The hot and oppressive summer at Peking with its peculiar and tainted odour upsets the white man's nerves and drives him out of the city. If he cannot get away he growls and endures because he must.
Twelve miles west of the city of Peking is a range of hills. Bare they look, but here and there still groves of fir trees dot the brown slopes. In these groves are temples.
"The man who is poor lives or should live in a simple and economi A grasping and avaricious priest rents him a room wherein he may deposit himself and his few belongings.
The man who is not pvor transfers his town establishment to one or other hill temples and enjoys dolce fur lento in peace and comfort. Bradshaw was a poor man. An English student interpreter on $90 a month' with every-thIng to find does not amass wealth.
Bradshaw and three other youngsters as needy as himself rented rooms in the temple known as The Pool of the Dragon Prince. Mosquitoes, prickly heat, and the fascination of the awful Chinese characters had rapidly deprived these four young men of their usual good tempers. They grow!
their meat and drink, scoffed at their wealthier neighbours, and were generally disagreeable.
truth was their livers were troubling them.
The ordinary young Britisher cares naught for fruit juice or lemonade. The tones of the Chinese language require the victim to imbibe draughts of beer or diluted soda" water before full justice can be done to their harsh and unhappy sounds, shaw began to feel where his liygr might be.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.