When Mr. Low was U. S. Minister in Peking some thirty years ago, he said to the writer “Just look at this tomfoolery!” holding up the fashion plates representing the new dress for the diplomatic service of Japan.  Time has proved that he was wrong, and that the Japanese were right in adopting a new uniform, when they wished to fall in line with nations of the West.  With their old shuffling habiliments and the cringing manners inseparable from them, they never could have been admitted to intercourse on easy terms with Western society.

[Page 294] The mandarin costume of China, though more imposing, is not less barbaric than that of Japan; and the etiquette that accompanies it is wholly irreconcilable with the usages of the Western world.  Imagine a mandarin doffing his gaudy cap, gay with tassels, feathers, and ruby button, on meeting a friend, or pushing back his long sleeves to shake hands!  Such frippery we have learned to leave to the ladies; and etiquette does not require them to lay aside their hats.

Quakers, like the mandarins, keep their hats on in public meetings; and the oddity of their manners has kept them out of society and made their following very exiguous.  Do our Chinese friends wish to be looked on as Quakers, or do they desire to fraternise freely with the people of the great West?

Their cap of ceremony hides a shaven pate and dangling cue, and here lies the chief obstacle in the way of the proposed reform in style and manners.  Those badges of subjection will have to be dispensed with either formally or tacitly before the cap that conceals them can give way to the dress hat of European society.  Neither graceful nor convenient, that dress hat is not to be recommended on its own merits, but as part of a costume common to all nations which conform to the usages of our modern civilisation.

It must have struck the High Commissioners that, wherever they went, they encountered in good society only one general type of costume.  Nor would it be possible for them to advise the adoption of the costume of this or that nationality—­a general conformity is all that seems feasible or desirable.  Will the Chinese [Page 295] cling to their cap and robes with a death grip like that of the Korean who jumped from a railway train to save his high hat and lost his life?  As they are taking passage on the great railway of the world’s progress, will they not take pains to adapt themselves in every way to the requirements of a new era?

2.  POLYGAMY

We have as yet no intimation what the Reform Government intends to do with this superannuated institution.  Will they persist in burning incense before it to disguise its ill-odour, or will they bury it out of sight at once and for ever?

The Travelling Commissioners, whose breadth and acumen are equally conspicuous, surely did not fail to inquire for it in the countries which they visited.  Of course, they did not find it there; but, as with the question of costume, the good breeding of their hosts would restrain them from offering any suggestion touching the domestic life of the Chinese.