But now I find the Pekin cart with a well-tired wheel, having a felloe six inches wide, and for ornamentation studded thickly with wrought-iron headed nails the size of boiler rivets. The wheel is thickly set with spokes centering in a splendid hub set on a well-oiled axletree. The hood, however, is true to the picture, but the whole affair is varnished and shines like an undertaker's cart; and hitched to it is the most splendid mule I have ever seen in all my wanderings.
That mule would redeem any kind of a vehicle he might be hitched to—such a large, fat, well-groomed, glossy mule.
His ears are several sizes shorter than those of the mule of story and of song—an urbane, genial, gentle, loving-looking mule—I don't believe the Pekin mule would kick. Judged from the obvious care that's bestowed on him, the Pekin mule has no kick coming.
And the ruts in the streets of Pekin?—there are no ruts. Wide thoroughfares, well paved.
And the rubbish in the streets? Not there. It's a fairly clean city; a city of many modern and splendid buildings. A city of many legations set in ample grounds, with beautiful and imposing entrances bordered with trees, shrubbery and flowers. A city of ancient Chinese temples; a city set in a fertile plain and walled about—Pekin is a different-looking city than I expected to see.
Martial law prevails—the country is under martial law.
China a republic? A joke!
No more absolute monarchy could be imagined than Yuan Shih-Kai's China today.
An upper and lower house of his own choosing, an autocrat, a dictator, wishing for the old order, and himself the emperor. These are pretty generally the opinions you'll hear expressed. He seems to be the one statesman in a country of 400,000,000 whom foreigners and Chinese generally center on as the only man to hold the reins. Hated by many, feared by more, plots and counterplots against his life—all agree that chaos would result were he taken away.
China today, some say, is a smoldering volcano, but more will not venture an opinion as to what the future holds for her.