FORE:Now whos been talking about my not behaving properly to your mother except yourself? said Keeling.
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui
blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores
et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident.
FORE:"We stopped to look at some fortune-tellers, who were evidently doing a good business, as they had crowds around them, and were taking in small sums of money every few minutes. One of them had a little bird in a cage, and he had a table which he folded and carried on his back when he was moving from one place to another. When he opened business, he spread his table, and then laid out some slips of paper which were folded, so that nobody could see what there was inside. Next he let the bird out of the cage, which immediately went forward and picked up one of the slips and carried it to his master. The man then opened the paper and read what was written on it, and from this paper he made a prediction about the fortune of the person who had engaged him.
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui
blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores
et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident.
FORE:Theres a very serious state of affairs, he said. We have a heavy deficit this last year, and unless we can find some means of raising money, we shall have to abandon the building of that new wing, which we began in the spring. Im glad to say that was not my fault, else I shouldnt have ventured to come to you, for I only became chairman a couple of months ago. Now we are going to have the honour of having you for our Mayor next year, and I wanted to consult you as to whether you thought it possible that the town would lend us a sum of money to enable us to complete this new wing, which, in my opinion, is essential for the proper establishment of the hospital. Would such a scheme have your support? The Committee is meeting, as I said, in half an hour, and, if possible, I should like to be able to tell them that some such project is, or will be, under consideration.At noon they had gone twenty-five miles through a country which abounded in villages and gardens, and had a great many fields of wheat, millet, cotton, and other products of China; the fields were not unlike those they had seen on their voyage up the Yang-tse; and as for the villages, they were exactly alike, especially in the items of dirt and general repulsiveness. The modes of performing field labor were more interesting than the villages; the most of the fields were watered artificially, and the process of pumping water attracted the attention of the boys. An endless chain, with floats on it, was propelled through an inclined box by a couple of men who kept up a steady walk on a sort of treadmill. There were spokes in a horizontal shaft, and on the ends of the spokes there were little pieces of board, with just sufficient space for a man's foot to rest. The men walked on these spokes, and steadied themselves on a horizontal pole which was held between a couple of upright posts. Labor is so cheap in China that there is no occasion for employing steam or wind machinery; it was said that a pump coolie was able to earn from[Pg 359] five to ten cents a day in the season when the fields needed irrigation, and he had nothing to do at other times.
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui
blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores
et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident.
