The greater part of the foreign population here has recently come to realize in grieved surprise that Peking ix becoming openly eontemptuous and insulting.
From year to year this greater part of the foreign community has been oblivious to a slow and cautious change in the temper of the people, keeping exact pace with the decline in diplomatic prestige, and the com. ments of those who have returned {from home leave, from time to time, calling attention' to a tenser atmos: phere, have been taken very lightly, Now there is no mistaking the fact. that the Pekingese are not only contemptuous of the foreigner but have the courage to be openly insulting. Some groups in the street vilify you when you pass, othe burst into contemptuous. merriment, 4 Coolies stroll placidly in. front of whatever vehicle you may happen to be using, slow you up and smirk in what they think is a supercilious manner. It is impossible: to travel a mile through the strocte without having at least a dozen. street riff-raff look at you though you were something aus seating and then spit with phasis in the opposite direction. at you, but rot quite risen this courageous height.
The country folk move more slowly than the urban population, but no less surely. A Legation employee who was here some years ago and returned recently, is given to riding alone through the countryside all directions. He says that when the was formerly in Peking the rus-8 were eagerly friendly,: when he first came back he found: them indifferent and now he finds some sullenly indifferent and others openly disagreeable. Those who were here in 1900 say that the whole change in atmosphere duplicates that of the pre-Boxer epoch and that it is decidedly ominous,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.