It shows what can be done in this interior city by the slightest kind of cooperation. That reminds me that there are men enough within three miles of each side of the road from here to Kueitehfu, who will be doing almost nothing for the next two months, to build an excellent road bed from here to the railway station. I wish there were some ways to scare them up to it. We have urged that they raise 10 to 1,000 men from the famine district for three months and make this much needed and talked of road. They say it is a fine scheme, but I have heard of no actual movement yet. We are not going to let up on it easily. This road would be almost worth its cost just to the automobiles now tearing over these "lack of roads." There are in this and two adjoining cities about a dozen machines, but most of them are frequently laid up by reason of the efforts of imported. drivers trying to make speed without roads, as they would on Shanghai streets.
We have had the fullest Christmas, and I think on the whole the best we have ever had in this inland city. Seventeen of us—the whole foreign community—sat down on Christmas Day around one table sumptuously supplied at Mrs. R. K. Gonders'. Their five
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.