Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION When His Excellency Li Hung Chang arrived in London I lost no time in calling upon him at the Chinese Embassy, 49 Portland Place. I was introduced by my old friend Loh Fung Lu, Secretary of Legation, who spoke English as well as the best of us. After several long interviews, which generally took place early in the morning, and after being with His Excellency for a whole day. in the country, I could see that, notwithstanding his high education, he failed to understand the peculiar state of affairs that obtains in England and America in regard to our missionaries, and how it happens that we inflict them upon China. I, therefore, decided to explain matters to His Excellency, and to prove to him that we did not all approve of missionaries or believe the absurd doctrines that they were attempting to teach in China. In order to present the facts in the strongest light, I prepared a very large scrap-book containing extracts and clippings from a great number of publications, with explanatory notes. In one section of the scrap-book I explained to His Excellency our system of lying, showing him the high degree of development that this science had reached in Europe and America, especially among religious people. At the same time I pointed out that the Chinese had advanced quite as far in this science as we had ourselves, and that the falsehoods circulated by them in China are quite as absurd as any that our religious people circulate in this countryabout China. I thus proved conclusively that the lying was mutual, and that this reckless disregard of truth had caused a great deal of misapprehension in both countries. As the Chinese officials were exceedingly puzzled in regard to our system of religion, not being able to understand how a people so far advanced in civilisatio... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.