(A paper read before the American Woman's Club, Hankovr, October 14, 1920.)
New comers to this land, twenty or thirty years ago, on walking into any Chinese city from one or other of the treaty ports were im~ pressed with the unkemptness and squalor thereof, albeit relieved to some extent by the outlandish glamour of the main streets of shops. Among the humans that may have impressed them would be a shabby-genteel personage, swaying slightly as he walked along in his long blue gown, with dark goggles on his nose. And it is quite possible that those visitors remarked among themselves: "I wonder what in the world that old fellow is thinking about."
Tt would have surprised them beyond measure had any one told them the truth concerning that old-time Chinese scholar's cogitations. It would have amazed them to learn that their own feeling of superiority in regard to Chinese civic life was more than matched by his feeling of superiority as regards Western folk; that to his mental diagnosis foreign settlements were only relieved by an outlandish mercantile glamour which obtruded itself from minds unkempt and squalid, in the absence of anything visibly approaching the refined scholarship and artistic politeness, which have been the bases of Chinese pride and self-satisfaction. But such undoubtedly were his thoughts, as he lifted his goggles a moment to gaze at the foreigners.
Now, were we to trace that pride of his a little deeper, we should find that it rested upon the possession of an antique literature, wherein this old-time scholar had found his home, consisting of mental structures of faultless sym-merry, built up of prehistoric and precious hieroglyphs, arranged in crystalline phrases of ever-enduring dignity. And were we to study the literature that he has been study-
(3) An exceedingly bulky history of each ruling dynasty, written out soon after the decadence of each. Then, from these prolix records, a condensed but stil] bulky History of China, in various editions.
(4) Commentaries on the Classics} and History, (5) The works of a score or so of semi-Confucian or else Taoist philosophers, the chief of the latter (Chwang Tzu) being an unmitigated mystic.
addition to these politico-moral works, must be mentioned:
(6) A collection of ancient. literary pieces, written for writing's sake; gem compositions whose style is exceedingly terse and beautiful.
(7) A collection of poems; some of which are included in the Five Classics, and the rest from the Han, Tang, Sung, and Ming dynasties.
(8) Works on ancient medicine, astronomy, botany and the like.
A full curriculum for the attainment of Chinese scholarship includes all these items, except perhaps the last miscellaneous works and such is the premium that has been put on Chinese scholarship, that for the 18 centuries preceding (say) the year of grace 1900, the prizes for such scholarship, and the ability to compose _perfect-style sermonettes after the antique, have been rulership over cities and prefectures and provinces, with almost illimitable opportunities of making' a fortune financially, should the conscience not be too tender to do
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.