Furlough comes even in the slow-moving East. After planning for weeks and packing for days, tickets are purchased. Advice from others has been various and plentiful. Tf "they say" truly, the American s.s. lines have the finest fruit, the British the most meat, the French the choicest coffee, while the Germans make the best bread and butter. The Japanese attempt the cheapest combination, Europe, the wil steamers have the praise in point of size, deck space, service, and general comfort. No. matter what ship you select, you will be told of a better one. Wealth and fashion travel first class; sume sensible and as many respectable people choose second class, while strict economy or grim necessity only can justify a long voyage in the third class:
Aword about children. Americans emancipate, British subordinate, French climinate, and Germans tolerate them on shu board, Perhaps the Japanese do each in turn. It requires courage to start on a ten-thousand-mile voyage, or even further, with one or more about the age of two. When twenty-three of assorted sizes gather at the first-meal apprehension becomes ncertainty. It requires considerable lubri-
stewards and stewardess cheerful all the cation in the way of coin to Keep the way, Our ship made a record voyage from Shanghai to Hongkong; wind, weather, moonlight and thermometer were at their best. We had the usual quota of globe-trotters, merchants, missionaries, and navy officers off duty, The cigarette youths and the piano girl were also in evidence. The gentle reader will doubtless recall his own impressions of his fellow-passengers. There was course the nut quite ideal or typical, but yet quiet, real home-going Father.
He is short of stature, large in girth, of ruddy countenance and heavy handed. Pays household bills regulaly and grumbles periodically. Commands his wife in some one great affair and yields to her abjectly in a thousand small matters, He can talk politics or business by the hour, religion for a minute; but grows altogether dumb on general culture. He believes in education for children, and pays well for it, if some one else will' undertake it. He boasts about his boys—when they are absent,—and pets his girls even in com-Mis speed when the voice of his wife pany. He is ordinarily slow, but accelerates
reaches F sharp. His " let-me-alone please yourself" theory of life is lo by the partner of his joys, who usually answers to the often sounded but never worn title of Mother.
She is tall and spare, sweet- ys, and sometimes handsome. Each child brings aline to her check—the youngest leaves a furrow. She is a Juno in morals, a Guyon at church—Propriety she reaches by instinct when the rule is not obvious. She Knows one man and his ways so. well that she can guess unerringly at all the rest. She disciplines her children to save body and soul; she prudently indulges her servants and retains them while other women are constantly changing. She is nota good book-keeper, but saves money in mysterious wi She conquers by forgiving and her victories outnumber the days of the year. She never has anything to wear, but always appears neatly dressed. Her worst, sins seem to come through her nerves; her greatest weakness is warm tea and "that tired feeling." No one fails to soe That Boy, still Chinese, and are immensely superior Dorn in the East—a misfortunetobegin with. to the barbarians far across the sea, who Tf left to the Shanghai Public Gardens visit us occasionally. Ours is the only and Chinese amahs he will be able to swear realm worth counting after all." To some in six languages without the power to pray light-minded foreigners, this may seem to in one. He may survive the colic and be much the same as the pride of a certain measles, but an excess of bottled sweets old lady in her " very old brass tea-kettle," are bad for his teeth and worse for his liver. whose handle had been renewed more than Ifhe comes up ina missionary compound once, whose spout had been replaced by in the crowded interior he may read Greek another, whose handle was certainly not as carly as Macaulay and display, the ancient, and whose bottom had been re-memory of a Seneca, but it means headache newed quite lately. and a narrow chest later on in his career.
But the pride of the Chinese rests on You cannot measure him by the years of deeper foundations than considerations of his age: you must estimate him from his race and territory. The former may be knowledge of life. He is inclined to be Proved to be @ barbarian admixture, the Priggish, owing to numerous and oblatter may suiter certain trayinys-out at Sequious household servants; but if British the euges (Honyxong, Mormosi, sXtaocuoU, blood runs in him he will seck outdoor Wemaiwes, ana ror Arcuur inay yo), oF sports and show a tendency to fight his have several rents in the boay or the associates. The son of an American likes material (and every treaty port 1s such a to have his own way and usually succeeds.
Tent to the Chimese). but it the national Sooner or later he wants a_bieycle, qand pride is driven from a wider to a narrower then it is time to send or take him home basis, that pride still has a basis in the to school. name of the Sacred Sage, Confucius. On Justo few lines about the hus tablet in every provincial, prefectural, East-born Girl. and county capital, are embossed the bad for a boy to open his fist in words " The Most Sacred Former (or Fore-the Far East, it is worse for a girl to have most) Teacher, Confucius. her first ery there. Nature does little for Carlyle tells us that "of man's whole her and environment seems to do less. terrestrial possessions, unspeakably the Only too often she starts out with a pale noblest are his symbols, divine or divine-face, a languid body, and a thin timid voice seeming; under which' be marches and self-conscious before she can articulate, she fights—what we call his realised ideals. lingers near mamma like a shadow. Her Or which realised ideals, omitting the vocabulary consists of adjectives and in-rest, consider only these two: his Church, terjections. Her mother does all of her or spiritual Guidance; his Kingslup, or thinking; the servants do all of her work—temporal one." And as in Russia, the two father pays the bills of course. great rallying words are, " the Czar and She needs the aid of the West and contact the Faith," so in China the two ideals are with its character far more than the super-the Emperor and Confucius. But among, ficial schooling and shallow accomplishments the thinking classes, the former has large-by courtesy called education. She limits ly waned into something like common-her own horizon, who only expects to place, while the: latter has become the oscillate between matrimony and its most one great rallying point. frequent opposite—acrimony. Woman has er than tne Gods, much yet to learn, but the doors of destiny True, Confucius has never been deified. are opening wide to her at the dawn of the But that is because he, as "the Sacred twentieth century.
Man," towers high above all the gods, In due time we arrived at Hongkong. native or imported. To make Confu-Some passengers got off, others came on. dus a native god would be like giving While waiting for cargo' we went ashore, Shakespeare a British M.A. To class him. some to the Peak, others to "HappyValley. with Buddhist gods would be like giving All had a look at the shops If we have Shakespeare an American degree. Neither time and you the space, Mr. Editor, more would add to his dignity, and either would take him down from his unique position of ink will flow from the cheap fountain pen and place him among the crowd of the Exit. merely excellent. Let a foreigner say what he likes about any idol, Taoist or Buddhist, and the Chinese will laugh with
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.