War seemed infinitely remote from the charming gathering, where all the foreign community met in the sunny garden on the river-bank. English hospitality is very delightful so far away from home, and the cordial spirit of the host and hostess lent a special attractiveness to the occasion. I was particularly pleased to meet a Chinese friend there, Miss Tseng, who invited us to visit her school next day. In Chapter VIII I have tried to give an account of this famous scion of a famous race. With all the educational and religious and philanthropic institutions to be visited, it was most difficult to find time to see the monuments of the past, but we determined not to miss the beautiful golden-roofed temple, dedicated to Chia Yi, a great statesman of the second century B.C. It is now transformed into a school, and we saw the boys drilling; but they seemed an insignificant handful in those noble courtyards, and there were no signs of proper or even necessary equipment. Our time at Changsha was all too short, and it ended very pleasantly with an evening spent at the Consulate. By this time many of the Chinese were in full flight, because of the coming Southerners, and the city was supposed to be set on fire by incendiaries at 8 p.m. Our steamer had retired into the middle of the river, because of the rush of passengers clamouring to be taken on board, and the captain was unable therefore to fulfil his engagement to dine at the Consulate. We were promised a fine sight of the blazing city—only happily the show did not come off—from the Consulate garden across the river. We stayed there in the delicious summer air till it was time to go on board, and found it difficult not to step on the slumbering people who covered the deck when we reached the steamer. At midnight we slipped down stream, following in the wake of the departing Governor. The Southern troops came in a few days later, but without the looting and fighting which has so often happened in similar circumstances. _Chapter VII_ _Present-Day Ironsides—General Feng Yu Hsiang_ “There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round. All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.” —BROWNING. _Chapter VII_ _Present-Day Ironsides—General Feng Yu Hsiang_