Mrs. Alec Tweedie's Adventurous Journey (first published in 1926) comes
to us now in a cheaper edition {Butterworth, 3s. 6d.). It is good value with its excellent illustrations and vivid accounts of adventures in Russia and China. Mrs. Tweedie does not attempt an ornate style (indeed her English is sometimes slipshod), but she tells some good stories. The conditions of filth and misery in Russia appalled her. To the Chinese she is sympathetic and she tells a strange tale (illustrating the gulf between white and yellow) of a poor man who wished to raise fifteen dollars to bury his father. He went to a pawnbroker with an old coat : instead of fifteen dollars he was offered fifteen cents for it. So he took a hatchet and chopped off five fingers, leaving them on the counter. Immediately the pawnbroker produced the fifteen dollars. And why ? Because otherwise he might have been accused of maiming a client. So the poor man bought his father's coffin. " Such is chivalry to the dead in China."
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