[Illustration:  SIR ROBERT HART AND HIS STAFF (FOREIGN AND CHINESE) PEKING 1902.]

In the waiting-room he told his faux pas to the Ministers, either coming from or going into the Audience Hall, and expressed his annoyance that the proper formula for returning thanks had slipped his mind when it did.  They laughed heartily over the incident, and for his comfort told him the story of a certain man called Kwei Hsin, who had an even worse experience.  Some time in the late ’seventies he returned from an audience pulling his beard, which was long and thin.  He seemed visibly annoyed about something.

“What has happened?” enquired his colleagues anxiously.

[Illustration:  SIR ROBERT HART WISHING MISS ROOSEVELT “BON VOYAGE” ON HER DEPARTURE FROM PEKING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1906

On the left is admiral Hu Yue Fen]

“Well,” said he, “the Emperor (then little more than a child) asked me a question to-day which I could not answer.”

“And what was it?” Their minds immediately flew to knotty points at issue.  Was it about the finances of the provinces?  Could it be a Censor had denounced some one and enquiries were to be made?

“He asked me,” said Kwei Hsin slowly, “if I slept with my beard under the quilt or outside it, and for the life of me I could not remember, so I stood there dumb as a fish.”

Two or three days after the audience the “souvenirs” were brought to the I.G. by the Palace servants.  In addition, they gave him a little surprise of their own.  He found them pasting a big red placard on his front gate.  It was their way of advertising his newest honour—­the Presidency of a Board—­and has had the sanction of society in China since the Flood.  What if it is a little embarrassing!  It would be worse for the newly promoted to tell his friends about his step up in the world himself.  By this method he is spared the trouble, and while he theoretically knows nothing about it, the Imperial servants take this delicate means of making the honour known, receiving a substantial tip for their thoughtfulness.

But the I.G., whose modesty was entirely genuine instead of counterfeit, was shocked at seeing himself lauded in three-inch black characters on a flaring red ground, and driven in desperation to explain that while his gratitude was unbounded, he did not want an admiring crowd collected on his threshold.  So, much to the disappointment of his servants, who in China feel that their master’s glory reflects upon themselves, the announcement was taken down.

Whoever says “No man can be a hero to his own valet” is wrong, for the I.G. was undoubtedly a hero to his whole household—­modesty notwithstanding.  Most of his servants remained with him for thirty years, and at the end one and all gave him an excellent “character.”  “We have found you a very satisfactory master,” said they—­which sounds strange to us, but is the Chinese way of doing things.  No wonder they said so.  He had such a horror of asking too much from those he employed that he was far too lenient with them.  His ear was too attentive to their stories, his purse too open to their borrowings.  When their relatives died—­and in China each man has an army of them, including duplicate mothers and grandmothers—­boys, cooks, coolies and bandsmen rushed to “borrow” from him.  I cannot remember hearing that one ever came to repay.