In the carly springtime, the rural traveller in China is very likely to see the smoke ascending from a huge mound of earth, which ho is informed is a brick-kiln, where are the materials out of which all the dwellings and shops of the neighbourhood are to be constructed. The fuel is, for the most part, the stalks or haulms of whatever crops the region may produce, occasionally varied by the introduction of some of the coal with which China abounds but which is often too dear to be available. When made the bricks look well on the smooth surface, but on turning them over, the hollowness of their construction is at once exposed. If one of them is put into a pan of water there is a sound like that of tiny rivers rushing through minute caverns, and this is exactly what is taking place, for the entire interior is honey-combed.' These bricks often decay like cheese which is exposed to the nibbling of mice, and in those regions where the soil is impregnated with soda the bricks melt away at the base, until the wall unless repaired, topples over.
Any one who cares to do so, may see, in the cities, towns, or villages where the work of carpenters' is carried on, little heaps of boards loosely laid one athwart another, with curls of smoke winding among them. This is often the sole pro cess of "seasoning" to which the Chinese lumber is subjected. It is unequal, inofficient, and useless as a preventive of shrinkage, warping, and spliting. Tables, benches and tablets made of such wood, within a few months, show yawning gaps which no one ever expects to see filled. A Chinese mor tice will fall apart just as leaves separate from the parent stem, when they are ripe.
The carpenters, like the bricklayers, know too much to make their work 50 good that there will be no occasion to call upon them within a reasonable time for repairs. The process is still further illustrated when the masons exhibit the utmost patience in rubbing smooth (at the expense of their employer) all the inequalities of the superficial area of the guard-wall to your front steps.
This is the custom of the profession, but he knows, everybody knows, and eventually you will know that this is a mere form to be observed. The first hot sun, the first sharp frost, the first hard rain, the first frost, will reduce the whole smooth area to indiscrimate corrugations, or gaping apertures. But what of it? It was all right when the workman took his hands off, and more than that neither he nor anyone else expected or desired Again, at the new year season, one observes the whole city being pasted over, as s its door-posts, etc., with red stripes of fine appearing paper, covered with excellent sentiments drawn from the Classics, or from the experience of those to whom these works have been the only intellectual aliment. "The Grace of the fon of Heaven," we read, "Is boundless as the sea," "As a single spark of fire lays the mountains of many regions, so a single unguarded expression spoils the virtue of one's whole life." How admirable! and; ral thousands in two or three hours. We: how appropriate for the beginning of suspected the reason for this migration, new year, you reflect. But the next time but, in order to learn a. little You pass, you cannot fail to notice that of what was going on in the mind of my-the-virtue-of-one's-wholelife" is longer in situ. There was a trifle too little paste, the wind dried what there was too soon, a sudden flurry took the lapping strip quite off, and if you look carefully you will see " the-virtue-of-one's-whole-life" lying in a gutter close by. But this is only for the time being. The nest forenoon it is whipped up by a man with a big basket on his back, the agent of a benevolent paper-saving society, which obeys the mandate to "respect the written character," and the virtue etc., is duly reduced to ashes ju an iron crate for this purpose made and provided, while the remainder of the "noble sentiment" sticks to its post until scraped off, at the following new year season, by the next inundation of fine phrases.
Kind reader, do you take in' the Peking Gazette," or are you taken in by it yourself? Do you know, for certain, what its well-oiled utterances connote? Can you read between the lines? Do you detect "Reform" lurking there? Can yeu analyse its inwardness, biologically, to as to tell corms, and spores, and bacil-
our advice und spare yourself the pains.
Me bias thin? " Rind reader, take Remember the caves inside the beaks recall the twisting of the elm boards; re-fleet on the "noble sentiments" which, for the moment, flutter in the win], and, presto, are gone. And then lay it well to heart that, within the Celestial Kwupire, things are not what they seem!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.