cocksureness of the people. With their queues discarded they were then doing a roaring trade in small cloth and silk caps, made after a foreign pattern, which they wore proudly in defiance to the little round Manchu hat. These caps were met with at every turn, hung on nails in the wall above the street-vendors' stall; they were fetching as much as seventy cents apiece. To-day they could be had for twenty. Men who had made their purchases now laid aside the foreign article and fell back to the round hat with the little red knob on the summit. In the streets half the shops were closed, the other half doing a little trade and meanwhile preparing to take away most of the valuable stocks. Huge loads were standing outside the doors ready to be taken away as soon as the busy coolie gangs had time to attend to them; old men and {167} women, carrying all their belongings in small baskets, were tiao-ing as hard as they could go; through the gates, now no longer guarded by a cocksure squad of military, but thrown wide open, came the constant hurrying stream of urban residents, who now were removing to the country. In China at such times as this one is held almost awestruck with the manner in which people clear out. Homes which perhaps had been held together for many generations were being evacuated in a couple of hours--the old father and the old mother took the children, the sons shouldered the heavy family furniture, the wives hobbled along behind with the babies, and altogether they silently went out of the city in a mournful procession. They hardly knew where they were going, but in the city trouble was brewing, and they were taking no risks of being shelled or burned out of their little hovels as had been done to thousands of their race over the river at Hankow.