Bo 
has to face them and take care of one's self. 
Some day the world will be in happier con- 
ditions and it will reflect upon all of us. 
Of course, this exploration work with its 
continuous absence from people who can inspire 
one, gets pretty hard on one's nerves. One must 
be some sort of a reservoir that carries along 
all kinds of stores. Soldiers in the field have 
more dangers to face, but they get at least 
companionship and often recreation supplied to 
them. For about one month now I haven't seen a 
white person, for all of the missionaries are at 
the mountain and seaside resorts and travellers 
one rarely meets here in these parts of Kupeh. 
My new interpreter is of the sponge variety, 
that is, absorbing all and giving back little or 
nothing and this special work of mine is very 
hard to understand for Chinese anyway. They seem 
to consider it somewhat in the order of a silly 
thing to spend so much money for a few seeds or 
plants. 
Well, I have become so calloused to opinions 
of Chinese, that it matters but mighty little what 
they think, the whole race has become too weedy 
for lack of healthy contact with outside people 
during all of these past centuries, ^''ith the ex- 
.ception of a few they are quite satisfied v/ith 
the ways their forefathers did things; unless 
capable foreigners^ are allowed to supervise things, 
all sorts of innovations run again to nothing in 
a few years' time; even the main railroad from Pe- 
king to Hankow is getting to be in a truly de- 
plorable state of condition and it would not sur- 
prise us out here if the services would be stopped 
altogether not very long from now, 
I am quite pleased to hear in your letter 
of July 5, 1917, that my soy bean cheese samples 
have really created so much Interest, Mr, Men- 
derson wrote me a long letter on this problem; 
I cannot give him, however, much more information 
than what I wrote in my report to Mr, Morse and. 
on the fotos. Bean|curd and bean milk alwa5> s 
taste beany: The cheese, however, has lost this 
unpleasant characteristic. If soft bean curd is 
beaten up with sugar, it also improves much in 
flavor. 
I have not heard from Mrs. Kin as yet; she 
surely will get along without my assistance, for 
she "knows the ropes" here in her own land. 
December 31, 1917. 
