e babble that we were wont to raise about its precious future and its
possibilities, no more than the talk of children in the streets who have
made a horse out of a pea-pod and match-sticks, and wonder if it will
ever walk. I am sadly out of conceit of mine own other--not
mother--country now that I have had my boots blacked at once every time
I happened to take them off. The blacker did not do it for the sake of a
gratuity, but because it was his work. Like the beaver of old, he had to
climb that tree; the dogs were after him. There was competition.

* * * * *

Is there really such a place as Hong-Kong? People say so, but I have not
yet seen it. Once indeed the clouds lifted and I saw a granite house
perched like a cherub on nothing, a thousand feet above the town. It
looked as if it might be the beginning of a civil station, but a man
came up the street and said, "See this fog It will be like this till
September. You'd better go away." I shall not go. I shall encamp in
front of the place until the fog lifts and the rain ceases. At present,
and it is the third day of April, I am sitting in front of a large coal
fire and thinking of the "frosty Caucasus"--you poor creatures in
torment afar. And you think as you go to office and orderly-room that
you are helping forward England's mission in the East. 'Tis a pretty
delusion, and I am sorry to destroy it, but you have conquered the wrong
country.

Let us annex China.

No. VIII

OF JENNY AND HER FRIENDS. SHOWING HOW A MAN MAY GO TO SEE LIFE AND MEET
DEATH THERE. OF THE FELICITY OF LIFE AND THE HAPPINESS OF CORINTHIAN
KATE. THE WOMAN AND THE CHOLERA.

"Love and let love, and so will I,
But, sweet, for me no more with you,
Not while I live, not though I die.
Good night, good-by!"

I am entirely the man about town, and sickness is no word for my
sentiments. It began with an idle word in a bar-room. It ended goodness
knows where. That the world should hold French, German, and Italian
ladies of the ancient profession is no great marvel; but it is, to one
who has lived in India, something shocking to meet again Englishwomen in
the same sisterhood. When an opulent papa sends his son and heir round
the world to enlarge his mind, does he reflect, I wonder, on the places
into which the innocent strolls under the guidance of equally
inexperienced friends? I am disposed to think that he does not. In the
interest of the opu