It is this same absence of nerves that enables the Chinese to bear suffering of any kind with a patience and fortitude that is perfectly Spartan. He will live from one year's end to another on food that seems utterly inadequate for human use; he will slave at the severest toil, with no Sunday to break its wearisome monotony, and no change to give the mind rest; and he will go on with the duties of life with a sturdy tread and with a meditative mystic look on his face, that reminds one of those images of Buddha that one sees so frequently in the Chinese monasteries or temples. The staying power of the Chinese seems unlimited. The strong, square frames with which nature has endowed them are models of strength. They are not graceful, neither are the lines of beauty conspicuous either in face or form, but for endurance there is nothing to surpass them anywhere throughout the world. On one occasion, I had to make a journey to a large city some twenty miles or more distant. It was in the hottest days in summer, when the temperature was over ninety in the shade. I engaged two chair-bearers to carry me, who were taken at random from the nearest chair shop, where such men wait to be hired. There was nothing to distinguish them from the ordinary men who get their living by carrying chairs. They had the look of the farmer class from which they were taken, and were as dull and as uninteresting as shabby clothes and tanned and bronzed faces could make them. They had a mean and insignificant appearance, being not more than five feet and a half in height, and the blue colour in their garments, which is so popular with the Chinese, gave them a commonplace look that did not raise one's opinion of them. We started very early in the morning, just before the light of the dawn had touched the darkness that covered the land with its shadows. We had not gone far before the men began to show their mettle. With the heavy chair upon their shoulders, they kept on at a steady swing of over three miles an hour, in spite of the fact that the roads were simply footpaths, that had been worn into ruts and hollows by the feet of countless travellers and by the wear and tear of storm and rain.