The men were divided into two bodies under the two foreign commanders, and in the course of operations one body had to defend a village, while the other had to attack it.

When the time came to capture the village at the point of the bayonet, both sides lost their heads; there was a fierce hand-to-hand fight in stern reality, and before this could be effectively stopped four men had been killed outright and sixteen badly wounded.
Considering how squalid many Chinese homes are, it is all the more astonishing to find such deep attachment to them.

There exists in the language a definite word for _home_, in its fullest English sense.

As a written character, it is supposed to picture the idea of a family, the component parts being a "roof" with "three persons" underneath.

There is, indeed, another and more fanciful explanation of this character, namely, that it is composed of a "roof" with a "pig" underneath, the forms for "three men" and "pig" being sufficiently alike at any rate to justify the suggestion.