Eat and drink, for in March we die. This is the thought of the ordinary villager in this usually happy district of Hotung, with its 36 counties, of which 27 are now reckoned, famine stricken.
Eat not dainties, drink not even the beverage of tea, but, starting with the white flour of ordinary times, when the grain bin shows signs of getting low, mix in the bran. Then all) bran and no flour. Then bean flour, afterwards Indian corn, then coarser grain, and husks, roots, leaves, tree bark, shells of monkey nuts, and fine earth, and go on'selling and exchanging till the head reels, the mind gives way, and the curtain falls.
Already chapter one—the white flour stage—has passed for many recent landowning farmers here, and daily, one family after another is starting on the programme of despair which; as they know and say, is scheduled to end a few weeks hence, unless there should come the long delayed snow or rain. Should rain in sufficient quantity come within the next two months, only the chronic poor will suffer. The middle class folks will carry on a campaign of barter, sell, borrow, mortgage, pawn, and possibly swindle, which will land them safely at the next harvest.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.