Your correspondent has just returned from a ten days' tour toward the north-east in the discharge of his ordinary duties We found that particular segment of the universe in the much desi state of] "exceeding peace" with the exception of occasional robbery to keep society from cherishing a feeling of unusual security. A passing traveller regaled us with the story of the heroic but vain attempt of a son to beat off a band of these ruffians who attacked the barrow conveying him and his aged father along a lonely bit of road. The son laid hold of the only weapon he could find, namely the stick used to prop the barrow when at rest, and with this Primitive war-club he fought til, he. was nocked senseless and his father brutally pot, only the blood-bespattered clods by the murdered. When the narrator passed the
wayside remained, he said, to tell that another of those unnecessary' tragedies had occurred, the responsibility for which must be aid largely at the doors of selfish, indolent, local officials. It is true that some effort is being made to capture and punish such robbers. We met an armed company of underlings out on such an expedition. "But the movement of these emissaries is usually 80 deliberate: and their zeal so luke-warm that they do not inspire much fear. small military force has been sent into the troubled district to aid the civil authorities, but it is utterly inadequate or at least has failed to put a stop to the outrages.
MORE LIBELS, We noticed in many inns along the road, which is the main highway to Chefoo vid Weihien, rude pictures stuck up on the walls purporting to represent scenes from the late war. It goes without saying that their artistic grotesqueness was only equalled their historical inaccuracy. They are Jooked upon by many of the country people as being faithful representations of China's uninterrupted success in punishing the rebel Japs. There is, however, a feature about them which makes them worse than generally. misleading, and that is the constant introduction of " foreigners" of other nationalities (usually labelled "English" or "French") amongst the number of captives who are being ingloriously.led by means of ropes about their necks to receive sentence from supercilious mandarins and have the sentence of death in various horrible forms forthwith executed. Every attempt is made to heap contempt upon foreigners as such, The explanatory text is written in a literary (?) style as bad as the pictures and. i full of glaring verbal Dlunders which doubtless go a certain wey toward neutralizing the effect intended to be produced, but it is a shame that after a hundred years of contact. with foreign nations such spiteful lies can be perpetrated and largely believed, and that so close to the open ports, If there ever was a nation that chose darkness rather than light, it is fairly matched by our adopted country.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.