The Chinese, as we have just had occasion observe, are remarkably shrewd ol.servers of human nature. Tt dees not require an extended familiarity with foreigners for the Chinese to perceive that the foreigner is not only to a large degree unfamiliar with the nature and the workings of Chi nese society, but that he frequently takes no pains to inform himself. If he is nut acquainted with the Chinese language, information of this sort is not only difficult to obtain at first hand, but is almost wholly inaccessible. And those who do not know the language of the Chinese are not very likely to be enthusiastic in the pursuit of information, for the details of which they do not care. That they do not know much about what the Chinese are thinking and doing, and that they care as little as they know, the Chinese themselves quickly perceive, snd are prompt to act upon the knowledge. Even in the case of those who do know something of the Chinese language, and who are more or less interested in at~ tempting tounravelthe intricacies of Chinese social life, the task is found tobe by no means:
easy one, for no matter how much one knows, there is almost always just as much more in reserve which he does not know. It will not be surprising, either, if the most zealous student of the ways of the Chinese should find that he gets from them very little credit for the things which he really does know, but rather fatal discredit for the things which he does not know.
In these circumstances, it is not strange that the Chinese tind our more or less voluntary ignorance ® quality most useful to themselves, They wish help for purposes which we can with difficulty comprehend, under some pressure which we do not comprehend at all, but which we are assured is terribly real. A cook for example petitions for a holiday of uncertain duration, and for what? Because his *grandfather® has died, it his own grandfather?' "No, not his own grandfather.' 'What kind of a grandfather was "Tt was a yard-grandfather,' 'What jard-grandfather?' It is a *brother-cousin grandfather' and the cook would be thought ill of, if he should not go. All the other servants agree that the etisia is a grave one, and accordingly the cook gets holiday of uncertain durati greatest advantay i Ivis in the item of purchases, that the:
of the foreigner, and it is xt this point that hais most helpless. Of what ina general way are termed *squeezes", we all know a great deal more than we wish to know, but there.
not one of us who really knows how to prevent then. If, as the Book of Changes tells us, careless concealment invites to robbery," careless ignomuce is not leas alluring. We have heard of a uew-comer in 8 part of Chinn in which the so-called small cash ' are used (where five hundred are spoken of as a thousand, &.) who for many months paid a double price for everything which he bought. A vein of ignorance of this sort was probably the tost paying mine which his compradores and servants ever struck, and naturally no one was in haste to enlighten him, It is only by long practice and by constant in qui that we become even superticinlly fam with the general outlines of the facta which environ us, but even then our in: formation is but partial, and we are always and everywhere, in the language of the politicians, in the hands of our friends,"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.