customs
survive even in Christian Russia.

'I'm afraid I'm too busy to go just at present,' said my cousin; 'I
suppose you could not take on the business for me, could you?'

Well, I had not the slightest objection; indeed, I was delighted with
the prospect.

'What am I to do?' I asked; 'hide myself in the standing corn and ambush
him?'

'Leave it to old Michael, the keeper.' said my cousin. 'I will wire that
you're coming to-morrow, I can telegraph within three miles of the
lodge, and the message will be sent on.'

So my preparations were hurried forward, and I was ready and anxious to
be off early on the following day.

[Illustration: "'Why not start a round of story-telling?'"]

'Be kind to my dogs,' said my cousin; 'there are three of them there,
red setters, beauties--Michael keeps them for me; have them into the
room and pet them a bit, if you don't mind, for they have a dullish time
down there, and I like them to see English folk now and then--it does
them good!'

(_Concluded on page 26._)

THE MUSIC OF THE NATIONS.

I.--THE 'KING' AND 'OU' OF THE CHINESE.

[Illustration]

Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, Confucius declared that
'Music gives finish to the character, which has first been established
by its rules of proficiency.' Moreover, he said, 'Wouldst thou know if a
people be well governed, and if its manners be good or bad, examine the
music it practises.'

When we reflect that the speaker was the most famous sage of the
Chinese, to whom temples are built in every town of the vast empire of
China, and to whose memory the Emperor himself offers homage twice a
year at the Imperial College in Pekin, we may understand what weight his
opinions have carried in his own country.

Long before his time, however, music had been studied there as a
science. It was imported by the first invaders of the Celestial Empire,
who hailed from the borders of the Caspian Sea. The Yellow Emperor, or
Huang Ti, who reigned two thousand seven hundred years before the
Christian era, established a fixed base note from which musical
instruments were to be measured, much as in the modern musical system we
take a key-note and found our chords and scales upon it. The connection
between musical and State affairs was so business-like in those days
that the precedence of the various classes was fixed according to the
musical grade: F, the base note of the oldest known scale, represented
the Emperor; G