From these fearful injuries he nevertheless recovered, to such an extent that six months later he was able to walk several hundred miles to a foreign hospital for treatment. The abdominal wound had partly closed, leaving only a small fistula, but the normal action of the bowels was interrupted. He is a striking exemplification of that physical vitality to which attention has been already directed.
The habit of yelling to enforce command or criticism is ingrained in the Chinese, and appears to be ineradicable. To expostulate with another in an ordinary tone of voice, pausing at times to listen to his opponent's reply, is to a Chinese almost a psychological impossibility. He must shout, he must interrupt, by a necessity as inexorable as that which leads a dog labouring under great excitement to bark.
The Chinese have carried to a degree of perfection known only among Orientals the art of reviling. The moment that a quarrel begins abusive words of this sort are poured forth in a filthy stream to which nothing in the English language offers any parallel, and with a virulence and pertinacity suggestive of the fish-women of Billingsgate. The merest contact is often sufficient to elicit a torrent of this invective, as a touch induces the electric spark, and it is in constant and almost universal use by all classes and both sexes, always and everywhere. It is a common complaint that women use even viler language than men, and that they continue it longer, justifying the aphorism that what Chinese women have lost in the compression of their feet seems to have been made up in the volubility of their tongues. Children just beginning to talk learn this abusive dialect from their parents and often employ it towards them, which is regarded as extremely amusing. The use of this language has become to the Chinese a kind of second nature. It is confined to no class of society. Literary graduates and officials of all ranks up to the very highest, when provoked, employ it as freely as their coolies. It is
