As A Chinaman Saw Us Part 2

The daring of the American woman impressed me. This same lady asked me not to remain with the men to smoke but go on the veranda with her, where _tete-a-tete_ she produced a gold cigarette-case and offered me a cigarette. This I found not uncommon. American women of the fast sets drink at the clubs; an insidious drink--the "high-ball"--is a common one, yet I never saw a woman under the influence of wine or liquor. The amount of both consumed in America, is amazing. The consumption per head in the United States for beer alone is ten and a half gallons for each of the eighty millions. My friend, a prohibitionist, a member of a political party whose object is to ruin the wine industry of the world, put it stronger, and, backed by facts, said that if the wine, beer, whisky, gin, and alcoholic drinks of all kinds and the tea and coffee drank yearly by the Americans could be collected it would make a lake two miles square and ten feet deep. The alcoholic drinks alone if collected would fill a ca.n.a.l one hundred miles long, one hundred feet wide, and ten feet deep. May their saints propitiate this insatiate thirst!

It would amuse you to hear the American women of literary tendency boast of their schools, yet when educational facilities are considered the average American is ignorant. They are educated in lines. Thus a girl graduate will speak French with a good accent, or she will converse in Milwaukee German. She can prove her statement in conic sections or algebra, but when it comes to actual knowledge she is deficient. This is due to the ignorance of the teachers in the public schools and their lack of inborn culture. No better test of the futility of the American public-school education can be seen than the average girl product of the public school of the lower cla.s.s in a city like Chicago or New York.

Americans affect to despise Chinese methods because the Chinese girl or boy is not crammed with a thousand thoughts of no relative value. China has existed thousands of years; her people are happy; happiness and content are the chief virtues, and if China is ever overthrown it will be not because, as the Americans put it, she is behind the times, but because the fever of unrest and the craze for riches has become a contagion which will react upon her. The development of China is normal, that of America hysterical. Our growth has been along the line of peace; that of other nations has been entirely opposed to their own religious teaching, showing it to be farcical and pure sophistry.

If I should tell you how many American women asked me why Chinese women bandage their feet you would be amazed; yet every one of these submitted to and practised a deformity that has seriously affected the growth and development of the race. I am no iconoclast, but listen to the story of the American woman who, with one hand, deforms her waist in the most barbarous fashion, while waving the other in horror at her Chinese sister with the bound feet. American women change their fashions twice a year or more. Fashions are in the hands of the middle cla.s.ses, and the highest lady in the land is completely at their mercy; to disobey the mandates of fashion is to become ridiculous. The fashion is set in Paris and various cities by men and women who have skilled artists to draw patterns and paint pictures showing the new mode. These are published in certain papers and issued by millions, republished in America, and no woman here would have the temerity to ignore them. The laws of the Medes and Persians are not more inexorable.

It is not a suggestion but an order, a fiat, a command, so we see this free nation really truckling to or dominated by a cla.s.s of tradesmen.

The object of the change of style is to create a sale for new goods, give work for laborers, and enable the producer to reach the pocketbook of the rich man; but the "fashions" have become so fixed, so thoroughly a national feature, that they affect rich and poor, and we have the spectacle of every woman studying these guides and conforming to them with a servility beyond belief. I once said to a lady, "The Chinese lady dresses richer than the American, but her styles have been very much the same for thousands of years," but I believe she doubted it. It would be futile, indeed impossible, for me to explain the extravagances of American fashion. Their own press and stage use it as a standard b.u.t.t.

At the present time tablets or plates of fashion insist upon an outline which shows the form completely, the antipodes of a Chinese woman; and this is intensified by some of the women who, when in the street, grasp the skirt and in an ingenious way wrap it about so that the outline of the American divinity is sufficiently well defined to startle one. Such a trick in China could but originate with the demimonde, yet it is taken up by certain of the Americans who are constantly seeking for variety.

There can be no question but that the middle-cla.s.s fashion designer revenges himself upon the _beau monde_. They will not receive him socially, so he forces them to wear his clothes.

Some years ago women were made to wear "hoops," pictures of which I have seen in old publications. Imagine, if you can, a bird-cage three feet high and four feet across, formed of bone of the whale or some metal. This was worn beneath the dress, expanding it on either side so that it was difficult to approach a lady. A later order was given to wear a camel-like "hump" at the base of the vertebral column, which was called the "bustle"--a contrivance calculated to unnerve the wearer, not to speak of the looker-on; yet the American woman adopted it, distorted her body, and aped the gait of the kangaroo, the form being called the "Grecian bend." This lasted six months or more; first adopted by the aristocracy, then by the common people, and by the time the latter had it well in hand the _bon ton_ had cast it aside and were trying something else.

A close study of this mad dressing shows that there is always a "hump."

At one time it went all around; later appeared only behind, like an excrescence on a bilbol-tree. At the present time the designer has drawn his picture showing it as a pendent bag from the "shirtwaist," like the pouch of the bird pelican. A few years ago the designer, in a delirium, placed the humps on the tops of the sleeves, then s.n.a.t.c.hed them away and tipped them upside down. Finally he appeared to go utterly mad with the desire to humiliate the woman, and created a fashion that entailed dragging the skirt on the ground from one to two feet.

Did the American woman resent the insult; did she refuse to adopt a custom not only disgusting but really filthy, one that a Chinese lady would have died rather than have accepted? By no means; she seized upon it with the ardor of a child with a new toy, and for a year the side-paths of the great cities of the country were swept by women's skirts, clouds of dust following them. The press took up the question, but without effect; the fashion dragged its nauseating and frightful course from rich and poor, and I was told by an official that it was impossible to stop it or to force a glimmer of reason into the minds of these women. Then they gave it up, and pa.s.sed a law making it a statutory offense, with heavy fines, for any one to "expectorate" on the sidewalk or anywhere else where the saliva could be swept up by the trains of the women of nearly all cla.s.ses who followed the fashion. The American woman, as I have said, looks askance at the footgear of the Chinese--high, warm, dry, sanitary, yet revels in creations which cramp the feet and distort the anatomy. The shoes are made of leather, inflexible, pointed; and to enable them to deceive the men into the belief that they have high insteps (a sign of good blood here) the women wear stilt-like heels, which throw the foot forward and elevate the heel from two to three inches above the ground.

But all this is but a bagatelle to the fashions in deformity which we find among nearly all American women. There are throughout the country numbers of large manufactories which make "corsets"--a peculiar waist and lung compressor, used by nearly every woman in America. These men are as dogmatic as the designers of the fashion-plates. They also issue plates or guides showing new changes, and the women, like sheep, adopt them. The American woman believes that a narrow waist enhances her beauty, and the corset-maker works upon the national weakness and builds creations that put to shame and ridicule the bound feet of the aristocratic Chinese woman. The corset is a lace and ribbon-decorated armor, made either of steel ribs or whale-bone, which fits the waist and clings to the hips. It is laced up, and the degree of tightness depends upon the will or nerve of the wearer. It compresses the heart and lungs, and wearing it is a most barbarous custom--a telling argument against the a.s.sumption of high intelligence on the part of the Americans, who, in this respect, rank with the flat-headed Indians of the northwest American coast, whose heads I have seen in their medical offices side by side with a diagram showing the abnormal conditions caused by the corset.

A year ago the fiat went forth that the American woman must have wide hips. Presto! there appeared especially devised machinery, advertised in all the journals, accomplishing the condition for those whom nature had not well endowed. Now the dressmaker has decided that they must be narrow-hipped, and half a million dollars in false hips, rubber pads, and other properties are cast aside. No extravaganza is too absurd for these people who are abject slaves to the whimsicalities of the designer, who is a wag in his way, as has been well shown in a story told to me. The designers for a famous man dressmaker in Paris had a habit of taking sketches of the latest creations to their club meetings.

One evening a clever caricaturist took a caricature of a fashion showing a woman with enormous and outlandish sleeves. It created a laugh. "As impossible as it is," said the artist, "I will wager a dinner that if I present it seriously to a certain fashion paper they will take it up."

This is said to be the history of the "big-sleeve" fashion that really amazed the Americans themselves.

The customs of women here are so at variance with those of China that they are not readily understood. Our ways are those culled from a civilization of thousands of years; theirs from one just beginning; yet they have the temerity to speak of China as effete and behind the times.

In writing, the women affect the English round hand and write across from left to right, and then beginning at the left of the page again.

They are fond of perfumes, especially the lower cla.s.ses, and display a barbaric taste for jewels. It is not uncommon to see the wife of a wealthy man wear half a million pounds sterling in diamonds or rubies at the opera. I was told that one lady wore a $5,000 diamond in her garter.

The utterly strange and contradictory customs of these women are best observed at the beach and bath. In China if a woman is modest she is so at all times; but this is not true with some Americans, who appear to have the desire to attract attention, especially that of men, by an appeal to the beautiful in nature and art; at least this is the impression the unprejudiced looker-on gains by a sojourn in the great cities and fashionable resorts. If you happen to be riding horseback, or walking in the street with a lady, and any accident occurs to her costume whereby her neck, her leg, or her ankle is exposed, she will be mortified beyond expression; yet the night previous you might have sat in the box with her at the opera, when her decollete gown had made her the mark for hundreds of lorgnettes. Again, this lady the next morning might bathe with me at the beach and lie on the sand basking in the sun like a siren in a costume that would arrest the attention of a St.

Anthony.

Let me describe such a costume: A pair of skin-tight black stockings, then a pair of tights of black silk and a flimsy black skirt that comes just to the knee; a black silk waist, armless, and as low in the neck as the moral law permits, beneath which, to preserve her contour, is a water-proof corset. Limbs, to expose which an inch on the street were a crime, are blazoned to the world at Newport, Cape May, Atlantic City, and other resorts, and often photographed and shown in the papers. To explain this manifest contradiction would be beyond the powers of an Oriental, had he the prescience of the immortal Confucius and the divination of a Mahomet and Hilliel combined.

CHAPTER V

THE SUPERSt.i.tIONS OF THE AMERICANS

Among the many topics I have discussed with Americans, our alleged superst.i.tions, or our belief in so-called dragons, genii, ghosts, etc., seem to have made the deepest impression. A charming American woman, whom I met at the ---- Emba.s.sy at dinner, told me with seriousness that our people may be intelligent, but the fact that in San Francisco and Los Angeles they at certain times drag through the streets a dragon five hundred feet long to exorcise the evil spirits, showed that the Chinese were grossly superst.i.tious. If I had told my companion that she was the victim of a thousand superst.i.tions, she would have taken it as an affront, because, according to American usage, it is not proper to dispute with a lady. The Americans are the most superst.i.tious people in the world. They will not sit down to a dinner-table when there are thirteen persons. No hostess would attempt such a thing, the belief being general that some one of the guests would die within a year. I was a guest at a dinner-party when a lady suddenly remarked, "We are thirteen." Several of the guests were evidently much annoyed, and the hostess, a most pleasing woman, apologized, and replied that she had invited fourteen, but one guest had failed her. It was apparent that something must be done, and this was cleverly solved by the hostess sending for her mother, who joined the party, and the dinner proceeded.

I do not think _all_ the guests believed in this absurd superst.i.tion, but they were _all_ very uncomfortable. I do not believe I met a society woman in Washington or New York who would walk through a cemetery or graveyard at midnight alone. I asked several ladies if they would do this, and all were horrified at the idea, though strongly denying any belief in ghosts or spirits.

In nearly every American city one or more houses may be found haunted by ghosts, which Americans believe have made the places so disagreeable that the houses have been in consequence deserted. So well-defined is the superst.i.tion, and so recurrent are the beliefs in ghosts and spirits, that the best-educated people have found it necessary to establish a society, called the Society for Psychical Research, in order to demonstrate that ghosts are not possible. I believe I am not overstepping the bounds when I say that this vainglorious people, who claim to have the finest public-school system in the world, are, considering their advantages, the most superst.i.tious of all the white races. Out of perhaps thirty men, whom I asked, not one was willing to say he could pa.s.s through a graveyard at night without fear at heart, an undefined nervous feeling, due to innate superst.i.tion. The middle-cla.s.s woman who stumbles upstairs considers it to mean that she will not marry. To break a mirror, or receive as a present a knife, also means bad luck. Many people wear amulets, safe-guards, and good-luck stones.

Several millions of the Catholic sect wear a charm, which they think will save them from sudden death. All Catholics believe that some of their churches own the bones of saints, which have the power to give them health and other good things. Many Americans wear the seed of the horse-chestnut, and many others wear lucky coins. Belief in the luck of the four-leaf clover, instead of that with three leaves, is so strong that people will spend hours in hunting for one. They are designed into pins and certain insignia, and used in a hundred other ways.

But more remarkable than all is the old horseshoe superst.i.tion. I have seen beautifully gowned ladies stop their driver, descend from the carriage, and pick up such a shoe and carry it home, telling me that they never failed to pick up one, as it brought good luck; yet this lady laughed at our dragon! In the country, horseshoes are commonly seen over the doors of stables, and even of houses. These same people once hung women for witchcraft, and slaughtered women for persisting in certain religious beliefs. I had the pleasure of meeting a well-known man, who stated that he had the power of the "evil eye." Innumerable people believe the paw of an animal called the rabbit to contain sovereign good luck. They carry it about, and can buy it in shops. Indeed, I could fill a volume, much less a letter, with the absurd superst.i.tions of these people who send women to China to convert the "Heathen Chinee," who may be "peculiar," as Mr. Harte states in his poem; but the Chinaman certainly has not the marvelous variety of superst.i.tions possessed by the American, who does not allow cats about rooms where there are infants, fearing that they will suck the child's breath; who believe that certain snakes milk cows, and that mermen are possible. I stood in a tent last summer at Atlantic City--a large seaside resort--and watched a line of middle-cla.s.s people pa.s.sing to see a "Chinese mermaid," of the kind the j.a.panese manufacture so cleverly. It was to be seen on the water. All, so far as I could judge, accepted it as real. So much for the influence of the American public school, where physiology is taught.

CHAPTER VI

THE AMERICAN PRESS

One feature of American life is so peculiar that I fear I can not present it to you clearly, as there is nothing like it under the sun. I refer to the newspapers. If such an inst.i.tution should appear in any Oriental country, or even in Russia, many heads would fall to the ground for treason or gross disrespect to the power of the throne. The American must not only have the news of his neighbor, but the news of the world every hour in the day, and the newspapers furnish it. In the villages they appear weekly, in the towns daily, in the great cities hourly, boys screaming their names, shouting and yelling like demons. Yesterday beneath the window a boy screamed, "The Empress of China elopes with her coachman!" I bought the paper, in which a column was devoted to it.

Fancy this in Pekin. Shades of ----! I can not better describe these papers than to say they have absolute license as to what to print, this freedom being a principle, but it is grossly abused by blackmailers. The papers have no respect for man, woman, or child, the President or the Deity. The most flagrant attacks are made upon private persons. Rarely is an editor shot or imprisoned. The President may be called vile names, his appearance may become the b.u.t.t of ridicule in opposition papers, and cartoonists, employed at large salaries, draw insulting pictures of him and his Cabinet. One would think that the way to obtain patronage of a person would be to praise him, but this would be considered an orientalism. The real way to secure readers in America is to abuse, insult, and outrage private feelings, the argument being that people will buy the journal to see what is said about them. All the American press is not founded upon this system of virtual blackmail. There are respectable papers, conservative and honorable; but I believe I am not overstating it when I say that every large city has at least one paper where the secrets of a family and its most sacred traditions are treated as lawful game.

The actual heads of papers have often been men of high standing, as Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond, E. L. G.o.dkin, Henry Watterson, the late Charles A. Dana, James Gordon Bennett, and William Cullen Bryant.

But in the modern newspaper the man in control is a managing editor, whose tenure of office depends upon his keeping ahead of all others.

The press, then, with its telegraphic connection with the world, with its thousands of readers, is a power, and in the hands of a man of small mind becomes a menace to civilization and easily drifts into blackmail.

This is displayed in a thousand ways, especially in politics. The editor desires to obtain "influence," the power to secure places for his favorites, and, if he is slighted, he intimates to the men in power, "Appoint my candidate or I will attack you." This is a virtual threat.

In this way the editor intimidates the office-holder. I was informed by a good authority of two journals of standing in America which he knew were started as "blackmailing sheets"; and certainly the license of the press is in every way diabolical, a result of the American dogma of free speech. When one arrives in America he is met with dozens of representatives of the press, who ask a thousand and one personal and impertinent questions, which, if one does not answer, one is attacked in some insidious way. One man I know refused to listen to a very importunate newspaper man, and was congratulating himself on his escape, when on the following day an article appeared in the paper giving several libelous pictures of him, the object being to show that he had nothing to say because he was mentally deficient. He appealed to the editor, but was told that his only recourse was to sue. As one walks down the gangplank of a ship he may become the mark for ten or fifteen cameras, which photograph him without permission, and whose owners will "poke fun" at his resistance.

As a news-collecting medium the press of the United States is a magnificent organization. At breakfast you receive the news of the whole world--social, diplomatic, criminal, and religious. Meetings of Congress and stories of private life are alike all served up, fully ill.u.s.trated with pictures of the people and events. A corner is devoted to children, another to women, another to religious Americans, and a little sermon is preached. Then there are suggestive pictures for the man about town, recipes for the cook, weather reports for the traveler, a story for the romancer, perhaps a poem, and an editorial page, where ideas and theories are promulgated and opinions manufactured on all subjects, ready made for adoption by the reader, who in many instances has his thinking done for him. I made a test of this, and asked a number of men for their opinion on a certain subject, and then guessed the name of their favorite paper, and in most instances was correct. They all claimed that they took the paper because it agreed with their political ideas; but I am confident that the reverse is true, the paper having insidiously trained them to adopt its view. Here we see where the power of one man or editor comes in, and worse yet, a nation which acquires this "newspaper habit," this having some one to think for it by machinery, as it were, will lose its mental power, its facility in a.n.a.lysis. I made bold to suggest this to a prominent man, but he merely laughed. As a whole, the American newspapers are valuable; they are the real educators of the people, and have a vast influence. For this reason there should be some restriction imposed on them.

CHAPTER VII

THE AMERICAN DOCTOR

At a dinner at Manchester in the summer I had as my _vis-a-vis_ a delightful young American, who, among other things, said to me: "It is astonishing to me that so many of your people live long, considering the ignorance of your doctors." I a.s.sured her that this was merely her point of view, and that we were well satisfied with our doctors or physicians.

I wished to retaliate by telling my fair companion a story I had heard the day previous. An American physician operated upon a man and removed what he called a "cyst," which he displayed with some pride to a doctor of another school. "Why, man," said the latter, "that isn't a cyst; it's the man's kidney!"

The Americans have made rapid advances in medicine and surgery, and they have some extraordinary physicians. From two to four years of study completes the education of some of the doctors, and hundreds are turned out every year. Some are of the old and regular school of medicine, but others are called homeopathic, which means that they give small doses of the more powerful medicines. Then there are those who practise in both schools. Indeed, in no other field does ignorance, superst.i.tion, credulity, and lack of real education display itself as among the American doctors or healers. I believe I could fill a volume by the mere enumeration of the diabolical and absurd nostrums offered by knaves to heal men who profess to hold in ridicule the Chinese doctors. I mention but a few, and when I tell you, as a truth beyond cavil, that the most extraordinary of these healers, the most impossible, have the largest following, you can see what I mean by the credulity of the people as a whole. Christian Science doctors have a following of tens of thousands.

They combine so-called science with religion; leave their G.o.d to cure them at long or short range through the medium of so-called agents. The head of this faction is an ignorant but clever woman, who has turned the heads of perhaps thirty-three and a third per cent of the American women whom she has come in contact with.

Then come the faith curists, who rely upon faith alone. You simply are to _think_ you will get well. Of course, many die from neglect. As an ill.u.s.tration of the credulity of the average American, a Christian Science healer was once treating a sick woman from a distant town, and finally the patient died. When the bill was presented the husband said, "You have charged for treatment two weeks after my wife died." It was a fact that the healer had been treating the woman after she was buried, the husband having failed to give notice of the death. One would have expected the "healer" to be thrown into confusion, but far from it; she merely replied, "I thought I noticed a vacancy."

Next come the musical curists, who listen to thrills of sound, a big organ being the doctor. Then there is the psychometric doctor, who cures by spirits. The spirit doctor cures in the same way. The palmist professes to point out how to avoid the ills of life. Magnetic healers have hundreds of victims in every city. Their advertis.e.m.e.nts in the journals of all sorts are of countless kinds. Some cure at short hand, some miles distant from the patient. They are equaled in numbers by the hypnotists, or hypnotic doctors, who profess to throw their patients into a trance and cure them by suggestion. I heard of one cure in which the guileless American is made to lie in an open grave; this is called "the return to nature." Again, patients are cured by being buried in hot mud or in hot sand. I have seen a salt-water cure, where patients were made to remain in the ocean ten hours a day. The plain water cure has thousands of followers, with hospitals and infirmaries, where the patient is bathed, soaked, filled, washed, and plunged in water and charged a high amount.

Then there is the vegetarian cure, no meat being eaten; and there are the meat eaters, who use no vegetables. There are over fifty thousand _ma.s.seurs_ and osteopaths in the country, who cure by baths and rubbing. You may have a bath of milk, water, electricity, or alcohol, or a bath of any description under the sun, which is guaranteed to cure any and all ailments. Perhaps the most extraordinary curists are the color doctors. They have rooms filled with blue and other colors, in whose rays the patient victim or the victim patient sits, "like Patience on a monument." I could not begin to give you an enumeration of the various kinds of electric cures; they are legion. But the most amazing cla.s.s comprises the patent-medicine men, who are usually not doctors at all, but buy from some one a "cure" and then advertise it, spending in one instance which I investigated one million dollars a year. Every advantageous wall, stone, or cliff in America will be posted. You see the name at every turn, and the gullible Americans bite, chew, and swallow.

It is not overstating facts when I say that three-fifths of the people buy some of these patent nostrums, which the real medical men denounce, showing that the ma.s.ses of the people are densely ignorant, the victims of any faker who may shout his wares loud enough. In China such a thing would be impossible; the block would stop the practise; but, my dear ----, the Americans a.s.sure me China is a thousand years behind the times, for which let us be devoutly thankful! I have not enumerated a tenth of the kinds of doctors who prey upon these unfortunate people.

There are companies of them, who guarantee to cure anything, and skilfully mulct the sick of their last penny. There are retreats for the unfortunate, farms for deserted infants, and homes for unfortunate women carried on by villains of both s.e.xes. There are traveling doctors who go from town to town, who cure "while you wait," and give a circus while talking and selling their cure; and in nine cases out of ten the nostrum is an alcoholic drink disguised.

In no land under the sun are there so many ignorant blatant fakers preying on a people, and in no land do you find so credulous a throng as in America, yet claiming to represent the cream of the intelligence of the world; they are so easily led that the most impossible person, if he be a good talker, can go abroad and by the use of money and audacity secure a following to drink his salt water, paying a dollar a bottle for it and sing his praises. Such a doctor can secure the names and pictures of judges, governors of States, senators, congressmen, prominent men and women, officers of the volunteer army, artists, actors, singers--in fact, prominent people of all kinds will provide their pictures and give testimonials, which are blazonly published. These same people go to Chinese drug shops and laugh at the "heathen" drugs, and wonder why the Chinaman is alive. America has a body of physicians and surgeons who are a credit to the world, modest, conscientious, and with a high sense of honor, but they are as a dragon's tooth in a mult.i.tude to the so-called "quacks," who take the money of the ma.s.ses and prey upon them, protected in many cases by the law. No one profession so demonstrates the abject credulity of the great ma.s.s of Americans as that of medicine.

One other incident may further ill.u.s.trate the jokes these so-called doctors play upon the common people. In a country town was a "quack"

doctor, who professed to be a "head examiner," giving people charts according to their "b.u.mps," a fad which has many followers. "This, ladies and gentlemen," said the lecturer, holding out a small skull, "is the skull of Alexander the Great at the age of six. Note the prominent brow. This [holding up a larger skull] is the same at the age of ten.

This [holding out another] at the age of twenty-one; [then stepping out to the front of the stage] this is the _complete_ skull of Alexander at the time of his death." All of which appeared to be accepted in good faith.

Of the best physicians in America one can not say enough in praise. I was most impressed by their high sense of honor. They have an agreement which they call their "ethics," by which they will not advertise or call attention to their learning. Consequently, the lower and ignorant cla.s.ses are caught by the blatant chaff of the patent-medicine venders and the quack doctors. What the word "quack" means in this sense I do not quite know; literally, it is the cry of the goose. The "regular doctor" will not take advantage of any medicine he may discover, or any instrument; all belongs to humanity, and one doctor becomes famous over another by his success in keeping people from dying. The grateful patient saved, tells his friends, and so the doctor becomes known. In all America I never heard of a doctor that acted on the principle which holds among our doctors, that the best way to cure is to watch the patient and keep him well, or prevent him from being taken sick. The Americans, in their conceit, consider Chinese doctors ignorant fakers; yet, so far as I can learn, the death-rate among the Chinese, city for city, country for country, is less than among Americans. The Chinese women are longer lived and less subject to disease. In what is known as New England, the oldest well-populated section of the country, people would die out were it not for the constant accession of immigrants. On the other hand, the Chinese constantly increase, despite a policy of non-intercourse with foreigners. The Americans have, in a civilization dating back to 1492, already begun to show signs of decadence, and are only saved by constant immigration. China has a civilization of thousands of years, and is increasing in population every day, yet her doctors and their methods are ridiculed by the Americans. The people have many sayings here, one of which is, "The proof of the pudding lies in the eating." It seems applicable to this case.