At this point, the magistrate himself took charge of the court ind the prisoner continued to assert hi Innocence when Mr. Liu told him to) write out a statement to the effect that he had not written this letter, and to state that if he had written such a letter that he was willing to be executed. Li, seeing nothing in this, wrote the statement and in it Included the substance of the material of the letter in his own words. When he handed the statement to Mr. Liu, the magistrate had him, for he had used a character in his giving of the substance of the letter which he had used in the letter and which was the wrong character. "Besides the handwriting was identical with that of the original letter. Li, who had never been caught in such a trap before, realized that he had at last met his match and confessed.
The confession was made only atler Mr. Liu had proved to him how useless any lies would be by detailing to him several of the crimes he had been guilty of. One of these wag that for some months back he had been raising rumours of approaching bandit gangs and used these rumours to try fo persuade all the population In the region to pay him {ribute to protect them when the raids were actually made, stating at same time that he had sufficient control of the gangs to insure that they would obey his commands. Many' actually joined, paying tribute and thus becoming his disciples.
'Anyway, has confessed and not only 0, But has signed a statement that he' has written the letter, the full text of which is spread out the statement and besides signing has put the print of his thumb on it, Mr.
Liu has referred the case to military headquarters at Nanchang, and not' to Anching the provincial capital. The reason for this is that Mr. Liu, besides being made magistrate of the hsien, has been also appointed concurrently military Judge.
'A Fine ead Yesterday morning, Mr. Rewi Alley, who was up here for his holidays, and went over to the Yamen to see this notorious criminal. I was surprised to see such a fine head. and especially the forehead, almost resembling that of Shakespeare, but underneath that forehead not those beautiful eyes of our Kinz of Poets. but sly wolfish things that seemed to look all ways at once. He was 'm fetlers and the magistrate allowed him to sit down on the ground, and seeing that those cruel fetter rings were cutting into the poor man's eas, ordered rags to be packed in between them and his ankles.
He sat therer seemingly at perfect vase, and Kept talking all the time. giving accounts of what others had, been doing. He has money and if the mayor wants that It would be kiver Nberally for his release. But that is entirely out of the question. As stated above, the case has already -been referred to Nanchang. During the time we were talking, Colonel Chu, who is In charge of the military here, came up and said "shoot him at once and have done with it". Mr. Liv will not Silla man himself. He Teaves that to others and pities even that rascal.
Military Forces The military forces in the hsien consist of separate organizations and all independent of each other. This medley of forces Mr. Liu has started to unify but it will take time. First, there is the Pao An Tui which is sivan regular army training and has 3 colonel from Anching in charge Under Mr. Liu, who is supposed to be the colonel of the officers and men The pay for this force is reckoned in the yearly budget by the Anching Government, but, of course, the funds all have their origin inside the hsien The soldiers are paid $7 to $10 a month and the officers $20 to $60 a month; The colonel receives $100 a month and office expenses. Of course, all are housed and 1 may say, well housed. The Cheng Huang ' Miao City Temple was a wreck when Mr. Liu came here. It is next door to the Yamen. He had it renovated by mending the root. by having the} dirty idols and their broken-down pedestals removed, the floors levelled and beaten hard, the walls scraped and whitewashed, and the fronts of the buildings enclosed in double matting Instead of using brick which. would have cost too much. But the nest thing of all is @ real sanitary. latrine whish makes it possible for the premises end surrounding areas to be kept clean. Prior to this, the situation" was indescribable. The budget for this force is about $2,000 a month, and the training they are receiving will enable them to be organized into a part of the regular army.
'Secondly, there is the Chuang Ting 'Tui which' for so far has no offeial recognition outside of the hsien Originally these were volunteers and each of the eight sections of the hsien supported "its own contingent, the volunteers collecting as much from the farmers as they could." Thix Ted to terrible abuses and later the Chu Changs or officials in charge of each section were empowered to col lect a tax, and the volunteers themselves prohibited from exacting anything outside of that tax. But with the louse government that existed before Mr. Liu's arrival here, there constant drain on the people over and above the regular tax. Another difficulty in those days was that the wealthy would not pay but at the Same time compelled the men in the Chuang Ting Tui to guard them specially, using what trifles there were among them in defence of their own persons and property. The tax that was imposed for this single purpose amounted to two to there cents a mow.
Our magistrate is now having this tax paid direct into his yamen and has Feduced it to oneeent a mow.
The wages paid to thornen of the Chang Ting Tui are the ame as those paid to the Pao An Tui of equal rank.
Thirdly there is the Kung An Tui, a small force of altogether not over 60 in the whole hsien, 30 of whom. are in this city. These poor fellows were paid only $2 a month and were poorly equipped, and as poorly dress sed. They eked out a living by, Squeeze on opium dens and gambling houses. Mr lu has raised their pay, to $5 or.$8 a month and instead of their being ragged they are now in smart uniforms and not only respect
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.