The roads already spoken' of connect large towns having their chambers of commerce. Take this town of about 12,000 inhabitants. It has a railway station 20 li away. The business men of the town and the mandarins of ten use that road. Chairs are numerous along it. Yet it is of exactly the sort already described. To build railways and yet have no feeders for them in the shape of roads leading to their stations shown a very ill-balanced judgement to say the least. All classes seem lazily content with the minimum of comfort. It they can get along anyhow they never cry out for anything better. So they go on as they have always done, plodding with their burdens along abominable roads which never admit of wheeled traffic. These roads are never more than barely tolerable and when wet weather makes them impassable the people stay at home and beguile the enforced leisure in gambling.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.