to read and write a few hundred words. They all learn
and excel in embroidery; the little knick-knacks which hang at every
Chinaman's waist-band being almost always the work of his wife or
sister. Visiting between Chinese ladies is of everyday occurrence, and
on certain fete-days the temples are crowded to overflowing with
"golden lilies"[*] of all shapes and sizes. They give little
dinner-parties to their female relatives and friends, at which they
talk scandal, and brew mischief to their hearts' content. The first
wife sometimes quarrels with the second, and between them they make
the house uncomfortably hot for the unfortunate husband. "Don't you
foreigners also dread the denizens of the inner apartments?" said a
hen-pecked Chinaman one day to us--and we think he was consoled to
hear that viragos are by no means confined to China. One of the
happiest moments a Chinese woman knows, is when the family circle
gathers round husband, brother, or it may be son, and listens with
rapt attention and wondering credulity to a favourite chapter from the
"Dream of the Red Chamber." She believes it every word, and wanders
about these realms of fiction with as much confidence as was ever
placed by western child in the marvellous stories of the "Arabian
Nights."

[*] A poetical name for the small feet of Chinese women.

ETIQUETTE

If there is one thing more than another, after the possession of the
thirteen classics, on which the Chinese specially pride themselves, it
is _politeness_. Even had their literature alone not sufficed to place
them far higher in the scale of mental cultivation than the unlettered
barbarian, a knowledge of those important forms and ceremonies which
regulate daily intercourse between man and man, unknown of course to
inhabitants of the outside nations, would have amply justified the
graceful and polished Celestial in arrogating to himself the proud
position he now occupies with so much satisfaction to himself. A few
inquiring natives ask if foreigners have any notion at all of
etiquette, and are always surprised in proportion to their ignorance
to hear that our ideas of ceremony are fully as clumsy and complicated
as their own. It must be well understood that we speak chiefly of the
educated classes, and not of "boys" and compradores who learn in a
very short time both to touch their caps and wipe their noses on their
masters' pocket-handkerchiefs. Our observations will be confined to
members