leave for home to sleep at 7:00 p.m. The Shan opened a
large mouth; then he spoke. He would be pleased, he said, to come to
work about nine o'clock; that he had several marriageable daughters
still on his hands and could not therefore, and would not, cut grass; he
objected going to the market in the extreme heat of the day; he could
not think of eating the foreigner's food; and would go home to feed at
1:00 p.m. and leave again finally at 5:00 p.m. for the same purpose. He
left before five p.m. Another man was called in. He was quite cheery,
and came in and out and did what he pleased. On being asked what he
would require as salary, he replied, "Oh, give me a rupee every market
day, and that'll do me." The person was not in service when market day
rolled round, and I hear that this European, who loves experiments of
this kind, has gone back to the Chinese.

Chiu-Ch'eng (Kang-gnai) was going through a sort of New Year carousal as
I entered the town, and everybody was garmented for the festival.

I had great difficulty in getting a place to stay. People allowed me to
career about in search of a room, treating me with courteous
indifference, but none offered to house me. At last the headman of the
village appeared, and with many kindly expressions of unintelligibility
led me to his house. A crowd had gathered in the street, and several
women were taking from the front room the general stock-in-trade of the
village ironmonger. Scores of huge iron cooking pans were being passed
through the window, tables were pushed noisily through the doorway,
primitive cooking appliances were being hurled about in the air, bamboo
baskets came out by the dozen, and there was much else. Bags of paddy,
old chairs (the low stool of the Shan, with a thirty-inch back), drawers
of copper cash, brooms, a few old spears, pots of pork fat, barrels of
wine (the same as I had blistered the foot of a pony with), two or three
old p'u-kai, worn-out clothes, disused ladies' shoes, babies' gear, and
last of all the man himself appeared. Men and women set to to clean up,
an old woman clasped me to her bosom, and I was bidden to enter. New
Year festivities were for the nonce neglected for the novel delight of
gazing upon the inner domesticity of this traveling wonder, into his
very holy of holies. I received nine invitations to dinner. I dined with
mine host and his six sons.

Through the heavy evening murk a dull clangor stirred the air--the
tolling of sh