loaferish policeman is seen,
nearly always leaning against a building or finding support from the
angle of a deep-set door. Most of the police wear sandals and straw
hats, and carry long batons and revolvers; but there is no sameness of
apparel or armament among these guardians of the peace, attested by
their wearing only a portion of their uniform at a time. The Cantonese
believe their police are equipped and dressed in strict accord with the
"finest" of a great city in America.

On the way to that section of the city where Cantonese of high and low
degree are laid away after death, we encounter a returning funeral party
that made a curious procession, and one stretching to inordinate length.
In front was a ragamuffin corps of drummers and men extracting
ear-racking noises from metal instruments that looked like flageolets,
but were not. Twenty or thirty bedraggled Buddhist priests in pairs
trotted behind, proving by their individual gaits that in China there is
no union of religion and music. Interspersed in the marching medley were
a dozen or more gaudily painted platforms with pole handles, carried by
coolies in the way that chairs are borne. Each platform displayed a
layout of varnished pigs with immovably staring eyes, plates of uncooked
strips of fish, and decorative objects suggesting place in a well-to-do
Chinese home. Every fifty yards or so a mustached official of uncertain
rank was mounted on a Tartary pony, and at the end of the column a
coolie loped along bearing across his naked shoulders the deceased's
Yankee-made bicycle. No student of foreign conditions could ask more
striking evidence that China was at last "waking up," was heeding the
influences of Western civilization, surely. The funeral party suggested
perfunctory pomp and display, and gave not a suggestion of
bereavement--and that it was, for every person in the cortege was hired
for the occasion. Half the food had been left at the tomb for the
departed in his spirit form; the remainder was to be devoured by the
mercenary mourners when the procession broke up at the door of the home
from which the corpse had been carried.

Ah Cum John's clients lunch in the renowned Five-Story Pagoda, rising
from the city wall to an elevation that spreads Canton at its feet; but
by the time one reaches the building he is satiated with views and wants
nothing but food. The Chicago "air-tights" and bottled beers and
table-waters fetched from the steamer are relish