No account of the trial appeared in any paper; but the Governor's death warrant wag published in all the papers. It announced quite plainly that the prisoner had been accused by "secret spies'—and everybody knew that that meant that the spies were never confronted with their victim. It stated that this man who, as I have said, was hardly able to knock in a nail had been ''manufacturing bombs." The exact section of the Hunan Constitution making this crime punishable with death was quot-
T happened to be at a friend's house within sight of the scene of the execution just when it was being carried out; indeed, two other gentlemen who left the house a little before I did and who took another way into the city, ran into the procession at the city gate. The decapitated body was at once buried in a coffin provided by one_ of the "Good Deeds—Associations" which are happily still at work in this land. The next morning, I was present when the body was transferred from that grave to one in the Christian cemetery. What I saw in that early morning stirred my indignation and I wrote to the Governor. As I claimed the right to publish what I was writing and have not yet received other reply than that through a gentleman whom the Governor asked to interview me about the letter, which he said had hurt him, I venture to send you the greater part of it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.