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Updated: June 25, 2025
Writing home he said, "To tell you the truth, I do not want anything, either money or honours, from either the Chinese Government or our own. As for the honours, I do not value them at all, and never did. I should have refused the 10,000 taels even if everything had gone well, and there had been no trouble at Soo-chow." Gordon's army remained at Quinsan till the end of February 1864.
You try to see whether Mrs. Hsueeh will be soft enough to produce fifty taels for you to share with me, but fancying now that it's of no avail, you turn round and begin to rate me by coming out with all these grand words! I won't however take any money from you, Mrs. Hsueeh.
In his absence the mission was entered through a rift made in the wall, and three hundred taels of silver, all the money to the last sou that he possessed, were stolen. Suspicion fell upon a Christian, who was not only an active Catholic himself, but whose fathers before him had been Catholics for generations.
And well it might be; for thousands of children are disposed of in the course of a year for a few taels by heartless parents, who watch them being carried away, like so much merchandise, to be converted into silver, in many cases in this poverty-stricken district merely to satisfy the craving for opium of some sodden wretch of a man who calls himself a father.
It was not that his custom was falling off in any way; indeed, it had lately increased in a manner that was phenomenal, and when the merchant came to look into the matter, he found to his astonishment that the least order he had received in the past week had been for a hundred idols. All the sales had been large, and yet Ti Hung found himself most unaccountably deficient in taels.
Both the mandarins sought to clear themselves by accusing the other; and a special decree came from Pekin conferring on the English officer a very high order and the sum of 10,000 taels. Major Gordon returned the money, and expressed his regret at being unable to accept any token of honor from the emperor in consequence of the Soochow affair.
"I'm not," lady Feng went on to add, "like those people, who afford help and render assistance with an eye to money; these three thousand taels will be exclusively devoted for the travelling expenses of those youths, who will be sent to deliver messages and for them to make a few cash for their trouble; but as for me I don't want even so much as a cash.
A few years ago Yün-nan had only two articles of importance with which to pay for extra provincial products consumed, namely, opium and tin. The latter came from a spot twenty miles from Mengtsz, and the value of the output now runs to approximately three million taels.
No venture which he undertook maintained a profitable attitude, so that many persons who in former times had been content to display the printed papers setting forth his name and virtues in an easily-seen position in their receiving-rooms, now placed themselves daily before his house in order to accuse him of using their taels in ways which they themselves had not sufficiently understood, and for the purpose of warning passers-by against his inducements.
"If the junior ladies subscribe twelve taels each," Lai Ta's mother went on to ask, "we must, as a matter of course, also come one degree lower; eh?" Upon hearing this, old lady Chia remonstrated. "This won't do!" she observed.
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