SUN YAT SEN AND THE CHINESE REPUBLIC
—although it was so very near! Auntie had lived in the adjacent town of Shian Cha formerly, and at Shian Cha they have an unrestricted view of the waters of the Harbor of Venus. Well, auntie was a good story-teller. She declared that dreadful things were happening on those foreign ships and that it was not safe to have them around; that the foreigners were all rich men dressed in the queerest of clothes and that none of them wore a queue, and that some of them had no hair on their heads, at all, but lots of beard, and sometimes the beard as red as fire. She had been told that when they ate they put sharp knives up to their faces. She further declared that one day she saw the smoke rising from muskets, of which they made very free use, much to her fear and perturbation. Ah, they were a rash lot, those Ocean-men, and good little Chinese boys would do well to stay away from them."
While the little lad did his share in the farm labor after the hours in the temple school, his mind was developing the set idea that if such a fuss were made over the Ocean-men they must be worth while to know. Sun Yat Sen is not a man of many words. As I reflect, it seems strange to me, the very few questions that he has ever asked me. So I don't think that, as a boy, he went about asking questions concerning the Ocean-men. I
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