the method everything.  He then proceeded to fold the paper into a cocked hat, and, calling a servant to him, gave it into his hands with a grand bow, just as if he were presenting the man with some specially earned honour.  As for the servant, he took his cue excellently well, received the paper like a sacred relic, and, still as if he were taking part in some ceremony; opened the flap of the tent and threw it away.

[Illustration:  The canal:  The route by which sir Robert hart first came to Peking.]

Still more adventures awaited Robert Hart on the short trip from Shanghai to Ningpo; indeed I think the best and the most romantic adventures took a certain pleasure in following him always.  At any rate, this time he was to have such a one as even Captain Kettle might have envied; he was to be chased by a pirate junk, a Cantonese Comanting, with a painted eye in the bow, so that she might find her prey, with a high stern bristling with rifles and cutlasses, so that she might destroy it when found, and with stinkpots at her mastheads and boarding-nets hung round her.  Of course he was to escape in the end, but so narrowly that all possible sail had to be crowded on to his little ship, and the whole crew set to work the big oar at the stern, while every soul on board shivered and shook as men should when pirates are after them.

Ningpo itself in 1854 was the quietest place under the sun.  A handful of merchants lived there, buried without the trouble of dying; one or two consulates had been built, but roads were non-existent, and the few houses were separated from one another by a network of paddy (rice) fields.  The new consular assistant shared his house with a man called Patridge, for whom he had conceived a liking, a jolly fellow and a capital messmate, yet not without certain peculiarities of his own.  I believe he took a special delight in posing for fearful and radical ideas like the abolition of the House of Lords, and could never be made to see why a man should not sit in the presence of his Sovereign, or wear his hat either if he felt so inclined.

The other youngsters laughed at his notions; one or two even went so far as to accuse him of being a snob and to twit him on having changed the spelling of his name and dropped the first “r” for the sake of a stylishness he pretended to despise.  He protested hotly; they stuck to their assertion.  He declared his name was Patridge, always had been Patridge, and never could be anything else; they disbelieved him, and so the dispute remained a drawn battle for want of an umpire till long afterwards, when Robert Hart himself proved the point in a very curious way.