Wuchang, Jan. 20.
'The Heroes' temple is undergoing one more transformation. Once it was the Huang Tien of Manchu regime. Av each gate stood a stone pillar forbidding any one but the "one man" to pass the point on horseback. The walls were red, the temple was imperial yellow. No one ever visited it save for state ceremonies, when the Viceroy and provincial officials appeared there to perform the imperial rites.
Then came October 10, 1911, the flight of the Viceroy, the triumph of the rebel flag. The rebellion was renewed, revolution traitors became heroes. Those who perished in the early struggles were partly deified. Emperor's tablets disappeared and their place was filled by photographs and tablets of those who had given their lives to found the Re public. It became the shrine the Republic. The most impressive each function of the first anniversary of the Republic was held there. Representatives of all the eighteen provinces, of Yuan Shih-kai and of Li Yuan-hung gathered in top hats and frock coats to bow before these tablets and to offer sacrifice and obeisance to the shades and memories of the heroes.
The great patriotic prayer-meeting of 191%, just before Yuan's coup d'état against the rowdy parliament took place, was held there. Lately Professor' Robertson of Y.M.C.A. fame gave some of his well known lectures there and Sherwood Eddy discoursed on the rise and fall of nations and of the Saviour of the World in s matshed erected before the inner shrine.
Once more the temple has been in the workmen's hands and now it is about ready for whatever ceremonies are meet and right at the inauguration of the new Emperor snd other functions hereafter. What stories that temple could tell had it a mouth to speak and eyes to see! The writer remembers speeches there that would mean almost instant death now. He remembers the pool of blood just inside the wall where the victim of no of the numerous counter-revolutions lost his head. We are to go back to the old placid days. Red and gold are in order once more and the heroes must give way to the Emperor.
So be it. Perhaps it had been better had they been content to keep within their own original slogan of "Down with the Manchus' and never wander off into republican fields. Yet with all their extravagance they did set a new breath blowing through this musty old land.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.