Tsao Kun and his brothers were brought up by a stern father to fend for themselves early in life, and had no educational advantages in their native village at the mouth of the Peiho.
The future President was apprenticed at a cloth shop, and when he had learned the business, was provided by his parent with w_ stock of merchandise, and a wheel barrow. Tht wares of variegated patterns, to appeal te both sexes, were displayed in the familiar fashion on his barrow, and trundled by Tsao Kun to the villages of the neighbourhood, to be chaffered over by keen-witted house wives, always ready to strike a hard bargain. Imagine then the embryonic. Tuchun, armed with the peripatetic draper's rattle, to be seen and heard any day in the side streets of a Chinese city, plodding his weary round, and returning home at night, discontented with his lot, to dream of something more exciting than. a village huckster's circumstantial existence.
The lad found the monotony of the life irksome, and used to spend -his earnings with other
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.