“It is easy to preach doctrines (taali), but to apprehend principles is difficult.”
“If you do not put forth your works, but only preach, your strength is emptily wasted; and if you talk till you break your teeth, even then it will be in vain.”
“If you are entirely without belief and desire (will), and do not attend to the prohibitions, then your strength will have been uselessly wasted, and your head shaved to no purpose.”
“May the precious ground (of the monastery) be renewed.”
“To be intimate, and not divided, consists in the virtuous roots being gathered in a place.”
“When the image was asked why it turned round and fell backward, it said, ‘Because the people of the time would not turn their heads;’” [they probably being a stiff-necked generation, like the people of many other times and places.]
“Peacefully seclude and regulate yourselves.”
It will be observed that some of these inscriptions are most sensible as well as appropriate. While the last is quite in place in such an institution, it is wisely modified by the five first, which show how retirement can be made profitable, or at least warn against its being unprofitable. The seclusion of a monastery can only be of advantage to those who, having experienced the turmoil and passion of worldly life, really know its bitterness, and desire something better. It is not only the old monk who breaks his teeth in vain, or the neophyte who shaves his head to no purpose. Youth is the time for action—for “the mud and trouble of life”—and in vain do men try to evade it by planting the unhappy slip “in a deep hill,” bidding him observe “the trees of the clouds and the flowers of the mountains,” or oppressing him with moral and religious ideas which he cannot appreciate. Old age, again, is the proper period for meditation and wisdom. How often, in all countries, do we see the virtues suitable to one period of life, or to one station of life, forced upon persons of other ages and of different stations, until their souls revolt within them against all virtue whatever!
Passing northward from the “Eighth Village” Valley, we walked over undulating moorland, broken by low hills covered with white quartz, passing one village called Kum-chin, or the “Golden Cash,” which was surrounded by acres of large fir-trees, lychus and other fruit-trees, well stocked with doves; and another which bore the fragrant name of Wa-cheang, or “Fine-smelling Grain,” though eminently dirty, and surrounded by a stagnant ditch. About two miles after crossing a creek, we skirted the small walled town of Sam-chun, but took good care not to enter. Doubtless at that time we might have done so with tolerable safety, but I once had such a narrow escape in that place, that I had no desire whatever again to tempt its hospitality. Sam-chun is a mart of bad repute, being at the head of a creek, and rather a depôt for goods, frequently pirated, rather than giving hostage for its respectability in cultivation of the soil. Aheung, who was an old man himself, explained its iniquities by the fact that there were few or no old men to be found in it. The first time I visited it, along with a friend, hostilities were going on at Canton, and rewards were out for the heads of foreigners. One of our coolies asked us to go into a shop in the town which was kept by some relatives of his, and in doing so we passed through two small gateways, and also the butchers’ bazaar. The shopmen received us very well, but we had scarcely time to drink a cup of tea before the room was filled by a crowd of ruffians, chiefly butchers from the neighbouring bazaar, armed with knives and choppers. They first began shouting derisively, pressing in and hustling us; then got up the cry “Tá tá!”—“Strike, strike!” with which Chinese commence all their assaults; and then the ominous words “Fanquiei sha tao”—“Cut off the heads of the Foreign Devils”—coupled with some remarks as to what amount of dollars these articles would bring at Fat-shan. Those who know only the ordinary placid appearance of the Chinaman, have happily little idea of the spectacle he presents when working himself into a fury, or the atrocities which he is capable of committing. The butchers round us—and there must have been nearly a hundred in the shop—were pushing one another on and rapidly rising to blood-heat. Another minute would have proved fatal, and as it was, I had no hope of final escape, the only ambition which occurred being that of getting up into a loft close to where I stood, and where our revolvers could have been used with effect. The coolie who brought us into the fix wanted us to fire, but that would have been madness, pressed in as we were by the crowd. Fortunately the shopkeepers, and some more respectable Chinese who were beside us, so far took our part as to assist in getting us hustled out through a door before the bolder of the ruffians had quite worked their way to us; and as we got through, a yell of rage and disappointment rose from the crowd; and it is to be feared that the shopmen suffered, for there was a general row inside, with great crashing of furniture. As the crowd could not get quickly out of the shop, we had the start of it in the streets, but were soon overtaken by the rabble, who pressed closely on us and threw bricks, besides exhausting indecent language in their remarks. Luckily they were rather afraid of our revolvers, and the street was too narrow to allow of their passing to get the gates shut. They called upon the Chinamen we passed at shop doors and side streets to strike us down; and one individual offered to do so with a long hoe, but failed, while on others we tried very hard to smile blandly, as if the whole affair were a joke or a popular ovation. Even on the plain beyond the crowd followed us for two miles; some men from a neighbouring village, armed with gingalls, threatened to cut off our retreat, and a number of junkmen, with filthy gestures and language, invited us to stop and fight them, as if two strangers, just escaped from imminent death, were at all likely to delay for the pleasure of encountering about two hundred pirates. As my friend could not swim, I was afraid we might be brought up at the creek; but the boat was just starting, and, by holding a revolver to his head, we persuaded the ferryman to take us over, notwithstanding the counter-threats addressed to him by those of the ruffians who had still continued to follow.
The whole affair took us so much by surprise, and there was such necessity for immediate action, that we did not fully realise it until we were safe enough to take a rest, when we both began to feel rather faint, and had immediate recourse to our flasks for a glass of brandy. I experienced, however, a peculiarly disagreeable sensation when the crowd was howling round us in the shop; it was not fear of the consequences, but a kind of magnetic effect from the noise and brutal hostility of so many human beings. A little terrier-bitch which I had with me, and which I carried out in my arms, as otherwise it would have been trampled down, was so affected by this that it trembled violently, quivering like an aspen leaf. There is something very trying in the hostility of a howling crowd, and a species of almost physical effluence goes out from it beyond visible positive action. A man who was lynched in Texas a few years ago, and whom a party of soldiers tried to save, was so affected by the conflict round him that he besought his friends either to hang him or to give him up at once. I have heard an old Californian settler say that it was nothing to be in a stampede of wild cattle, compared with being surrounded by a crowd of either terrified or infuriated men.