eing that
some foreign ladies were involved, he decided to keep out of it. He
kept his back turned the entire time, with his hands tight in the
pockets of his padded trousers.

VII

DONKEYS GENERALLY

It's all delightful here every moment of the day. The excitement begins
every morning at breakfast with the unfolding of "The Peking Gazette." I
come down-stairs early, when the corridors are being swept and dusted by
the China-boys in their long blue coats, and receive a series of
"Morning, Missy's" on my way to the breakfast-room, the nice, warm
breakfast-room, with oilcloth-covered floor, and everything else simple
accordingly. There is gilding in the big dining-room, but the
breakfast-room is as simple as a New England boarding-house. One boy
pulls out my chair, another opens my napkin,--they look after you well
here,--and a third boy, the regular waiter, leans over and says,
"Pollidge, Missy?" and a moment later brings a big bowl of porridge
and a can of cream. There is nothing but tinned milk and cream in
China, for there are no cows. There is no room to pasture cows or to
feed them, for one cow can eat as much food as twenty people, so no
land can be devoted to such superfluities as that. One of the
legations has a cow, however, and people who stand in well with the
legation can have such milk as there may be over and above the
legation's needs. But the Wagons-Lits Hotel is not on that list,
and, as I say, tinned cream is all that I get for my "pollidge." But
it is very good indeed, these chilly October mornings. After all,
what does food matter? Peking is so rich in other things!

To-day at breakfast, with the "Gazette" propped against the coffee-pot,
I began my usual search for news. Found it, too, in a moment, in the
editorial column. A fairly long leader, entitled, "The Shanghai Opium
Combine: Frantic Efforts to Secure Further Privileges in China," caused
me to forget "pollidge" and everything else, and to read hastily to the
end. As I told you the other day, the opium traffic in China is to come
to an end in six months. Well, this article says that the Shanghai
Opium Combine, the combination of a dozen British firms with
headquarters in Shanghai, is making frantic efforts to prolong the time
limit for the sale of opium, to extend it for another nine months. The
excuse offered is that the combine has not sufficient time between this
and April 1, 1917, to sell off its remaining stocks of opium, and i