Every one who has lived in China knows how dangerous are the periods when vast numbers of students congregate for the public examinations. Here is an example. At Canton, in June, 1880, a student took back a coat he had purchased for half a dollar at a second-hand clothes shop, and wished to have it changed. The shopkeeper gave him rather an impatient answer, and thereupon the student called in a band of his brother B.A.'s to claim justice for literature. They seized a reckoning-board, or abacus, that lay on the counter, struck one of the assistants in the shop, and drew blood. The shopkeeper then beat an alarm on his gong, and summoned friends and neighbours to the rescue. Word was at once passed to bands of students in the neighbourhood, who promptly obeyed the call of a distressed comrade, and blows were delivered right and left. The shopkeepers summoned the district magistrate to the scene. Upon his arrival he ordered several of the literary ringleaders, who had been seized and bound by the shopkeepers, to be carried off and impounded. In the course of the evening he sentenced them to be beaten. A body of more than a hundred students then went to his yamên and demanded the immediate release of the prisoners. The magistrate grew nervous, yielded to their threats, and sent several of the offending students home in sedan-chairs. The magistrate then seized the assistants in the shop where the row began and sentenced them to be beaten on the mouth. Next morning ten thousand shops were closed in the city and suburbs. The shopkeepers said they could not do business under such an administration of law. In the course of the morning a large meeting of the students was held in a college adjoining the examination hall. The district magistrate went out to confer with them. The students cracked his gong, and shattered his sedan-chair with showers of stones, and then prodded him with their fans and umbrellas, and bespattered him with dirt as his followers tried to carry him away on their shoulders. He was quite seriously hurt. The prefect then met a large deputation of the shopkeepers in their guild-house in the course of the day, and expressed his dissatisfaction at the way in which the district magistrate had acted. A settlement was thus reached, which included fireworks for the students, and business was resumed. * * * * * Any individual who is aggrieved by the action, or inaction, of a Chinese official may have immediate recourse to the following method for obtaining justice, witnessed by me twice during my residence in China, and known as "crying one's wrongs."