Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-12-12
ATHOME WITH MANCHUS
Domestic Scenes Near Japanese
 Lines of Battle.
IOUsEs INVADED BECAUSE OF WAR

Caring For Refugee Chinese Women
 and ChiIdrem-Forced Guests of a
 Village PRtriRrch-Ldttle Wong Yu'S
 Jealousy and How It Was Cured.
 BetrOthaI of m Stable Boy. .....-.
 Our compound Cthe grounds around a dwelling house. is rather domestic, though it conveys hundred intima- tions.ta day of the presence of war;. writes the New York Posts special correspondent from the field headquar- ters of General Oku's army near Muk- den, Manchuria. 5Es. E4I
 Next door all the women of the will lage had been collected together, with their offspring, if at breast. One night there was considerable commotion. Soldiers had dispossessed them, and they had to come with their babies to seek shelter of the underground bomb proof in our garden. AS soon as com plained to, Japanese officers compelled the soldiers to give back to the Chinese women their shelter. They had, how ever, to come to our compound to grind their millet, for here were the only two little donkeys that wore through the attack on Sh1hlipo. One was wounded with a shrapnel ball, but he could still walk the round of the niIlet grinder (though he had to be blindfolded so he wouldn't eat too much), dragging loglike stone over flat stone, thus thrashing the miIlet from its husk.
 Here are farms-indeed, all Manchu- ria so far as one sees in 250 mile journey up from the peninsula is one great garden of nnillet and beans, dot ted with walled settlements, where the cultivators huddle together with their dogs to offer common resistance against the bandits who otherwise would eat and steal all they had. What these rustic Manchurfans live for is no more than the half wolves of the surround ing plains live for. They have appe- htes to be daily appeased: they rear young who have to be fed and who are a link with life. Otherwise there are no ambitions, no possibilities in exist ence.
 By order of the army we were billet ed upon a native family of some stand ing. The wife has a severe and rather patricfan face; the husband possesses Chinese novels, the ''siho Story,'' which reminds you of Robin Hood," and three -fourths of Chinese dictionary, compared with which the Century Die tionary Is vest pocket affair, yet from the torn papers in his windows and the dust upon his lintels and the rag ged condition of the straw mat upon the general bench which serves as a bed you would think him poor That is merely to deceive the predatory mandarin and the burglarfous Hung. hutse.
 His children are named Number One Wong, Number Two Wong, and so on, so he can keep count, suppose, of the growth of the Wong family, Number One Wong is charming by any stand ard. He is cheerful and bright and sensitive. Since the other afternoon he had eaten nothing, when saw him cutting the door jamb with an old Chinese razor, great tears falling from his round cheeks.
 What's the matter with Wong Yu today Y' asked an interpreter. Whats he cutting up the door jamb for and cryingP"
 sOh, he very angry" said the inter preter, because his mother, she petted one of the other children
 I got Wong Yu some chestnuts and pear and piece of unSpeakable na- tive jellied candy and gave them to him, with slap on the back.
 'gToshi, toshi, toshi, !" he said at once, brightening like sunrise. Then he gave part to his severe looking mother and to his sick father and to his un- sympathizing brothers and sisters, and that afternoon we heard nothing ex- cept Wong Yu's childish, delightful laughter.
 He showed me some original draw fngs of Manchurian formal decorations and gave me the Manchurian names for them-the OK, the aEs, the wolf and the temple. Wong Yu cannot read yet, having innumerable characters to learn by heart, but you would be sur prised to see how many characters bis elder brother, Wong ShR, eau give a name to, notwithstanding he is but twelve years old and that since Haf- cheng we have not seen single school They learn them by eveTy one saying the same thing over in unison (which westerners tell me is done in AEnerica), all pronouncing over and uver tAe same word at the same time.
 Some of the women are wives of carbers who were comOaandeered by Russians to assist their transport. Two of the carters recently returned, hav- ing sold their carts furF3vely in Muk- den, making their way Ften tas to the west to the railway whicH borderR neu- tral territory, thence s4uth to New chwang and thence up the captured Nfanchurian railway home to Shihliho. They brought no information of the Russian side, not having had the ca pacity to observe and report military conditions. They found their homes stove in at the roof and blown in at the side and in occupation by Japanese and the attaches of Oku's army. They found the trees which stand here and there. being cut down and made into logs, which, in a gulch wonder, were being cooked" as the soldiers call it, into charcoal.