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Rh : “Our five trackers clung on their hands and feet to the jagged rocks, as they pulled the boat up inch by inch. I cannot sufficiently admire the pluck and endurance of these poor coolies, earning but two dollars in cash for the two months’ voyage, and getting three meals of coarse rice, flavoured with a little fried cabbage, for their sustenance, upon which they are called to put forth their strength from dawn to dark daily.”

The writer is acquainted with a Chinese who was employed by a foreigner in pushing a heavy barrow, on journeys often months in duration. Upon these trips it was necessary to start early, to travel late, to transport heavy loads over steep and rugged mountains, in all seasons and in all weathers, fording chilling rivers with bare feet and legs, and at the end of every stage to prepare his master's food and lodging. All this laborious work was done for a very moderate compensation, and always without complaint, and at the end of several years of this service his master testified that he had never once seen this servant out of temper! Is there any reader of these lines of whom, 'mutatis mutandis', the same statement could be truthfully made?

Perhaps it is in time of sickness that the innate cheerfulfness of the Chinese disposition shows to most advantage. As a rule, they take the most optimistic view, or, at all events, wish to seem to do so, both of their own condition and of that of others. Their cheery hopefulness often does not forsake them even in physical weakness and in extreme pain. We have known multitudes of cases where Chinese patients, suffering from every variety of disease, frequently in deep poverty, not always adequately nourished, at a distance from their homes, sometimes neglected or even abandoned by their relatives, and with no ray of hope for the future visible, yet maintained a cheerful equanimity of temper, which was a constant albeit an