Gladly did I quit the dust and din of Western life, the
artificialities of dress, and the unnumbered futile affectations of our
own maybe not misnamed civilization, to go and breathe freely and
peacefully in those far-off nooks of the silent mountain-tops where
solitude was broken only by the lulling or the roaring of the winds of
heaven. Thank God there are these uninvaded corners. The realm of
silence is, after all, vaster than the realm of noise, and the fact
brought a consolation, as one watched Nature effecting a sort of
coquetry in masking her operations.
And as I look upon it all I wonder--wonder whether with the "Opening of
China" this must all change?
The Chinese--I refer to the Chinese of interior provinces such as
Szech-wan--are realizing that they hold an obscure position. I have
heard educated Chinese remark that they look upon themselves as lost,
like shipwrecked sailors, whom a night of tempest has cast on some
lonely rock; and now they are having recourse to cries, volleys, all the
signals imaginable, to let it be known that they are still there. They
have been on this lonely isolated rock as far as history can trace. Now
they are launching out towards progress, towards the making of things,
towards the buying and selling of things--launching out in trade and in
commerce, in politics, in literature, in science, in all that has spelt
advance in the West.
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