sing the window; it
shut so hard! If Mr. Decker had remembered to close and bolt the shutter
before he went out, he might have saved her this. There was such a
genuine irritability and force in this remark, that Mr. Decker was quite
overcome by remorse. But Mrs. Decker forgave him with that graciousness
which I have before pointed out in these pages. And with the halo of
that forgiveness and marital confidence still lingering above the pair,
with the reader's permission we will leave them, and return to Mr.
Oakhurst.

But not for two weeks. At the end of that time, he walked into his rooms
in Sacramento, and in his old manner took his seat at the faro-table.

"How's your arm, Jack?" asked an incautious player.

There was a smile followed the question, which, however, ceased as Jack
looked up quietly at the speaker.

"It bothers my dealing a little; but I can shoot as well with my left."

The game was continued in that decorous silence which usually
distinguished the table at which Mr. John Oakhurst presided.

WAN LEE, THE PAGAN

As I opened Hop Sing's letter, there fluttered to the ground a square
strip of yellow paper covered with hieroglyphics, which, at first
glance, I innocently took to be the label from a pack of Chinese
fire-crackers. But the same envelope also contained a smaller strip of
rice-paper, with two Chinese characters traced in India ink, that I
at once knew to be Hop Sing's visiting-card. The whole, as afterwards
literally translated, ran as follows:--

"To the stranger the gates of my house are not closed: the rice-jar is
on the left, and the sweetmeats on the right, as you enter.

Two sayings of the Master:--

Hospitality is the virtue of the son and the wisdom of the ancestor.

The Superior man is light hearted after the crop-gathering: he makes a
festival.

When the stranger is in your melon-patch, observe him not too closely:
inattention is often the highest form of civility.

Happiness, Peace, and Prosperity.

HOP SING."

Admirable, certainly, as was this morality and proverbial wisdom, and
although this last axiom was very characteristic of my friend Hop Sing,
who was that most sombre of all humorists, a Chinese philosopher, I must
confess, that, even after a very free translation, I was at a loss to
make any immediate application of the message. Luckily I discovered a
third enclosure in the shape of a little note in English, and Hop Sing's
own commercial hand. It