of furniture and garniture, the same shape of table, of stool, of form, of bed, of cooking utensils, of picture, of everything; and all the details of her housekeeping are so apathetically uninteresting.  The Chinese woman has no charming art, rather is it a common, horrid, daily grind.  She is not, as the woman should be, the interpreter in her home of her own grace, and she differs from her Western sister in that it is impossible for her to express in her dress also the little personalities of character—­all is eternally the same.  But I know so very little of ladies’ clothing, and therefore cease.

Quarrying was going on high up among the hills as I left the city.  Men were out of sight, but their hammering was heard distinctly.  As each boulder was freed these wielders of the hammer yelled to passers-by to look out for their heads, gave the stone a push to start it rolling, and if it rolled upon you it was your own fault and not theirs—­you should have seen to it that you were somewhere else at the time.  If it blocked the pathway, another had to be made by those who made the traffic.  Directly under the quarry I was accosted by a beggar.  “Old foreign man!  Old foreign man!” he yelled.  Stones were falling fast; it is possible that he does not sit there now.

Physiognomists do not swarm in China.  There is grand scope for someone.  There would be ample material for research for the student in the soldiers alone who would be sent to guard him from place to place.  He would not need to go farther afield; for he would be given fat men and lean men, brave men and cowards, some blessed with brains and some not one whit brainy, civil and surly, stubby and lanky, but rogues and liars all.  Travelers are always interested in their chairmen; oftentimes my interest in them was greater than theirs in me, until the time came for us to part.  Then the “Ch’a ts’ien,"[AL] always in view from the outset of their duty, brought us in a manner nearer to each other.

As I came out of the inn at Ch’u-hsiong-fu somewhat hurriedly, for my men lingered long over the rice, I stumbled over the yamen fellow who crouched by the doorside.  He laughed heartily.  Had I fallen on him his tune might have been changed; but no matter.  This unit of the city humanity was not bewilderingly beautiful.  He was profoundly ill-proportioned, very goitrous, and ravages of small-pox had bequeathed to him a wonderful facial ugliness.  He had, however, be it written to his honor, learnt that life was no theory.  One could see that at a glance as he walked along at the head of the procession, with a stride like an ox, manfully shouldering his absurd weapon of office, which in the place of a gun was an immense carved wooden mace, not unlike a leg of the old-time wooden bedstead of antiquity.  His ugliness was embittered somewhat by sunken, toothless jaws and an enigmatical stare from a cross-eye; he was also knock-kneed, and as an erstwhile gunpowder worker, had lost two fingers and a large part of one