ation
jump to their feet and rush out to see what is going on. I could
have told them if they had only asked me. No doubt, some unwise
Chinaman, in place of coming straight in and sitting down, stood on
the outskirt of the crowd on tiptoe. A city thief coming along
says, "Ah, there is my man," and he walks quietly up to him with a
pair of sharp scissors, cuts off his tobacco pouch, and goes off
with it. Of course, as soon as the man misses the pouch, his first
impulse is to grab his next neighbour; that neighbour remonstrates,
and then a fight commences.

'Sometimes a funeral passes, and that is almost as serious an
interruption as a fight; because, although a Chinaman does not
think much about his soul after he dies, he thinks a vast deal
about his dead body, and, in order to be perfectly sure that he
will not be cheated by the undertaker, he buys his coffin before he
is sick, and sees that he has a good bargain. And so, having a good
coffin, he wants a good funeral; and it is said some men spend
nearly half of their fortune in having a grand procession when they
are carried to their grave. When one of these enormous funerals,
with a procession sometimes a quarter of a mile long, comes by, it
is a very bad job for your congregation. Out they go to have a look
at it.

'Then the interruption is sometimes another thing, and this last
one is a more difficult case to settle. When one of the upper ten
thousand in China has a marriage, they want to have a great
exhibition; and after they have bought the furniture, they get and
hire a great many men, and have them dressed to carry that
furniture in procession along the streets and show it to their
neighbours. First comes a great wardrobe, and then a little
cupboard, a washstand, a square table, and all sorts of furniture.
Now when that comes, what are you to do? They have been at the
expense of paying for an exhibition for their neighbours to see,
and they feel that it would be unneighbourly if they did not step
to the door and look out and see the things carried past, and there
goes your congregation. Sometimes unusual interruptions happen. I
remember once a woman put her head in at the door. Women do not
come to these chapels often--I am very glad they do not. That woman
put her head in at t