Four years ago about this time there wax a flutter in the rural courts and alleys, for it wax reported that in a place "called " Fei Chen" workmen were wanted who would "get rich]! quick". Everybody was inquiring when ther it wax a good thing, a sare thing, and would we guarantee it? When told what it was and that we would not, they retired more or Iese stoned. Bat would we then agree to collect the monthly payments? No? Not if they gave as 8 moderate commission No? Then I won't go! great many of is well retired. 'They were wu. lazy, gamblers, opium-smokers, and had never done any Iaboarers' work. Then the farmer clans got wind of it.
Agents were everywhere, and many swallowed the silver bait. It is a mystery how anybody made any money own so many tr for when thirty of them went in a "bench" to the seaport about eighteen would come back as no go." Why? Because they were too mach this, or not quite enough that, though stout and Insty. One young fellow came back wailing, because he had been rejected on account of being practically bald. " Do they then dig gold in Africa with their hair?" was the natural question, Then the fathers, or the mothers, who were widows, would come to know if we could tell why they got no "letter." (They never had "letter" before in their entire lives, bat then they never wanted one, and now they did want one.) For in the letter would be news of a remittance. Yes, that was it, the son was to have the" rowittent fever," and it woul take at home. There were bureaux of many sorts at Tientein, and certain, probably not iromoderate, amount of red-tape to be untied. But thea emerged the Oriental talent for adaptation.
It is not every day that money belonging to some one else is to had merely by waking a trip to Tientsin, and presenting ® ticket, " borrowed," stolen, or wrenched from its ignorant owner, Only the great "Gods Imniortal" to. whom Cicero so often appealed will ever know how much of this delicious irrigating silver went somewhere else And it was the same in Africa.
The real countryman is honest, faithful, and willing to work, for he has never had the pernicious notion that the "World" (of which he knew nothing) "owed" him a living. But a more or less liberal sprinkling of bad characters gave all the workmen a bad name, quite undeserved by many, and mach more than deserved by others, Some malingered and got fined 0 whi meant horribly hard and' often dangerous work under close supervision below ground, and without pay. (What pre-cantion there was against making these fines arbitrary when the temptation mast have been great, we are not informed). Then there was a somewhat mysterious cramp in the muscles with which some were grievously affected, dae to the unaccustomed environment, while others felt no touch three years, Many came back fided from this and like causes.
Only the other day an acquaintance casually mentioned that a fellow fi town lost his life from avon How was it? Well, you see up and he had a lot of gold all in sovereigns, but the sly fellow never left, it off his person, even when in the mines, for he had been paid off and there was yet a month to the sailing of the steamer. But why loaf around for whole month One day's pay was better than spending some of hix hard earned gold. So he wrought hard and well. Alongside him, howe ane'er-dowell, who had is money and who asked to" borrow" three pieces of the lord-of-wealth. L.0.W. woold not Tend it, bot the other man knew a more excellent way. There came a day when the two went down the shaft together, and unaccompanied. At some conve lent time the th to dinner. along presently. come the innate and age-long suspicion of the Chinese blossomed out. We heard you ask him for money, we heard him refuse you, you two went in to-gother, you came out alone, we will report you, come to the Boss So an investigation was ordered, blood was found, and the belt likewise. And what became of the murderer? "That we never heard, but a distant uncle got all the moner—there were no relatives but Such is the intricate complexity fe, that when relative of an upper generation set himself to appropriate the results of nephew's toil there seemed to be no wi check him. And cases like that were frequent, and tos Westerner meddening. But the Chinese (like the eels) are *nsed to A younger brother: who had worked hard ('sold his life", in his own phrase) retains to find that older brother who has a family has squandered most of it for useless trifles. Fancy paying $187, for a gramophone or some rubbish' of that sort with the came of a " Foreiga Theatre" ander the impression that it would prove a chronic "rice-bowl only to learn that after some months of use it will no longer work
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.