SOOCHOW, August, 1903.


Well, Mate, this is the first letter I have really written you from
China. Shanghai doesn't count. Soochow is the real article. The
unspeakable quantity and quality of dirt surpasses anything I have
ever imagined. Dirt and babies, there are millions of babies, under
your feet, around your heels, every nook and corner full of babies.

From Shanghai to Soochow is only a one night trip, and as I had an
invitation to come up for over Sunday, I decided to take advantage of
it. You would have to see the boat I came in to appreciate it. They
call it a house-boat, but it is built on a pattern that is new to
me. In the lower part are rooms, each of which is supplied with a
board on which you are supposed to sleep. Each passenger carries his
own bedding and food. In the upper part of the boat is a sort of loft
just high enough for a man to sit up, and in it are crowded hundreds
of the common people. A launch tows seven or eight of these
house-boats at a time. I will not ask you to even imagine the
condition of them; I had to stand it because I was there, but you are
not.

It was just at sunset when we left Shanghai, and I got as far away
from the crowd as I could and tried to forget my unsavory
surroundings. The sails of thousands of Chinese vessels loomed black
and big against the red sky as they floated silently by without a
ripple. In the dim light, I read on the prow of a bulky schooner,
"'The Mary', Boston, U.S.A." Do you know how my heart leapt out to
"The Mary, Boston, U.S.A."? It was the one thing in all that vast,
unfamiliar world that spoke my tongue.