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The cyclic impulse had been working mainly on spiritual and intellectual planes: Ssema Tsien, the Father of Chinese History, gives gloomy pictures of things economic.* "When the House of Han arose," says Ssema, "the evils of their predecessors had not passed away.

Ssema Tsien tells us that "mountains were hewn through for many miles to establish a trade-route through the south-west and open up those remote regions"; that was a scheme of Chang Ch'ien's, who had ever an eye to penetrating to India. There was a dark side to it. Vast sums of money were eaten up, and estravagance in private life was encouraged.

One of the three was a convert, one of the six surviving converts made by the aggregate Inland Mission of Suifu in six years. He was an excellent good fellow, rather dull of wits, but a credit to the Mission. To him was intrusted the paying away of my money he carried no load. When he wanted money he was to show me his empty hands, and say "Muta tsien! muta tsien!"

Entering into a conversation intended for the whole village to hear, my bulky coolie sublet his contract for two tsien for the eighty li we had already done fifty. The man hired was a weak, thin, half-baked fellow, whose body and soul seemed hardly to hang together. He was the first to arrive.

Ts'u gathered to herself most of the rest of China for her allies, and there was a giant war that fills the whole horizon, nearly, of the first half of the third century B. C. New territories were involved: the world had expanded mightily since the days of Confucius. "First and last," says Ssema Tsien, "the allies hurled a million men against Ts'in."

But his eyes were bright and open, bright with a look that was new to M'liss that imparted a strange softness and melancholy to his features, the incipient gleam of insanity! If I remember rightly, in one of the admirable tragedies of Tsien Tsiang at a certain culminating point of interest an innocent person is about to be sacrificed. The knife is raised and the victim meekly awaits the stroke.

At the present time, in the same city, many men would be willing to do a deal for any quantity you like for less than two tsien. Cases of smuggling are frequent.

But, saving the whispering of her name, what the trees say cannot be understood; and they alone remember the years of Sië-Thao. Something about her you might, nevertheless, learn from any of those Kiang-kou-jin, those famous Chinese story-tellers, who nightly narrate to listening crowds, in consideration of a few tsien, the legends of the past.

Says Ssema Tsien: "The public granaries were well-stocked; the government treasuries full... The streets were thronged with the horses of the people, and on the highroads, whole droves were to be seen, so that it became necessary to forbid the public use of mares. Village elders ate meat and drank wine.

The common sailors, too, had their copper cash, or "tsien," to hide; and the whole place was in a state of bustle and confusion. When all their more valuable property was hidden, they began to make some preparations for defense.