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ON TO PEKIN

great seaport town. Pekin cannot be reached by large boats; and its searport, so to speak, is Tien-Tsin, which is also on the Pei-Ho, not many miles from the Gulf of Pechili."

"Then, if there are not many large cities, there must be a host of small ones."

"China, so I have read, is a country of villages; and there are vast territories where these villages, each containing a hundred or two hundred inhabitants, are less than half a mile apart. You see the Chinese farmer doesn't live on his farm excepting during the time he has to watch his crops, to keep them from being stolen. He lives in the village, along with all of his neighboring farmers; and all of them go out to work every morning, taking all their tools with them, and even the bucket and windlass for the well, and return at nightfall."

"I think I should rather live on the farm. We always lived on our plantation in Virginia, before we moved to Richmond."

"And so did my folks live on their farm in the Mohawk Valley, New York State, Pennington. But you must remember that, with so many people to feed, farming lands in China are valuable; and so