k dust into my food.

Everyone pushed to where there was standing room. Outside a rolling sea
of yellow faces surmounted a mass of lively blue cotton, all eager for a
look. The din was terrible. All very visibly annoyed were my men at the
rudeness of their low-bred fellow countrymen, and especially surprised
at the equanimity of Ding Daren in tolerating quietly their pointed and
personal remarks. I became more and more the hero of the hour.

Turning to the crowd as I came out, I smiled serenely, and with a quiet
wave of the hand pointed out in faultless English that the gulf between
my own country and theirs was already wide enough, and that Great
Britain might--did not say that she _would_, but might--widen it still
more if they persisted in treating her subjects in China as monstrous
specimens of the human race. This was rigorously corroborated by my two
soldier-men, to whom I appealed, and a parting word on the ordinary
politeness of Western nations to a greasy fellow (he was a worker in
brass), who felt my clothes with his dirty fingers, ended an interesting
break in the day's monotony. In the street the crowd again was at my
heels, and evinced more than comfortable curiosity in my straw sandals.
They cost me thirty cash, equal to about a halfpenny in our coinage.

Since then I have paid other visits to Pu-piao. On one occasion in
subsequent travel I had a public shave there. My arrival at the inn in
the nick of time enabled me to buttonhole the barber who was picking up
his traps to clear, and I had one of the best shaves I have ever had in
my life, in one of the most uncomfortable positions I ever remember. My
seat was a low, narrow form with no back or anything for my neck to rest
upon, and afterwards I went through the primitive and painful massage
process of being bumped all over the back. Between every four or five
whacks the barber snapped his fingers and clapped his hands, and right
glad was I when he had finished. The yard was full, even to the stable
and cook-house alongside each other, the anger of a grizzly old dame,
who smoked a reeking pipe and who had charge of the rice-and-cabbage
depot, being eclipsed only by my infuriated barber as he gave cruel vent
to his anger upon my aching back.

This reminds me of an uncomfortable shave I had some ten years ago in
Trinidad, where a black man sat me on the trunk of a tree whilst he got
behind and rested my head on one knee and got to work with an implement