Nor is he to be bullied into lowering his
price. What if the purchaser be a soldier and an alien made cocky by
victory and confident by overwhelming force? He has two large pears
saved over from last year which he will sell for five sen, or for the
same price three small pears. What if one soldier persist in taking
away with him three large pears? What if there be twenty other
soldiers jostling about him? He turns over his sack of fruit to
another Chinese and races down the street after his pears and the
soldier responsible for their flight, and he does not return till he
has wrenched away one large pear from that soldier's grasp.
Nor is the Chinese the type of permanence which he has been so often
designated. He is not so ill-disposed toward new ideas and new
methods as his history would seem to indicate. True, his forms,
customs, and methods have been permanent these many centuries, but
this has been due to the fact that his government was in the hands of
the learned classes, and that these governing scholars found their
salvation lay in suppressing all progressive ideas.
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