CHINESE PRINT AND MSS sit,—If so be that no one
.has yet drawn attention to the matter, I wonder if it is not too late for me to comment on a passage in Mr. E. M. Gull's review of Agnes Smedley's book on China in your issue of March 17th last, 'which seems to represent the authoress as dis- ingenuously exaggerating her own proficiency in Chinese I disagree with Mr. Gull in thinking it likely that the lecture notes happened .upon by Miss Smedley were in ts'ao tzu, or in any sort of writing such that a person of Miss Smedley's experience could not have perceived their general tendency without outside assistance. In Chinese, as in English, writing legibility goes in inverse ratio to the writer's educa- tion. Moreover, ts'ao tzu is a system on its own that is accomplishment which is the cachet of a rather old-fashioned type of scholar. The notes in question were probably written in a scribble based on Itsing-shu (a cursive development of the engrossing style) with an abundance of simplified forms. Most of such, although differing greatly from print, is not at all difficult to understand provided one has a little practice.
Many foreigners who study Chinese, however, do so almost entirely from print, with the result that even when they have acquired a con-
siderable knowledge of the language they find ordinary manuscripts diffi- cult to read. Presumably, Miss Smedley's Chinese was to a large extent "picked up" in unconventional ways, and so included conversance with
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