rs of the wash-tub gossip sometimes in the West.

It was a beautiful spring morning; the sweet song of the birds pierced
through the noise of the rolling river below, the air was fragrant and
bracing, and as I left and commenced the rocky ascent leading again to
the mountains, the barks of some fierce-disposed canines, who alone
objected to my presence among the hill-folk, died away with the rustle
of the leafage in a keen north wind.

One of my men was poorly, the solitary element to disturb the equanimity
of our camp.

It was Shanks. He had been suffering from toothache, and unfortunately I
had no gum-balm with me; without my knowledge Lao Chang had rubbed in
some strong embrocation to the fellow's cheek, so that now, in addition
to toothache, he had also a badly blistered face, swollen up like a
pudding. Upon learning that I had no means of curing him or of
alleviating the pain, Shanks bellowed into my ear, loud enough to bring
the dead out of the grave-mounds on the surrounding hill-sides, "Puh p'a
teh, pub p'a teh"; then, raising his carrying-pole to the correct angle
on the hump on his back, went merrily forward, warbling some squealing
Chinese ditty. But Shanks was the songster of the party. He often madly
disturbed the silence of middle night by a sudden outburst inte song,
and when shouted down by others who lay around, or kicked by the man who
shared his bed, and whose choral propensities were less in proportion,
he would laugh wildly at them all. Poor Shanks; he was a peculiar
mortal. He would laugh at men in pain, and think it sympathy. If we
could get no food or drink on the march, after having wearily toiled
away for hours, he would not be disposed to grumble--he would laugh.
Such tragic incidents as the pony jumping over the precipice provoked
him to extreme laughter.[AX]

And when I caught him sewing up an open wound in the sole of his foot
with common colored Chinese thread and a rusty needle, and told him that
he might thereby get blood poisoning, and lose his life or leg, he cared
not a little. As a matter of fact, he laughed in my face. Not at me, not
at all, but because he thought his laughter might probably delude the
devil who was president over the ills of that particular portion of
human anatomy. He came to me just outside Pu-peng, where we saw a coffin
containing a corpse resting in the roadway whilst the bearers refreshed
near by and, pointing thereto, told me that the man was "muh tsai" (n