Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/360

Rh, he finally yielded to his brother's desires and smoothed things over for him. In 1864, just before the capture of Nanking, when an imperial mandate ordered Li Hung-chang to go to Nanking, it was necessary for Tsêng to argue with his brother to accept the situation with good grace, and it was only Li's comprehension of the situation that really settled the question. Though Tsêng constantly upheld his younger brother, the latter always felt that there was partiality against him, whereas in reality Tsêng was concerned for the country and for the honor of the family. On one occasion, when the younger brother had written suggesting that the brothers ought not to speak harshly to each other, Kuo-fan writes: "This sentence is most splendid — worth ten thousand ounces of silver. At home or abroad in transacting affairs I am never altogether truculent or perverse, but I do speak somewhat severely and am now sorry for these things."

Turning to the practical duties of the home, the grandfather's influence was very strong on Tsêng, and many letters from 1859 to 1861 are largely taken up with the emphasis upon one or the other of these matters. Eight characters summarised the eight fundamental home tasks as the grandfather had taught them, namely, "books, vegetables, fish, pigs, early, sweeping, jewels, ancestors." "By books he meant their reading, and studies which were not to be neglected; vegetables, fish and pigs stood for the carrying on of their agricultural pursuits; 'early' means early rising; 'sweeping,' the cleaning of the house; 'ancestors,' the ancestral sacrifices, respectfully offered to the deceased father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and the sacrifice to the deceased mother. 'Jewels' is the entertaining and greeting of relatives and neighbors, extending congratulations in their joys and