It is "as pouring water in a frog's face" to talk to these, my children,
who think a man, with words upon his lips, a sage. I say a dog is not
a good dog because he is a good barker, nor should a man be
considered a good man because he is a good talker; but I see only
pity in their faces that their mother is so far behind the times. These
boys of ours are so much attracted by the glimpses they have had of
European civilisation, that they look down upon their own nationality.
They have been abroad only long enough to take on the veneer of
Western education; it is a half-and-half knowledge; and it is these
young men who become the discontented ones of China. When they
return they do not find employment immediately, since they have
grown out of touch with their country and their country's customs.
They feel that they should begin at the top of the ladder, instead of
working up slowly, rung by rung, as their fathers did before them.
They must be masters all at once, not realising that, even with their
tiny grains of foreign knowledge, they have not yet experience to
make them leaders of great enterprises or of men; yet they know too
much to think of going back into their father's shop.
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