This brings us to the considerat another quality of the Chinese intimately allied to the last named, to wit, Invincible Persistence. The Chinese who has been rebuffed, does not, as already remarked, for that reason give up, but rather redoubles his efforts. In China, Custom king, and it is a venerable custom to yield to perseverance, such as is represented in figurative language by the express sion rubbing down an iron crow-bar to make an embroidery needle.' This kind of patient persistence is best exemplified by the Chinese beggar, who knows that he will get next to nothing, but who yet with long patience waits for it, and withal ma Fests no resentment.
It is at this point too, that the average Chinese has a vast advantage over the average foreigner, who begins with an impatience which is constantly augmenting, until whether he is the applicant or the person to whom the application is made, he not infrequently wishes the other party in the uttermost parts of the earth, or even in still more inaccessible regions, and is often not backward in expressing his preferences upon this subject. When it comes toa test of patience between a Chinese and a foreigner, there is very little question which will win. The foreigner wants to be let alone, he wishes freedom from interruption, with a complete absence of distracting applications, unseasonable requests, and unseemly sounds of suppliea ion constantly renewed. What the Chinese wants, is—the thing which he wants, and he is not particular about the concomitants of quiet, and the absence of what might for (as Theodure Hook said of his piety) he has none to speak of.' Whatever the case may be there is always a way out of it for the foreigner, by an assent which is often inexpensive, and on the whole much less trouble than a continued resistance to what he foresees te be inevitable. There is a tradition of a woman who mat a man whom she did not fancy, to get rid of him." Many a foreigner has given a Chinese all that he asked (and would evew have given him twice as much if necessary) with the same end in view. It is the Chinese, and not the foreigner who is most thoroughly aware of the value of the precedent which is thus set, and from which upon the next occasion the foreigner will find it difficult or even impossible to escape, without seeming to put himself in the wrong.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.