Alas!  I knew that this was mainly true.  Mr. James Barry was an Irishman, whose finer religious feelings revolted against paying money to a heathen.  I could not find it in my heart to say anything to See Yup about the buttons; indeed, I spoke in complimentary terms about the gloss of my shirts, and I think I meekly begged him to come again for my washing.  When I went home I expostulated with Mr. Barry, but succeeded only in extracting from him the conviction that I was one of “thim black Republican fellys that worshiped naygurs.”  I had simply made an enemy of him.  But I did not know that, at the same time, I had made a friend of See Yup!

I became aware of this a few days later, by the appearance on my desk of a small pot containing a specimen of camellia japonica in flower.  I knew the school-children were in the habit of making presents to me in this furtive fashion,—­leaving their own nosegays of wild flowers, or perhaps a cluster of roses from their parents’ gardens,—­but I also knew that this exotic was too rare to come from them.  I remembered that See Yup had a Chinese taste for gardening, and a friend, another Chinaman, who kept a large nursery in the adjoining town.  But my doubts were set at rest by the discovery of a small roll of red rice-paper containing my washing-bill, fastened to the camellia stalk.  It was plain that this mingling of business and delicate gratitude was clearly See Yup’s own idea.  As the finest flower was the topmost one, I plucked it for wearing, when I found, to my astonishment, that it was simply wired to the stalk.  This led me to look at the others, which I found also wired!  More than that, they seemed to be an inferior flower, and exhaled that cold, earthy odor peculiar to the camellia, even, as I thought, to an excess.  A closer examination resulted in the discovery that, with the exception of the first flower I had plucked, they were one and all ingeniously constructed of thin slices of potato, marvelously cut to imitate the vegetable waxiness and formality of the real flower.  The work showed an infinite and almost pathetic patience in detail, yet strangely incommensurate with the result, admirable as it was.  Nevertheless, this was also like See Yup.  But whether he had tried to deceive me, or whether he only wished me to admire his skill, I could not say.  And as his persecution by my scholars had left a balance of consideration in his favor, I sent him a warm note of thanks, and said nothing of my discovery.

As our acquaintance progressed, I became frequently the recipient of other small presents from him:  a pot of preserves of a quality I could not purchase in shops, and whose contents in their crafty, gingery dissimulation so defied definition that I never knew whether they were animal, vegetable, or mineral; two or three hideous Chinese idols, “for luckee,” and a diabolical fire-work with an irregular spasmodic activity that would sometimes be prolonged until the next morning.  In return, I gave him some apparently