Kiangsu under date of March 14: Tonight a young man whom I have known for a long time, who lives near one cof our country chapels, came in here to see me and told me that his old mother was lying dead on a boat in the canal. He has been a refugee at Nankiog for several months with this old mother, They were sent back with officials. The ing, and be is now seeking help to bury he These returning refugees are la truly pitiful condition, Famine fever is already among them and quite a comber are dying on the boats or along the roadsides, The officials have given them some road money, to be sure, but it is not enough to feed them and they suffer beyond description from cold, hunger, sickness and crowded condition. I was told by one party the other day that four bad died on their best and they had left six or eight other sick and starving ones in an old temple by the way, to die there, Another young man, whom I knew very well, came by Buchien the other day and appealed to me for help. He was sick 3 Many others were sick on the same boat, An old kinsman whom he was helping home bad died. He said'he did not dare let the bot people know the old man was dead, bat jast let him lie wrapped up in a quilt aa if be were asleep, They bad only one more day's journey on the boat, and they would wait till the journey was finished to have their quarrel with the boatm Several others in the crowd had died, and, where the boatmen bad found it out, they had made a big racket, 'A great many of these retaming refugees can hardly walk. I met a poor fellow the other day tottering along. polling barrow laden with " part of his family, pashed by snather fellow almost as baddly off as he was, and as they passed me, he called out in " voice that rang in my ears and with "look in his face that I can see yet: " Are we in time? Any relief grain left All of these people passing through Yaowan who have tickets proving that they are bona fide refugees can. get help from our office here. But they do not get nearly enough. Many of them cannot possibly manage to live on what they get from both our Committee and the Government Relief Office. Some) of them are too far gone already to recover. A. whole family of eix or seven whom we helped the other day looked to me like they could not survive to reach their home, twenty miles from here seress country, The famine f appearing so early, frightens a all. bat will it be later?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.