could embody in his edicts of two or three months all the
important principles that were necessary to launch the great
reforms of the past ten years.

I doubt if any Chinese monarch has ever had a more far-reaching
influence over the minds of the young men of the empire than
Kuang Hsu had from 1895 till 1898. The preparation for this
influence had been going on for twenty or thirty years previously
in the educational institutions established by the missions and
the government. From these schools there had gone out a great
number of young men who had taken positions in all departments of
business, and many of the state, and revealed to the officials as
well as to many of the people the power of foreign education. An
imperial college had been established by the customs service for
the special education of young men for diplomatic and other
positions, from which there had gone out young men who were the
representatives of the government as consuls or ministers in the
various countries of Europe and America.

The fever for reading the same books that Kuang Hsu had read was
so great as to tax to the utmost the presses of the port cities
to supply the demand, and the leaders of some of the publication
societies feared that a condition had arisen for which they were
unprepared. Books written by such men as Drs. Allen, Mateer,
Martin, Williams and Legge were brought out in pirated
photographic reproductions by the bookshops of Shanghai and sold
for one-tenth the cost of the original work. Authors, to protect
themselves, compelled the pirates to deliver over the stereotype
plates they had made on penalty of being brought before the
officials in litigation if they refused. But during the three