ting parties, or, as the Chinese put
it, in the guise of a household word, at a due correspondence between
the doorways of the betrothed couple. As in Greece, so in China, we find
the marriage arranged by the parents; the veiled bride; the ceremony of
fetching her from her father's house; the equality of man and wife; the
toleration of subordinate wives, and many other points of contact.

The same sights and scenes which are daily enacted at any of the great
Chinese centres of population seem also to have been enacted in the
Athenian market-place, with its simmering kettles of boiled peas and
other vegetables, and its chapmen and retailers of all kinds of
miscellaneous goods. In both we have the public story-teller, surrounded
by a well-packed group of fascinated and eager listeners.

The puppet-shows, agalmata neurospasta, which Herodotus tells us were
introduced into Greece from Egypt, are constantly to be seen in Chinese
cities, and date from the second century B.C.,--a suggestive period, as
I shall hope to show later on.

The Chinese say that these puppets originated in China as follows:--

The first Emperor of the Han dynasty was besieged, about 200 B.C., in a
northern city, by a vast army of Hsiung-nu, the ancestors of the Huns,
under the command of the famous chieftain, Mao-tun. One of the Chinese
generals with the besieged Emperor discovered that Mao-tun's wife, who
was in command on one side of the city, was an extremely jealous woman;
and he forthwith caused a number of wooden puppets, representing
beautiful girls and worked by strings, to be exhibited on the wall
overlooking the chieftain's camp. At this, we are told, the lady's fears
for her husband's fidelity were aroused, and she drew off her forces.

The above account may be dismissed as a tale, in which case we are left
with Punch and Judy on our hands.

To return to city sights. The tricks of street-jugglers as witnessed in
China seem to be very much those of ancient Greece. In both countries we
have such feats as jumping about amongst naked swords, spitting fire
from the mouth, and passing a sword down the throat.

Then there are the advertisements on the walls; the mule-carts and
mule-litters; the sunshades, or umbrellas, carried by women in Greece,
by both sexes in China.

The Japanese language is said to contain no terms of abuse, so refined
are the inhabitants of that earthly paradise. The Chinese language more
than makes up for this defici