tells
you--you might think he was overflowing with joy, but he is really sick
and sore at heart, and is only laughing to deceive the spirits. So it
may be that the poor beggars who laughed at that noble presence which
has been the admiration of my friends in four continents, were moved to
do so by the hope to deceive the evil spirits who had punished them with
poverty, and so by their apparent gaiety induce them to relax the
severity of their punishment.

To within two or three miles of this village the road was singularly
level; I do not think that it either rose or fell 100 feet in twenty
miles. Forty li from where we slept the night before, having previously
left the main road, we came to the large walled town of Yunnan-hsien.
The streets were crowded, for it was market day, and both sides of the
main thoroughfares, especially in the vicinity of the Confucian Temple,
were thronged with peasant women selling garden produce, turnips, beans
and peas, and live fish caught in the lake beyond Tali. Articles of
Western trade were also for sale--stacks of calico, braid, and thread,
"new impermeable matches made in Trieste," and "toilet soap of the
finest quality." I had a royal reception as I rode through the crowd,
and the street where was situated the inn to which we went for lunch
speedily became impassable. There was keen competition to see me. Two
thieves were among the foremost, with huge iron crowbars chained to
their necks and ankles, while a third prisoner, with his head pilloried
in a _cangue_, obstructed the gaze of many. There was the most admirable
courtesy shown me; it was the "foreign teacher" they wished to see, not
the "foreign devil." When I rose from the table, half a dozen guests
sitting at the other tables rose also and bowed to me as I passed out.
Of all people I have ever met, the Chinese are, I think, the politest.
My illiterate Laohwan, who could neither read nor write, had a courtesy
of demeanour, a well-bred ease of manner, a graceful deference that
never approached servility, which it was a constant pleasure to me to
witness.

As regards the educated classes, there can be little doubt, I think,
that there are no people in the world so scrupulously polite as the
Chinese. Their smallest actions on all occasions of ceremony are
governed by the most minute rules. Let me give, as an example, the
method of cross-examination to which the stranger is subjected, and
which is a familiar instance of true