It took much diligent inquiry for us to find the residence of Dr. J. H. McCartney, surgeon in charge of the American Methodist Hospital. We were a dirty, mud-stained pair when we at last ascended to the veranda of the doctor's comfortable home, but the kindly surgeon had heard of the Inter Ocean's enterprise, and he bade us enter before inspecting our condition. It would have made little difference had we been two-fold more dilapidated in appearance, for I never met a missionary surgeon in China who did not entertain us royally, even at the sacrifice of his own comfort. As he sat over dessert, discussing our journey, tasting the first genuine American pie we had eaten since leaving San Francisco, I learned with strangely mixed feelings that the district we had just traveled was the most dangerous in China. Only a few weeks prior to our arrival the imperial mail, carried overland, was robbed. I could then understand the significance expressed in the remark of a certain Shen when he said, "You will have plenty to cause you fear before reaching Chung King." I had told him that Mrs. McIlrath and I had no misgivings as to the trip, but had I known that mail carriers were assassinated monthly, and that commissioners, traveling under protection of one of the great power's flags, were robbed and maltreated, our answer would have been different.
The interior cities of the Chinese Empire are similar in every respect; see one of them and you have seen them all. A visitor to Ngau-King need not go to Shaze, the man who has seen Shaze need not travel in search of fresh sights to Chung King, and one who has seen the native city of Shanghai has literally seen the great aggregation. Chung King, situated 160 miles from the sea, differed only from the others in that the shops of the various trades were grouped, each industry occupying a section of the street. The only absolutely new features of the town appeared to be the climate, which is delightful for duck and pneumonia propagation, an old conjurer, and the industries established by Mr. Archibald Little. The climate is first and most important, since it exists in humid, opaque quantities upon all occasions, except perhaps when the sun does not happen to be busy elsewhere; then only does the sun shine in Chung King. Pig bristles are the fundamental property of the establishment of Mr. Little, and Uncle Sam's people are the chief patrons of it. After the porker has been despoiled of his hirsute trimmings, the bristles, sorted into bunches of three, four and five inch lengths, are wrapped and shipped to the United States for use in brushes. The remaining great attraction of Chung King, namely, the conjurer, we met on one of the quadrangles of a temple, and for a performance conducted in the open air, by a necromancer stripped from waist to crown of head, without apparatus or appliance, he was marvelous. In a circle formed by the crowd, the stone pavement serving as table and stage, the scrawny, wrinkled old magician produced from space a curved sword, iron rings, hardwood balls, clam shells and bowls. The performance opened with contortions of the legs and back, and a dislocation and replacement of the various joints of the body. The wizard then swallowed a hardwood ball two inches in diameter, following this with a few clam shells and poking the whole mass down his elastic gullet with a curved sword. Famous sword swallowers of the vaudeville stage of our own country may use longer instruments, and swallow equally large objects, but they always leave enough of the swallowed article outside their internal grottos to withdraw the obstruction. Our Chinese entertainer disdained these sensible precautions, and after we had felt through the abdominal walls the point of the curved sword, the ball and the clam shells, he removed them in a style which was distinctively all his own. To remove the sword, he contracted his waist by pressure of both hands, gave a convulsive upheaval and the weapon glided upward until just an inch or two remained in the throat. Then one of the spectators removed the blade at the conjurer's request. The clam shells and ball were brought to light in a simple manner, the conjurer not touching his hands to his mouth, but spitting them on the ground as soon as they appeared between his teeth.