Page:On to Pekin.djvu/47

Rh wires are bewitched, and they won't walk under them excepting with their eyes closed and while holding their breath, or else while repeating some verse from Confucius. For many years they wouldn't allow a railroad to go through, because such a road would disturb the graves that are scattered here, there, and everywhere instead of being in regular cemeteries, as in our own country."

"I reckon the people in the interior are even more ignorant than those on the seacoast."

"They are, if the books I have read are to be believed. One writer says that some Chinamen were surprised to learn that he, as a 'foreign devil,' did not have three legs and a horn, and that others thought he had a hole through his breast through which a pole could be thrust whenever he wanted to be carried from place to place. Another writer says he was also asked about the hole, and that the natives were surprised to learn that he could bend his knees, having heard that no 'foreign devils' could bend their knees to their gods. This writer had a camera with him, and came close to having his head cut off through trying to take some snap-shots in the village. He added that numerous Chinamen think that