached the next day, although I had my doubts.
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