“Room in the heart makes room in the house.”
“Because you feel merry, there’s no need to dance when you are on a horse’s back or in a small boat.”
“Sacrifice one sheep to capture the tiger and save the other sheep.”
“Even honey is not sweet at the end of the meal.”
“A fat cat never got all his food at home.”
“Tightening your drumhead is as good as enlarging your stick.”
“A blind fox catches only a dead fowl.”
XXVI
CLIMATE, DISEASE AND HYGIENE
In the last two years China has surprised the world by carrying out her agreement to extirpate quickly opium smoking and poppy growing. It is the most spectacular abatement of a gigantic nuisance that the world has known. Among the heroes of the reform was Lin Ping Chang, a grandson of the famous Commissioner Lin who destroyed the chests of opium at Canton and brought on the war with Britain in 1840. Heredity obtains in China! It would have taken England and America possibly fifty years to bring about an equal reform in personal habits, but the Chinese have for 3,500 years been the most obedient people to government in the world, “Filial Piety” being the eminent principle of the religious, social and political life. The good work is going on apace, and Hongkong and India, thanks to the noble altruism of Lord Morley, Sir E. Grey, Mr. Asquith and Lloyd George, are with good grace swallowing the bitter pill of loss of revenue from this lucrative trade. It was a great victory for religion over commerce, and the latter died hard, for unregulated commerce is anything but a moralist at heart. The humanitarian sentiment in Britain, America and China won over money. Britain in her parliament Blue Books used to say: “Opium is a legitimate article of trade and a vested right that China is unable to attack.” To-day John Morley speaks of Britain’s “humanitarian duty.” Persian opium, which is much denser in morphia than is the Indian, still comes to Hongkong for Formosa. This is the opium of which Herodotus in 430 B. C. amusingly wrote as follows, his imagination supplying his facts: “Though it comes from a most stinking place, it is itself most fragrant. It is found sticking like gum to the beards of he-goats, which collect it from the woods.”