oice said, "General, I have been calling the ---- a highbinder," at
which the company laughed at my expense. In China, as you know, a guest
or a host would have killed himself rather than commit so gross a
solecism; but this is America.

The second course was oysters served in the shell, and my companion,
assuming that I had never seen an oyster [ignorant that our fathers ate
oysters thousands of years before America was heard of and when the
Anglo-Saxon was living in a cave], in a confidential and engaging
whisper remarked, "This, your 'Highness,' is the only animal we eat
alive." "Why alive?" I asked, looking as innocent as possible; "why not
kill them?" "Oh, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
will not permit it," was her reply. "You see, if they are swallowed
alive they are immediately suffocated, but if you cut them up they
suffer horribly while the soup is being served. How large a one do you
think you can swallow?" Fancy the daring of a young girl to joke with a
man twice her age in this way! I did not undeceive her, and allowed her
to enlighten me on various subjects of contemporaneous interest. "It's
so strange that the Chinese never study mathematics," she next remarked.
"Why, all our public schools demand higher mathematics, and in the
fourth grade you could not find a child but could square the circle."

In this manner this volatile young savage entertained me all through the
dinner, utterly superficial herself, yet possessed of a singular
sharpness and wit, mostly at my expense; yet she was so charming I
forgave her. There is no denying that you become enraged, insulted,
chagrined by these women, who, however, by a look, dispel your
annoyance. I do not understand it. I found that while an author of a
novel she was grossly ignorant of the literature of her own country, yet
she possessed that consummate American froth by which she could
convince the average person that she was brilliant to the point of
scintillation. I fancy that any keen, well-educated woman must have seen
that I was laughing at her, yet so inborn was her belief that a Chinaman
must be an imbecile that she was ever joking at my expense. The last
story she told me illustrates the peculiar fancy for joking these women
possess. I had been describing a storm at Manchester-by-the-Sea and the
splendor of the ocean. "Did you see the tea-leaves?" she asked,
solemnly. "No," I replied. "That is strange," she said. "I fear you are
not