from pictures, not intended to be caricatures, what were the chief features of the foreigner as viewed by the Chinaman.  Red hair and blue eyes, almost without exception; short and extremely tight clothes; a quick walk and a mobility of body, involving ungraceful positions either sitting or standing; and with an additional feature which the artist could not portray—­an unintelligible language resembling the twittering of birds.  Small wonder that little children are terrified at these strange beings, and rush shrieking into their cottages as the foreigner passes by.  It is perhaps not quite so easy to understand why the Mongolian pony has such a dread of the foreigner and usually takes time to get accustomed to the presence of a barbarian; some ponies, indeed, will never allow themselves to be mounted unless blindfolded.  Then there are the dogs, who rush out and bark, apparently without rhyme or reason, at every passing foreigner.  The Chinese have a saying that one dog barks at nothing and the rest bark at him; but that will hardly explain the unfailing attack so familiar to every one who has rambled through country villages.  The solution of this puzzle was extracted with difficulty from an amiable Chinaman who explained that what the animals, and indeed his fellow-countrymen as well, could not help noticing, was the frowzy and very objectionable smell of all foreigners, which, strangely enough, is the very accusation which foreigners unanimously bring against the Chinese themselves.

Compare these characteristics with the universal black hair and black eyes of men and women throughout China, exclusive of a rare occasional albino; with the long, flowing, loose robes of officials and of the well-to-do; with their slow and stately walk and their rigid formality of position, either sitting or standing.  To the Chinese, their own language seems to be the language of the gods; they know they have possessed it for several thousand years, and they know nothing at all of the barbarian.  Where does he come from?  Where can he come from except from the small islands which fringe the Middle Kingdom, the world, in fact, bounded by the Four Seas?  The books tell us that “Heaven is round, Earth is square;” and it is impossible to believe that those books, upon the wisdom of which the Middle Kingdom was founded, can possibly be wrong.  Such was a very natural view for the Chinaman to take when first brought really face to face with the West; and such is the view that in spite of modern educational progress is still very widely held.  The people of a country do not unlearn in a day the long lessons of the past.  He was quite a friendly mandarin, taking a practical view of national dress, who said in conversation:  “I can’t think why you foreigners wear your clothes so tight; it must be very difficult to catch the fleas.”