the loves of Mr. Punch,
while others again are of the knock-about style so dear to the ordinary
boy and girl. Besides such entertainments as these, the streets of a
Chinese city offer other shows to those who desire to be amused. An
acrobat, a rope-dancer or a conjurer will take up a pitch right in the
middle of the roadway, and the traffic has to get on as best it can.
A theatrical stage will sometimes completely block a street, and even
foot-passengers will have to find their way round. There is also the
public story-reader, who for his own sake will choose a convenient spot
near to some busy thoroughfare; and there, to an assembled crowd, he
will read out, not in the difficult book-language, but in the colloquial
dialect of the place, stories of war and heroism, soldiers led to
night-attacks with wooden bits in their mouths to prevent them from
talking in the ranks, the victory of the loyal and the rout and
slaughter of the rebel. Or it may be a tale of giants, goblins and
wizards; the bewitching of promising young men by lovely maidens who
turn out to be really foxes in disguise, ending as usual in the triumph
of virtue and the discomfiture of vice. The fixed eyes and open mouths
of the crowd, listening with rapt attention, is a sight which, once
seen, is not easily forgotten.

For the ordinary man, China is simply peopled with bogies and devils,
the spirits of the wicked or of those unfortunate enough not to secure
decent burial with all its accompanying worship and rites. These
creatures, whose bodies cast no shadow, lurk in dark corners, ready to
pounce on some unwary passer-by and possibly tear out his heart. Many a
Confucianist, sturdy in his faith that "devils only exist for those who
believe in them," will hesitate to visit by night a lonely spot, or even
to enter a disused tumbledown building by day. Some of the stories
told are certainly well fitted to make a deep impression upon young
and highly-strung nerves. For instance, one man who was too fond of
the bottle placed some liquor alongside his bed, to be drunk during the
night. On stretching out his hand to reach the flask, he was seized by a
demon, and dragged gradually into the earth. In response to his shrieks,
his relatives and neighbours only arrived in time to see the ground
close over his head, just as though he had fallen into water.

From this story it will be rightly gathered that the Chinese mostly
sleep on the ground floor. In Peking, houses