25. Schools of instruction in the preparation of tea and silk were ordered established. 26. The slow courier posts were abolished in favour of the Imperial Customs Post. 27. A system of budgets as in Western countries was approved. I have given these decrees in this epitomized form so that all those who are interested in the character of this reform movement in China may understand something of the influence the young Emperor's study had had upon him. Grant that they followed one another in too close proximity, yet still it must be admitted by every careful student of them, that there is not one that would not have been of the greatest possible benefit to the country if they had been put into operation. If the Emperor had been allowed to proceed, making them all as effective as he did the Imperial University, and if the ministers and provincial authorities had responded to his call, and had made "some effort to understand what he was trying to do," China might have by this time been close upon the heels of Japan in the adoption of Western ideas. As the edicts continued to come out in such quick succession my Hanlin friend became alarmed. He came to me one day after the Emperor had censured the officials for trying to delay the establishment of the Imperial University and said: "I must return to Peking." "Why return so soon?" I inquired. "There is going to be trouble if the Emperor continues his reform at this rate of speed," he answered. It was when the Emperor had issued the sixth of his twenty-seven decrees that this young Chinese statesman made this observation. If his most intimate advisers had had the perspicuity to have foreseen the final outcome of such precipitance might they not have advised the Emperor to have proceeded more deliberately? When one remembers how China had been worsted by Japan, how all her prestige was swept away, how, from having been the parent of the Oriental family of nations, a desirable friend or a dangerous enemy, she was stripped of all her glory, and left a helpless giant with neither strength nor power, one can easily understand the eagerness of this boy of twenty-seven to restore her to the pedestal from which she had been ruthlessly torn.