We have also been blessed with another exhibition of a more gruesome character. Two executions have just taken place outside the Eastern Gate of the city; the victims being the leader of a gang of ruffians who were caught rol-hended in robbing and wounding a poor widow on the public highway, about a year ago, a few hundred yards only from where they ex-pitted their crime, and in close proximity to where the ghastly spectacle of their heads dangling by their queues to wooden pegs, was afterwards to be seen on the city
in Ichang, over two years having elapsed wall, Executions are ooxapereiivel rare since the last. But this is by no means a criterion of the number of capital crimes committed in the vicinity; for at least a dozen heads should have ornamented the city gates for the mischief of 1891. But then these outrages were committed on foreigners, and everyone knows how lightly offenders for such slight misdemeanours ate punished in these pusillanimous days, when a few thousand taels will purchase a shipload of foreigners without fuss or bother. This pleasant little Chinese fiction of al-catching the leaders is " peculiarly interesting one,—who ever heard of a Kolao Hwi man being caught without his being a leader, long wanted. I think it would be amusing if not ridiculous, to read how many rank and file these private bands and secret societies have. It would, perhaps, be useful to catch a few of them, for they appear to be the cleverest of the lot, ut least in keeping their carcases safe. Or is it that catching and executing a leader disposes of the case, so far us the official is concerned, and so it comes about that many of these so-called leaders only obtain their rank after capture 7
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.