it would have been much ware if Fuel has been difficult to get but the teashops had not all seen the advantage and started to use coal earlier in the year. Rice keeps up in price and Boatmen are ready to buy up all that comes in even if it is a bit wet. Owing to the rain or the presence of soldiers, rice is only being carried in on the shoulder by the usual carrying pole. The country people make very short stays, for the rounding up of coolies to carry soldiers and or their gage is a constant item, No one thirsts for this business, for no money, little or no food, is given, and on occasion rough handling is resorted to. Chairmen and coolies have run away and left their chairs, ete. A few men have come home to die. The soldiers get the credit of causing these deaths.
There has been plenty of tramping about for the soldiers even during the wet weather. A regiment or lore comes here, stays for a off. There are said to be over day or two and is suddenly ordered 10 ying somewhere in the three districts of Huan, Kuoshan and) Yingshan. They seem to be billeted away from the cities and rumour, which has been nearly downed by the rain, has it that other small bands of the disbanded soldiers are among the mountains of the southwest.
Price or Protection. the soldiers are comparatively mild. At least the people are glad te get off so lightly. Still the somewhat common practics _prevails of getting their clothes washed and not paying the poor women for their work; picking a fowl and such like when they fool like it; going into the fields to help themselves to maize cobs and se forth, One soldier was about to pluck a maze cob when some one said that the field was owned by' the Agricultural College so he! desisted and passed on to another when he was told that belonged to a very poor faunly. "What!" he said in the northern style. "We have come to protect the oer people" and proceeded to pluck as many as he desired. That is often the way the poor are protected. On the other hand the disbanded sol-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.