Another and less informal way of getting amusement is in gossip and chatting with friends and neighbours. There is nothing stiff or formal about the Chinese. It requires very little introduction to make people acquainted with each other, and their powers of conversation are so great that with apparently nothing to say they are able to talk and laugh and spin yarns that make the time pass both rapidly and pleasantly. The Chinese are a humorous and jolly race of people and absolutely misrepresented, excepting in their mere physical appearance, in the popular pictures that appear of them on the tea-chests and in facetious literature. If they had not been, they would not have borne the strain of thousands of years of dulness and poverty and fierce struggles for existence that have tried to crush all life out of them so well as they have done. The position that they hold to-day in the Far East is a signal proof of the vitality and the determined pluck that have carried the Yellow race through the revolutions[2] that during the past centuries have rent and shattered the Chinese Empire. CHAPTER VIII THE FARMER Society divided into four classes--Farmers stand high in the estimation of the nation--Poverty of the Chinese--Money lending and borrowing--Small farms--Cause of poverty--Sell daughters to meet debts--Farmers have to engage in various occupations to meet the necessities of life--Some become coolies--Some chair-bearers--Some emigrate--Chinese farmer second to none in the world--Implements few--His knowledge of manures--Description of rice culture--Tried by droughts--System of tenant farming--Method of paying their landlords. In the four great divisions into which the Chinese have roughly divided the whole of society, viz. scholars, farmers, artisans, and traders, the one that holds the highest place for usefulness is undoubtedly the farmer. The fact that the scholar is placed first shows the high estimation that the nation has always entertained for learning. This is not a modern idea that has gradually sprung up with the growth of civilization. It was started at the very dawn of the country's history, for the men that have really been the moulders and fashioners of the Empire were scholars whose writings still continue to influence the thoughts and habits of the people. What Confucius thinks, no literary man, and much less the great unwashed, would ever dare to dispute. In great moral questions the maxims he has transmitted for twenty-five centuries are accepted by all as the very inspirations of Heaven, whilst in matters of government and the guiding of the affairs of the nation, the great principles that he and Mencius have enunciated for the ruling of a people have been accepted by nearly every ruler that has ever sat on the Dragon throne. [Illustration: A FARM HOUSE.]