Doth care for cleanness of surtout, or shirt,
Though shent with Egypt's plague, unkempt, unwashed, unhurt!''


The first open port of Shantung was Teng-chou-fu, a quaint
old city on the far northeastern point of the Shantung promontory.
It has been outstripped in importance by its later
rival, Chefoo, and is now ignored by the through steamers and
seldom visited by travellers. As the trip from Chefoo by land
requires two long hard days over a mountain range and as time
was precious, I decided to go by water. The regular coasting
steamer was not running on account of danger from pirates,
who had been unusually bold and murderous in attacking passing
vessels. But I succeeded in hiring a small launch. It was
a trip of fifty-five miles along the coast on the open sea, but the
weather was good and so we risked it. Several of the missionaries
took advantage of the occasion to visit friends in Tengchou-fu
so that a pleasant little party was formed.

We had intended to start at 7:30 A. M., but some of our luggage
and chair coolies, who had been engaged to take us from
Temple Hill to the launch at 6:30, did not come, and we had
to press into service some untrained ``boys.'' Then, our chair
coolies, who had been carefully instructed as to their destination
and who had solemnly asserted that they knew just where to go,
got separated from the others and calmly took us to the Union
Church. We appreciated their apparent conviction that we
needed to go to church, but we vainly tried to make them
understand that we wanted to go somewhere else. The delay
would have become exasperating if a small English boy who