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nearing train time, so we bought some food at the bakery, paid our bill at the Home, and bought third class tickets for Hangchou. It continued to rain most of the afternoon. The country south of Shanghai was much more Japanese than Chinese. The mud houses of the north were replaced by plastered dwellings with very upturned roof points ( it is notable that the roof points on many of them had very long curved turn-ups before they got down to the eves), or thatched dwellings with the thatch tied on with a sort of net as in Korea. Another thing of note was the number of single compounds scattered through the fields and the comparative absence of the inevitable village of the north. The country was much greener, and in one or two places where the land rolled up a bit above the paddies and was covered with mulberries and pines and young bamboo it might almost have been in certain parts of Illinois or Wisconsin where rolling land covered with underbrush adjoins the railroad. The water buffalo does here what horse, donkey, [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] cow and goat do in the north. The graves do not cut up the fields, pimpling the face of nature( I would rather say pock-marking, for that is the comparison that always occurs to me in parts of Shantung and Chihli, but for the inversion) as they do around my native parts, but they assume strange f forms at times. Sometimes there are walled and gated yards with many trees, sometimes just mounds, sometimes little houses. In the distance the brown sails moved boatless across the young rice seas.

     We arrived in Hangchou on time, and were met by a servant who took charge of our bags and brought us quickly to our destination. We had written about staying places and Dorothy had inquired of one Miss Rebecca Wilson. Miss Rebecca had then arranged for us to have an entire house, furnished, with a competent staff of servants and all the trimmings for the month for a very reasonable figure. The house is that of the foreign teachers in the Union Girls' School, located in a very pleasant compound only a short walk from West Lake, the most famous beauty spot in China, the place for which Hangchou is famous. Arrangements were made for the cook to provide food for us, so we have all the comforts of home with a minimum of inconvenience. Sleeping porches, and