Our time at Changsha was all too short, and it ended very pleasantly with an evening spent at the Consulate. By this time many of the Chinese were in full flight, because of the coming Southerners, and the city was supposed to be set on fire by incendiaries at 8 p.m. Our steamer had retired into the middle of the river, because of the rush of passengers clamouring to be taken on board, and the captain was unable therefore to fulfil his engagement to dine at the Consulate. We were promised a fine sight of the blazing city—only happily the show did not come off—from the Consulate garden across the river. We stayed there in the delicious summer air till it was time to go on board, and found it difficult not to step on the slumbering people who covered the deck when we reached the steamer. At midnight we slipped down stream, following in the wake of the departing Governor. The Southern troops came in a few days later, but without the looting and fighting which has so often happened in similar circumstances.
Chapter VII
Present-Day Ironsides—General Feng Yu Hsiang
“There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;