white man who has not been prudent enough to bring a cot
with him feels as if he were sleeping on a hot stove with ``the
lid off.''

The inns between Ichou-fu and Chining-chou were the poorest
I saw, and if a man has stopped in one of them, he has been
fairly initiated into the discomforts of travelling in China. But
wherever one goes, the heat and smoke and bad air, together
with the vermin which literally swarms on the kang and floor
and walls, combine to make a night in a Chinese inn an experience
that is not easily forgotten. However, the foreign
traveller soon learns, perforce, to be less fastidious than at home
and I found myself hungry enough to eat heartily and tired
enough to sleep soundly in spite of the dirt and bugs. But the
heat and bad air as the summer advanced were not so easily
mastered, and so I began to sleep in the open courtyard, finding
chattering Chinese and squealing mules less objectionable
than the foul-smelling, vermin-infested inns, since outside I had
at least plenty of cool, fresh air.

There is no privacy in a Chinese inn. The doors, when
there are any, are innocent of locks and keys, while the Chinese
guests as well as the innkeeper's family and the people of the
neighbourhood have an inquisitiveness that is not in the least
tempered by bashfulness. But nothing was ever stolen, though
some of our supplies must have been attractive to many of the
poverty stricken men who crowded about us. On one occasion,
an inn-employee, who was sent to exchange a bank-note
for cash, did not return. There was much excited jabbering,
but Mr. Laughlin firmly though kindly held the innkeeper responsible