‘One day a sow belonging to a certain Madame Feng, having done some slight injury to the door of a certain Madame Wang, that lady forthwith demanded compensation with interest, which was refused, whereupon Madame Wang announced her intention of committing suicide. This dreadful threat proved altogether too much for Madame Feng, who there and then determined to beat her enemy with her own weapon by flinging herself into the nearest canal.’[24] Suicides are by no means rare among the upper classes of the literati, and quite recently a censor, a high functionary who possesses the privilege of addressing petitions to the Sovereign, awaited the passing of the Imperial cortege and then killed himself as a political demonstration, in order to add weight to a memorial he had presented concerning some promise of the Government which had not been fulfilled. The innumerable public executions form a pendant to the equally numerous cases of suicide. The reader may be somewhat surprised that a people fearing death so little should make such bad soldiers; but, after all, however lightly a man may hold his life, no one sacrifices it unless it be for some ideal or other. If the Celestials care so little about existence, they care still less for the grandeur of their country, patriotic feeling being absolutely absent from their nature. During the French campaign in Formosa it was no uncommon thing to see Chinese prisoners refuse to do tasks which they considered beneath them, and which they could only be induced to perform after having seen the heads of a few of their comrades fall under the sword. These very people who prefer death rather than derogate from their dignity are the same who have often been seen throwing down their arms on the battlefield. It is but fair to add that it is the military mandarins or officers who generally give the signal for a stampede. Possibly, if commanded by other officers, the Chinese, with their wonderful power of enduring privation and callousness for death, would eventually form an admirable army which, even if it were unable to defend China against foreign Powers, would certainly prove a valuable ally to one or other of them.[25]