Another day one of our coolies had a fight with one of his substitutes about pay. Every man we pay always sweats the work out to some one else. The substitute boxed his ears. He called his substitute's mother dreadful names. They were both from the same town, which made it worse. In a second all our men had thrown down their loads, and were flying down the hill to join in the fight. As we had just passed through a little village, I thought, of course, my husband, who was behind, had been attacked; whilst he came hurrying up to learn what had been done to me. Meanwhile, our cook, the real fighting man of our party, had rushed in to have his innings, just as ignorant as either of us as to what had really occurred. Whatever it was, we felt sorry for the poor substitute, overpowered by the members of our party; so we at last succeeded in stopping the tail-pulling and cudgelling, but not before the poor man's face was all bleeding. Some ten miles farther on we came to a wayside house, with two venerable-looking Chinamen sitting in the seat of justice, and the whole party had to go in. It was decided our coolies were in the wrong. And I was delighted to hear that such an insult as they had offered to the man's mother could not be atoned for by money. They had publicly to _k'otow_ (bow till they touched the ground with their foreheads), and to apologise.
At Lichuan occurred our first mobbing, the more unfortunate as most of our coolies came from there. Our cook had, as we thought, very imprudently engaged rooms for us in an inn outside the walls, and evidently not the best inn. To make it worse, it had an entrance back and front, and the room assigned to us had three large windows. So often we had no windows at all, it seemed particularly unfortunate we should have three there; for in poured a howling crowd, and the windows were at once a sea of faces. We thought it best to bolt the door of the room, setting our soldier-coolie on guard over it. And the only thing to do with the windows seemed to be to close the shutters and wait inside in the darkness, hoping the crowd would go away when there was nothing more to see. But there were eyes and fingers at every crack--and the room was all cracks--and the people coughed to attract our attention, and called to us to come out; while to judge by the sounds--but one can never do this in China--there seemed to be fierce fighting between some of them and our coolies. Presently my husband went out, and tried to reason with them, telling them if it was only himself they should be free to come into his room, and see him all the time; but they knew themselves it was not proper to look into women's apartments. They seemed too low and rude a crowd for reasoning; so then he went to the landlord. And there were one or two furious onslaughts, and then as many or more men as were driven out from before came in from behind. And the landlord said he was powerless. Once they broke the shutters open, and my husband really frightened them, rushing out and asking who was trying to steal our things, and saying he would have the thieves arrested and taken to the _yamen_. This was an excellent idea, and quieted them for a little while. But then it all began again.