ess hesitated, looked up, down, on either
side, and behind him; finally he replied:--"I am a poor boatman; I
only earn one hundred and fifty cash a day, and how can you expect me
to know at what rate the tide was running?"

BUDDHIST PRIESTS

There are few more loathsome types of character either in the East or
West than the Buddhist priest of China. He is an object of contempt to
the educated among his countrymen, not only as one who has shirked the
cares and responsibilities to which all flesh is heir, but as a
misguided outcast who has voluntarily resigned the glorious title and
privileges of that divinely-gifted being represented by the symbol
_man_. With his own hands he has severed the five sacred ties which
distinguish him from the brute creation, in the hope of some day
attaining what is to most Chinamen a very doubtful immortality. Paying
no taxes and rendering no assistance in the administration of the
Empire, his duty to his sovereign is incomplete. Marrying no wife, his
affinity, the complement of his earthly existence, sinks into a
virgin's grave. Rearing no children, his troubled spirit meets after
death with the same neglect and the same absence of cherished rites
which cast a shadow upon his parents' tomb. Renouncing all fraternal
ties, he deprives himself of the consolation and support of a
brother's love. Detaching himself from the world and its vanities,
friendship spreads its charms for him in vain. Thus he is in no
Chinese sense a man. He has no name, and is frequently shocked by some
western tyro in Chinese who, thinking to pay the everyday compliment
bandied between Chinamen, asks to his intense disgust--"What is your
honourable name?" The unfortunate priest has substituted a "religious
designation" for the patronymic he discarded when parents, brethren,
home, and friends were cast into oblivion at the door of the temple.

But it is not on such mere sentimental grounds that the Chinese nation
has condemned in this wholesale manner the clergy of China. Did the
latter carry out even to a limited extent their vows of celibacy and
Pythagorean principles of diet, they would probably obtain a fair
share of that questionable respect which is meted out to enthusiasts
in most countries on the globe. The Chinese hate them as double-dyed
hypocrites who extort money from the poor and ignorant, work upon the
fears of, and frequently corrupt, their wives or daughters; proclaim
in bold characters at the