China is the country of the small landholder, for land, being very difficult to steal, is looked upon as the only really safe investment, the holdings being handed down from father to son. The farmer who succeeds in making his land smell more abominably than his neighbours is looked upon with respect, admiration, and envy by the surrounding population.

The amount of crops that the Chinese farmers can raise from one small piece of land is indeed surprising, but the amount of smell they can produce from the same tiny piece of ground is positively incredible.

However, no Chinaman is considered to be in the highest sense worthy of admiration until he is dead. Although this would appear to the uninitiated to be hard to understand, as one gets to know the Chinese lower classes better, one realizes that this is the only sound and just way of regarding the matter.

Although I have no strong feelings on the subject, I must confess that I prefer them dead myself, but so intense is the native feeling on this matter that, if a fellow-countryman will only die, his friends and relatives show their grati- tude with an energy that amounts in effect to worship.

The height of every Chinaman's ambition is consequently to become an ancestor, and he is never truly happy until he has succeeded in doing so-neither are his relatives and friends.

It is quite remarkable that in the smaller villages and country districts the population dress exclusively in rags. One never sees a well-dressed native who is not a high official; the reason for this being that the villager is aware that any ostentation-and by ostentation in this connection is meant a coat with less than five patches-will arouse the cupidity of the officials, which cupidity the said officials will not hesitate to gratify.

In Shanghai, however, where protection is assured, the wealthy Chinese go to the other extreme, and indulge in the most ostentatious display by means of adorned carriages and Australian horses-which latter are usually decorated with silver-mounted, harness, ornate trappings, spavins, string-halt, and capped elbows-gaudily painted motor-cars and women, big cigars, and Boston garters.

Shanghai is the goal, the Mecca, of every light-fingered, useless, born-tired, work-shy native waster who cannot get a living in his native place because he is too well known and understood there to be trusted. The punish- ments that would inevitably overtake him should he remain in his native village are so severe, so necessary, so just, that the dread of them drives him to the protective care of the Shanghai Municipal Council, which does not bamboo hini even when he is caught stealing, but gives him a fairly comfortable, well-fed time in a gaol that is a palace compared to his home; and which considers him innocent until he is definitely proved guilty-a form of legislation he would go hundreds of miles to obtain, as it suits his highly trained, inborn genius for evasion and scientific lying infinitely better than the methods employed in the unconstrained administration of his own laws.

The Chinese authorities consider a Chinaman guilty until he is definitely proved innocent probably because he usually is guilty. Even if he is innocent of the particular charge of the moment, he is most probably guilty of several other offences-or would be if he had the opportunity.

Justice being blind, they consider it only necessary to induce her to hit out in any direction, for whoever gets hurt is certain to deserve it either now or in the near future.

Moreover, justice, in China, is not only blind, but deaf to all sounds except the musical chink of dollars.

It is probably the paternal indulgence on the part of the Council, to which I have referred, that has earned that body the name of "City Fathers."

The Chinese, like women, are divided into two main divisions-good and bad; and a further similarity is that you never can tell under which beading to place them until too late. A good Chinaman is like a good woman, a pearl of great price, just splendid, and not sufficiently common to be a drug in the market.

Yet another feminine characteristic of the race is, that if you afterwards recollect the exact moment from which you imagined you were commencing to get your own way (in conse- quence of which your vigilance relaxed), you can from that moment date the time they began to get theirs.

To deal with the good ones first, however, the Chinese gentleman and man of honour is such a very excellent individual that one is obliged to make allowances for the bad ones for his sake; more especially as the faults of the bad ones are mostly the faults of a child.

The promise of a Chinese gentleman is inviolable, and infinitely to be preferred to our most complicated legal contract; for the reason that once given there is no desire to break it; the anxiety, nay, the whole object in life being to keep it to the letter; whereas with some foreigners any loophole which can be opened by means of a law, ancient or modern, will. at times be used with incredible meanness as a means of evading a promise accepted in good faith. A Chinese gentleman would no more plead that legal invitation to blackguardism, the Gaming Act, for instance, than would an English gentleman.

Unfortunately, this type of Chinaman is not at the bead of affairs, as a rule, either in diplomacy or business.

If it should ever be your good foitune to meet a Chinese gentleman and man of honour, you may know that you have met the highest type of gentility there is-from every point of view but the physical one.

Both classes aye marvellously adaptable. It is just this adaptability of theirs that astonishes one beyond all else in China. There are Chinese gentlemen here who can make you as good a speech-in English, of course-as could the late Lord Salisbury, and an infinitely better one than Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Roosevelt.

One sees the ubiquitous Chinaman lookkg after an electric-light plant, working the lime- light at the theatre, driving steam-rollers and the engines on the railways. He it is who makes ladies' costumes to measure, builds you a wharf or a brougham, and makes you a suite of furniture in the newest style from old kerosene cases. He sets up type to print your newspapers and books, despite the fact that the corn- positors who do the actual work cannot read or write a word of English, but pick out letters "alle same."

When he handles bamboo his ingenuity finds its widest scope. He eats it in the form of bamboo shoots-which, by the way, are a most delicious vegetable; drinks out of it shaped as a cup; sleeps on it cut up into bamboo shavings, which make excellent, resilient stuffing for mattresses; and is, finally, carried to his grave by means of bamboo poles.

Amongst a thousand and one articles he manu- factures from it are mats, drain-pipes, baskets, hats, shoes, furniture, needles, houses, brushes, egg-beaters, ropes, and scaffold-poles. A Chinarnan without his bamboo would be as helpless as a woman stranded on an iceberg without her clothes.

Of course, there is nothing remakable in the fact that the Chinese can do wonderful things along their own particular lines, but there is something very extraordinary in the fact that after a lesson or two you can get a coolie to drive an electric tram or a motor-car for twenty dollars a month in wages and "find" himselL The only disadvantage to their adaptability lies in the fact that they persist in adapting your ideas of how a thing should be done to their own. If you tell a 'ricksha coolie to hurry up he goes slower; not because he doubts that you are in a hurry, but because he is quite satisfied that hurrying is a stupid idea, and he refuses to be a party to any such nonsense. Besides, he isn't in a hurry, and if you are, why in the name of all that's reasonable don't you get out and run your- self?

If you show him the right way to do anything foreign fashion, he obeys, goes home at night, thinks out another way, and follows his own method ever after. No amount of bad language, protest, or rage will move him; for his chief delight is to achieve a similar result to yours by a method entirely his own, and then look at you to see whether you are impressed. When you again explain the method you desire him to adopt, and demonstrate it, he says "yes," smiles, and continues as before.

This is not exactly obstinacy. He is sure his way is better; that is all; and if you are too obstinate to see it, the fault is not his,

When you ask him if he understands, he invariably says "yes," in order to save you a lot of useless explanation; for he knows quite well how he is going to do the job-he is going to do it his own way. He has the idea some- where in his mind that he knows better than you do, and nothing will ever drive it out until he is killed either by the bursting of a boiler or the explosion of a match-factory. He is the only man alive who can smoke cigarettes in a gunpowder factory and only get blown up once every four or five years.

He navigates a junk (safling vessel) with a sail about one hundred and fifty feet high, uses no ballast and no keel, and onW gets drowned once in a lifetime-which is a mere nothing to a Chinaman, because there are plenty more- millions and millions.

He drives about in a carriage the springs of which are held together with ordinary wrapping string and the traces with an old bootlace, but never has an accident. He can use a condemned steam-launch for years and years by stuffing the cracks in her boiler with cotton-waste and mud tied down with string.

When he is ill he goes to a Chinese doctor, who doses him with dried centipedes, by the aid of which he is soon completely cured. If you gave him the proper medicine for his complaint, I am quite convinced he would die forthwith, just to show you that his way was the better.

He is usually very placid, but when thoroughly roused is a demon incarnate. Sometimes he becomes so annoyed that he wfll actually dance with rage, jumping both: feet irom the ground at the same time. Should he feel so insulted that his injury must be wiped out in blood, be makes no attempt to destroy his enemy, but kills himself instead, in order to get his enemy into trouble. This latter mode of revenge has occurred frequently when the desire for revenge is greater than the love of life-and facts go to prove that, with the Chinese, this state of mind is not uncommon.

His main object in life is to avoid "losing face," though to look at him is to wonder why. Losing face actually means "blushing for shame." No Chinaman "loses face" by stealing, but by being found out; which is a point of resemblance between the Chinese and our great financiers.

No trick is too subtle for him. He mixes little clay balls with the soya beans that he sells, and you cannot detect them unless you are an expert. These imitation beans are offered for sale quite openly in the native shops situate in bean-growing districts. He introduces a special kind of white clay into his vegetable tallow. When live cattle were being sold to the Army, they were driven on to a scale and weighed as they stood. Re pumped water into their stomachs with a force-pump to increase the weight.

His genius for deception and fraud is not content with the scope offered for its exercise within the limits of the material world: his insatiable appetite for chicanery is therefore pandered to by the puerile deceits he practises upon that spirit world in which he implicitly believes, and takes into account from the cradle to the grave.

Thus he offers to the spirits of his dead rela- tives round discs of cardboard, stamped to resemble silver dollars and coated with silver paper; paper sycee-that is, ingots of silver formerly used in currency; and slices of real food pasted upon a bamboo framework so that the general appearance assumes the guise of a solid mass of appetizing eatables.

rn his house-design be never allows one door to directly face another or a street to '' run in a straight line. The object of this is to prevent the 'jassing through of devils-because devils can, in his opinion, only travel in a direct line, and are incapable of turning corners.

He also affixes mirrors over his door and soinetimes on the cap of a male child, in order to "reflect " the evil spirit and cast him back from whence he came.

As ybu know, the Chinaman works all day and. every day. For him there is no Sunday and no holiday until China New Year, when every shop is shut for about five days, the stock sealed up in cabinets, debts paid in full (which is no small matter, since hardly a Chinaman trades with his own money), best dothes donned, and a regular orgy of gambling commenced. During this season one seldom sees one's servants.

Last China New Year, five of us were living in a mess in Haskell Road. We employed one coolie for cleaning up, one cook-who, in turn, as is Chinese custom, employed a boy to do his work-and each of us bad a boy to look after our clothes, &c. We managed to get through the five days somehow, and upon resum- ing the even tenor of our way after the holidays I happened to go into the kitchen to see that everything had been cleaned. To my surprise I discovered the coolie dressed up in silks, lean- ing back at his ease and watching the others work. Upon investigation I discovered that this coolie had won all the others possessed in the world, and was paying them a small wage to perform such duties as fell to his own lot.

As to your enquiry respecting the general aspect of the country in the vicinity of Shanghai, I can only say, speaking broadly, that it is a monotonous level plain, which is accounted for by the fact that the soil consists of nothing but mud, which in the nature of it must lie flat. The original settlers had to dig ditches and creeks every few yards to drain the land and enable them to stand upon it without sinking in.

If upon holiday bent the Shanghailander goes to Japan, Wei-Hai-Wei, Tsintau (German), or one of the few miniature health-resorts used principally by missionaries, who, having safely saved their SOUlS, are engaged in carefully con- serving their bodies in as comfortable cir- cumstances as the funds will allow.

An amusing incident occurred at Tsintau this summen Two Jews engaged in the opium trade -one of whom was a notorious gambler-were spending their holiday at this German resort. This was the occasion of the gambler's first visit to the town, but his companion had been to Tsintau previously. On the first evening of their stay they went for a walk, in the course of which they came to a hill about five hundred feet high.

" Fine hill that, and very difficult to climb," said one.

" Don't think much of it," dissented the gambler.

"Much harder to climb than it looks," in- sisted his companion, "and I'd bet you couldn't get to the top of it in an hour, especially seeing how you are blowing already."

"Nonsense," answered the gambler, scenting a bet. "I'll wager fifty dollars I climb to the top and return here in an hour."

"Done," agreed his companion, "that's a bet, but I'll wait for you in the hotel. I can see from there. When you are on top, wave your handkerchief."

And so it was agreed, slips exchanged, and off went the gambler for the summit at his best speed. When be had ascended about one-third of the distance, however, be came to a wire fence, which he climbed forthwith, and was about to continue his journey when he found himself confronted by a German soldier with a horrib]e scowl and a fixed bayonet.

"Where are you going? " asked the soldier, pointing the bayonet at the Jew's top trousers button.

"Only to the top of that hill," answered the opium merchant.

"Tie this handkerchief round your eyes," 'answered he with the rifle, "and come with me."

"Where to?" asked the Jew, thinking of his fifty dollars.

"Yanil find out when you're there," was the on]y answer forthcoming.

To cut a long story short, he was then led, blindfold, to the quarters of the officer in com- niand of the garrison, detained an hour whilst said officer finished his dinner, and obliged to remain in custody pending identification. The unkindest cut of all lay in the fact that it was absolutely necessary for him to send for the man who made the bet with him in order to establish his identity, for he knew no one else in Tsintau, and his friend insisted upon the bet being paid before performing the service on his behalf necessary to ensure his liberty.

There is another story going the rounds. A certain half-caste lady is, for some reason best known to herself, most desirous of hiding the nature of her origin. Not only so, but she resents, with a great deal of spite, any allusion to her. "mixed" blood. On one occasion she entered a leading store to purchase some stockings in the new, fashionable shades. Unfortunately the assistant who served her had been snubbed on a previous occasion and was awaiting an oppor- tunity to get even. Eaving asked for stockings, the assistant desired to know the shade she re- quired. "Flesh colour" replied the Eurasian lady, and the man brought a box containing deep yellow hose and laid them out for her inspection.

Your affectionate son,
JIM.

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