cannot know much. A person may become well-informed by reading,
but his practical knowledge cannot be compared with that of a person
who has travelled. We Chinese are great sinners in this regard.
A Chinese maxim says, "It is dangerous to ride on horseback or to go
on a voyage": hence until very recently we had a horror of going abroad.
A person who remains all his life in his own town is generally narrow-minded,
self-opinioned, and selfish. The American people are free from these faults.
It is not only the rich and the well-to-do who visit foreign countries,
but tradesmen and workmen when they have saved a little money
also often cross the Atlantic. Some years ago a Senator in Washington told me
that he crossed the Atlantic Ocean every summer and spent several months
in Europe, and that the next trip would be his twenty-eighth voyage.
I found, however, that he had never gone beyond Europe. I ventured to suggest
that he should extend his next annual journey a little farther
and visit Japan, China, and other places in the Far East
which I felt sure he would find both interesting and instructive.
I have travelled through many countries in Europe and South America,
and wherever I have gone and at whatever hotel I have put up,
I have always found some Americans, and on many occasions I have met
friends and acquaintances whom I had known in Washington or New York.
But it is not only the men who go abroad; in many cases ladies
also travel by themselves. On several occasions lady friends
from Washington, Philadelphia, and New York have visited me in Peking.
This is one of the Americans' strong points. Is it not wiser
and much more useful to disburse a few hundred dollars or so
in travelling and gaining knowledge, coming in contact with other peoples
and enlarging the mind, than to spend large sums of money in gaudy dresses,
precious stones, trinkets, and other luxuries?

In a large country like America where a considerable portion of the land