r. From there we
would each ride in a Peking cart with a driver and one extra servant in
front. There was nothing, apparently, for the extra servant to do; but it
was vitally important that he should sit on the front platform of the
cart.

A Peking cart is a red-and-blue dog house, balanced, without springs, on
an axle between two heavy wheels. The sides, back, and rounding roof are
covered with blue cloth. A curtain hangs in front. In the middle of each
side is a tiny window, and it is at such windows that you occasionally get
the only glimpses you are ever likely to get of Chinese ladies. There is
no seat in a Peking cart; you sit on the padded floor. When you get in,
the servant holds up the front curtain, you vault to the front platform,
and, placing your hands on the floor, propel yourself backward, with as
much dignity as possible, taking care not to knock your hat against the
roof, until you have disappeared inside. If you are long of leg, your feet
will stick out in front of the curtain, leaving scant room for the two
servants, who sit, one on each side, with their feet hanging down in front
of the wheels. The two carts, two drivers, and two extra servants, set out
from the Baptist Mission compound, to convey Mr. Sowerby and me to the
Yamen, or official residence, of His Excellency.

Every Yamen has three great gates barring the way to the inner compound.
If the resident official wishes to humiliate you, he has his man stop your
cart at the first gate and compels you to enter on foot. Fortunately for
us, since it was raining hard, His Excellency had chosen to treat us with
marked courtesy. The carts halted at the second gate while Mr. Sowerby's
servant ran in with our red Chinese cards. There was a brief wait, and
then we drove on through a long courtyard to the inner or screen gate,
where massive timbered doors were closed against us. Soon these swung
open; the carts crossed a paved yard and pulled up under the projecting
roof of the Yamen porch; and we scrambled down from the carts, while two
tall mandarins, in official caps and buttons, dressed in flowing robes of
silk and embroidery, came rapidly forward to meet us. One of these, the
younger and shorter, I recognized as Mr. Wen, the interpreter for the
Shansi foreign bureau.

The other mandarin was a man of ability and charm. Some of us, perhaps,
have formed our notion of the Chinaman from the Cantonese laundryman type
which we may have seen at his bench o