The Old Man—­by virtue of the growth on my chin, this epithet of respect was commonly used towards me—­wanted to wash his face and drink his tea.  He was tired with walking.  He was a foreign mandarin.  Did the blank, blank, blank cook, the worm and no man, not know that a foreigner was among them?  And then they fell to piling up the ignominy again and placing to the cook’s dishonor various degrees of lowliest origin common among the Chinese proletariat, which, thank Heaven, I did not quite understand.

That evening all Chao-chow came to honor me in my room, and to admire and ask to be given all I had in my boxes.  That it was all a huge revelation to many who came and inquired who I might be, and whence I might have come, was quite evident.  One fellow, dressed gaudily in expensive silks and satins—­probably borrowed—­came with pomp and pride; and disappointment was writ large upon his ugly face when he learned that I could not, or would not, speak with him.  He mentioned that he was one of the cultured of the city.  But the Chinese are all more or less cultured.  My own coolies, although not knowing a character, are really “cultured”—­they are the most polite men I have ever traveled with.  The culture, at any rate, although more apparent than real, has a universality in China which the foreigner must observe in moving among the people, and which as a sort of lubrication, makes the wheels of society run smoother.  This man was not cultured in the matter of taste in the choice of colors.  He was altogether frightfully lacking in sense of harmony, and when one saw the little boy who trotted along with him, one might have thought that Joseph’s coat had been revived for my especial edification.  He was a peculiar being, this highly-colored man.  He would persist in sitting down on his haunches, despite frequent invitations to use a chair—­how is it all Orientals can do this, and not one European out of fifty?

Lao Chang afterwards informed me that this man’s wife had just presented him with a second son, and great jubilation was taking place.  The birth of a child, especially of a boy, is a great event in any Chinese household, and considerable anxiety is felt lest demons should be lurking about the house and cause trouble.  A sorcerer is called in just before the birth, to exorcise all evil influences from the house and secure peace.  This is the “Exorcism of Great Peace.”  Simultaneously comes the midwife.  Should the birth be attended with great pain and difficulty, recourse is had to crackers, the firing of guns, or whatever similar device can be thought of to scare off the demons.  Solicitude is often felt that the first visit to the house after the birth of the child should be made by a “lucky” person, for the child’s whole future career may be blighted by meeting with an “ill-starred” person.  No outsider will enter the room where the birth took place for forty days.  On the anniversary of a boy’s birth the relatives and friends bring presents of clothes, hats, ornaments, playthings, and red eggs.  The baby is placed on the floor—­the earth, which is the first place he touches; he is born into a hole in the ground—­and around him are placed various articles, such as a book, pencil, chopsticks, money, and so on.  He will follow the profession which has to do with the articles he first touches.[AV]