1
3rd. Thursday. A warm day.
2
At 5 p.m. attended the union meeting of the Christian Endeavor Societies of Shanghai. The handsome auditorium of the 監理會堂 was packed. The audience was composed of the Chinese, Americans, English, Scotch, Welsh, Japanese, Australians and a Corean, Societies represented were 10, two of which being foreign. Total membership 327. The exercises were interesting. Mr. Fitz presided.
3
The most noteworthy fact in the meeting is the union of the foreign and native Societies in one service. By the way, slowly but surely a better understanding grows up between the foreigner and the native. For instance, five or six years the ushers of Union Church did not admit the Chinese except in rare cases. But now any respectable Chinaman may attend the services. Then the public notice at the entrance of the garden expressly said that no Chinese could enter into the enclosure thus placing him on the same plane with dogs. But now though the same prohibition holds good, the offensive notice is no longer to be found. Besides, there is a garden expressly laid out for the Chinese not far off from the foreign garden signifying the fact that the foreigner has come to pay some respect to the sensibilities of the native.
5
5th. Saturday. A very warm day.
6
Wrote to Dr. Tillett, Miss Fronzie, Jim McC., Mrs. Stone.
7
Went to see a fire. The flames blazed triumphantly where there was nothing to check but much to feed them. But as soon as a steady stream of water came in contact with the devouring fire there was hissing, smoking, steam and cooling. A good illustration of the fact that noise, complaints, and even bitterness are almost necessary evils where there is conflict between sin and righteousness.
8
On my way home, stepped into the Catholic sanctuary of Hon Kew. The images, the long candles, the rosaries, the gesticulations of endless and childish varieties, the chantings―all this almost startled me by the close resemblance to the rites of a Buddhist temple. The only difference is that the images are more decent and the order and manner of worship more refined in the Catholic Church than in a heathen temple.
10
6th. Sunday. Very sultry the upper half of the day.
11
Went to the Trinity Church to partake the Lord's supper. A vigorous shower cooled the temperature to a refreshing degree. Had a nice chat with the ladies of the McTyeire Home while waiting for the cessation of the rain.
12
Wandering thoughts etc etc etc:
13
1. I do wish that the word 'liar' has as much rebuking force in Chinese as it has in English for no other purpose than to have the satisfaction of telling a smooth-lying celestial "You are a lier!" While I fully concede that a Corean lies as much as any Asiatic I don't see why he should be honored as champion liar of Asia―an honor which a Chinese deserves more justly.
14
2. When you see a fellow who bears himself as if the Model Settlement were built by the might of his power and for the honor of his Majesty, you will find that he is not an English or American or a German or a French. He hails either from Macao or from Manilla.
15
3. One of the manliest virtues of the Anglo-Saxon race is their chastity without which monogamy is almost impossible, the fountain of domestic and national blessings.
16
4. Our 'Niang-yee' had a sore on her foot. There was no use to persuade her to consult the doctor. She said that her 'Busah' was offended and that she must burn incense to appease his anger. Her daughter is said to have expended or rather wasted6 for hiring a fellow to chant certain scripture in order to avert the calamity which a fortuneteller had predicted against her mother.
17
5. In some respects, the number of pins used in a community is a surer sign of its civilization than the number of pianos. While I was in America in many a small town in the South I found almost as many pianos or organs as there were pretty girls but not a pin in the streets. In a larger city like that of Atlanta several pins might be picked up in the course of a walk. But in Chicago I could pick up a dozen in hour. In a Japanese or a Chinese street not a single pin might be seen for years.
18
6. Our little yard is closely paved with square flag stones. This stony ground unfriendly to mud as well as to flowers reminds me of a hard and correct soul free indeed from popular vices, yet also from sweetening virtues. Give me rather a yard of black ugly earth that may under proper care bring forth roses and pinks than a smooth marbel pavement. Welcome to me is an inconsistent but a generous soul that has smile and tears, humors and sympathies; and that may, under God's grace, become an angel to the afflicted or a friend to the weak, rather than a hard man whose pericardium is stone and who neither smiles nor weeps except under circumstances that exactly fits his notions of propriety.
20
17th. Thursday. It has been raining for a week or more.
21
1. Where is happiness? Certainly not in what we may possess in the world. Once I thought I would be happy indeed had I such and such things. When I do get them after toil and labor, alas! I find that happiness is as far ahead of me as ever. An old story repeated millions of times every day the world over.
22
2. Capt. King once sent some maize and beans and pigs to Newzealanders who had never seen them. Some years later he found that the pigs "had eaten up the maize as it grew green and finished up the beans by way of desert before the vines were half way up the poles." This story, in a measure, illustrates what I consider to be the history of Confucianism. The system has some fine teachings―maize and beans―but it signed its own death warrant in its entrusting them to absolute monarchs-the pigs.
23
Called on Dr. Allen in the evening. He disapproved the mechanical way of measuring the success of a missionary by number of conversions, and the progress of a scholar by the amount of catechisms he had crammed in.
24
Mr. L. in a kind of synopsis of facts about the Bible put on a blackboards, wrote that the Book had no mistakes. In his words "Mistakes; None." This is a comfortable assurance but unreasonable. I con not believe that an absolute freedom from mistakes could be ascribed to any book in the writing and collecting and preserving and interpreting and copying of which frail men like ourselves had their part.
25
Have you seen a Chinese gentleman in silk and fur over under-wears black with dirt? The grandiloquent style of the Chinese writer covers up sham and rotenness in the political and social morality pretty much the same way as the silk and fur do the dirty under-clothes. The Chinese are ridiculously fond of fine names and gandy shows. Some of the dirtiest tea-houses and stinkiest alleys and streets have names that are worthy of better things. How splendid it sounds to read the description of the pomp and circumstances of a high official. But when you see him out on the street with his banners, soldiers, horses and music,―when you see his musicians barefooted and ragged with dirty faces and dirtier teeth; when you listen to the big gongs and drums; when you see the soldiers whom the people fear and enemies frighten; when you see the red tablets with fine words gilded either exhorting the people to be silent and reverent or declaring the high sounding title of the dignitary; when you see the half-fed and almost naked fellows who bear these official sign-boards and banners with grotesque figures on; when you see the secretaries of the great man on ponies only a little learner than themselves―what time you hear and see all this you will either laugh or cry according to the comparative strength of your sense of the ridiculous or of the pitiful.
26
Not a popular vice in China but that it has a fine and soft name. Opium and wine and other destructive agencies of evil are resplendent with florid titles. The official proclamtions and regulations abound in virtuous sentiments and wholesome exhortions, but they are all sham and cants.
27
It always tickles me to see a Chinese teacher with a pupil behind him. The former walks at a rate of speed with which a snail may sucessfully compete. Of course the young man behind the learned gentleman moves even slower than the snail. The whole thing well typifies the condition of affairs in China. The old moves in front of the young as slowly as if the world would never come to an end. The blood of youth stagnates in inactivity and dullness. By the time the young generation gets to the front it is just old enough to obstruct the progress of another generation. So on it goes.
30
Both of us were invited to dine with Mr. and Mrs. McIntosh. Had a very pleasant evening.
31
It is reported that 東學黨 in 忠淸道 and 全羅 has assumed a threatening attitude toward the government and that about 800 p-y-t-l soldiers have been dispatched against the rebels. Good and better(!!!)
33
28th. Monday. After a week of fair weather rain once more.
34
I am hungry for flowers. The two pots of geranium in the yard looked very pretty this morning with tiny drops of rain on the flowers―reminding me of the blushed cheeks of a lovely maiden with tiny crops of sweat.
35
My darling Baby has been unwell for two, three weeks.
36
Called on Dr. Allen. He has schemes for various literary enterprizes. His idea of mission work is not different from that of most missionaries. He does not believe that sermons and lectures could do much good unless they embodied in them the living experiences of a throbbing heart and life.
37
If there is any sin in me that may, more than others, be called original it is the sinful passion for licentiousness. Ever since my conversion I have had harder time with this passion than with another―the love of drinking not excepted. Even now a story of some romantic love affair, however sinful it may be, set in motion an unnameable passion in me that is simply horrible. God forgive me. Grant me the grace and power to cast out any wicked desire or passion. Such deep-seated passions in me must be as old as the Corean heathenism.
38
Am very much interested in reading the experiences of J. Gilmore among the Mongols. The book throws much light on some of the Chinese writings I have read on Mongols.
39
Heard an edifying sermon in the account which Mr. Malard gave of the evangelistic work done by Rev. and himself in Ceylon. Australia etc. The handsome auditorium of the C.I.M. building was 3/2 full. inspite of the bad weather and worse streets. Somehow or other I have a desire bordering on a passion to see Newzealand.
40
"When beggars ride, honest men walk". So says an English proverb. When no virtues ride, real virtues walk as in China.
42
30th. Wednesday. Wet all the day.
43
1. Lately, I have been giving 3 envelops to the best reciter, 2 to the 2nd best and 1 to the 3rd as a means of encouragement. This morning one of the Second Reader boys asked me what the envelops cost me. On my telling him that a pack of 25 envelops costs me 5￠ the boys sneeringly said that it was only 50 cash a week. I was so disgusted with their stinking spirit of meanness that I simply told them that anyone who regarded the gift as a material gain instead of being a stimulus for improvement showed a dirty heart.
44
2. Tong King Chung is a Cantonese lad of about 13 years of age. Being a bright fellow I have been very fond of him. I thought he appreciated my interest in him. But from some cause which I know not he didn't even speak to me today. Used as I am to the characteristic ingratitude of the Cantonese, I was much hurt.
45
3. Found that four fellows whom I had caught twice gambling indulged in the bad habit all through last night. Was not surprised to know that Tai Li Zung was in the gang. He is a typical Chinese, polite and smiling, conceited and dissembling, lying and spiteful―if he is a probationer.
46
4. If a Japanese paper is to be trusted, 東學黨 in the three southern provinces of Corea seems to kick up a lively racket. Welcome, three times welcome, is anything and everything (except p-t-l) that may smash up the evil saturated and blood-ful government of the unhappy peninsula.
47
5. In talking about the abominable custom of flattering the emperor and any member of his tribe my teacher said "China makes flattery its main business. The servant flatters the master; the master his employer; the employer, his customer; the customer the mandarin; the mandarin, his superior officer; the superior officer, the emperor".
49
31st. Thursday. Rained all day.
50
May, the loveliest month in the "South" of the Union is one of the ugliest of the twelve moons in Shanghai. Darling Baby could hardly walk about today on account of a sore leg. Bought 13 pot-plants for for 40￠,―a cheap luxury.
51
Whatever else the Chinese classics teach, the one thing that they emphasize is Li(禮) ; whatever else Confucius inculcates, the one thing that he insists upon is Li; whatever else his worthy and unworthy followers of all ages write and lecture about, the one thing that they lay special stress upon is Li; whatever else the Chinese plume themselves on as if they were superior to others, the one thing that they brag about is Li; whatever else this Li(禮) means, the one thing that it does mean is decency or propriety of manners; whatever else, therefore, we may expect from the Chinese, the one thing that we may be most certain to see prevailing in China is decency or propriety or manners. But when you see a fellow make water at the junction of two thoroughfares like Boon and Chapoo Rds in the face of all comers and goers of both sexes of all nationalities; when you hear the vilest and filthiest expressions on all occasions and no occasions from the mouths of old men with gray hairs; of little children just weaned from their mother's breasts; of masters and servants; of officials and coolies; of old women and young mistresses―when you witness all this, you may not be able to resist the conviction that Confucianism is a thin stuff indeed to have failed to make its devotees decent even in outward manners and expressions after nearly thirty centuries of undisputed supremacy over them.
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