o the Chinese, "You will soon be
establishing Legations abroad. Do you not think that my going will be
an excellent opportunity for you to send some of your people to see a
little of the world?" Yes, they agreed it would be; but--though they
never told him so--I think the older conservative generation had grave
doubts whether the adventurous ones would return alive. Europe was
then a _terra incognita_. There might easily be pirates in the Seine
and cannibals in Bond Street, not to mention the hundred mysterious
dangers of the great waters and the fire-breathing monsters that
traversed them.

Well, in the end, the prejudices melted and the party started,
chaperoned by the I.G. Five in all there were, a certain Pin Lao Yeh,
an ex-Prefect, his son and three students from the Tung Wen Kwan or
College of Languages. Old Pin Lao Yeh, being the senior, wrote a book
about his experiences, describing all he saw for the benefit of his
timid homekeeping countrymen, and giving careful measurements of
everything measurable--the masts of the steamers, the length of the
wharves, the height of the Arc de Triomphe, as if in some mysterious
way statistics could prove a prop to the faint-hearted. Of the four
lads in the "experiment," two afterwards filled high diplomatic
posts. A certain Fang I was made Charge d'Affaires in London and later
Consul-General in Singapore, while Chang Teh Ming was made Minister
Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James.

The voyage home was uneventful, the little party's first adventure
coming at their last port. Here the Customs had to be passed. With
some pride, I should like to write, only I am sure it was with his
usual modesty--the kind of modesty that made strangers say, the first
time they saw him, "Is that all he is?" and after they had spoken with
him for ten minutes, "Can he be all that?"--the I.G. presented his
letter from the French Legation at Peking to the Chief Custom House
Official Profound bows immediately from this worthy, then grand
gestures and the magic words, "Passe en ambassade!"

Accordingly the "mission" passed--in true Chinese style. The first
man by had a dried duck over his shoulder, the next a smoked ham,
the third a jar of pickled cabbage, none too savoury, while all
the attaches and servants were equally weighted down by pieces of
outlandish baggage from which nothing in the world would have induced
them to part, since nothing in the world could have replaced them in
the mark