We had paused by " pole bearing
certain com stopped at announcement to the effect, that spot, if inclined." There being none in sight at the moment, we cast /ebout in search of entertainment and instruction," It was thus that the sign came'to our notice.
This read" quite plainly, "E: change Rat for One Dollar." "Aha, thought we, "Science is at long last taking hold of the masses, and the expenditure for technical education justifying itself. "Here is someone who has heard of Dr. Wu Lien-teh, and show he traced the germ of plague to the Manchurian marmoset and the ungainly rat, If enlightenment thus continues, we need fear repetition of the cholera outbreak, snather summer."
Beneath this surge of optimism, however, was a distinct feeling of uneasiness. dollar seemed an unusually high price for any Chine20 to be willing to pay for a rat, unless it were wanted for some cunning medicinal brew and had perforce to conform with rare specific cations, Knowing a little of the psychology of the Celestial, we pictured the neighbourhood rapidly denuded of rats and the altruistic purchaser just as speedily bankrupt. Our reflexions thereupon took a hackneyed turn. "There is more in this than meets the eye," we mused, "or, rather, than has - met eye." "So we decided to another look. The inevitable disillusionment ensued. The second me, in much smaller letters, to be sure, read: "260 coppers." Then followed sundry lines valuing the sat" in various combinations of small silver coin.
As we waited. for a conveyance that would be inclined to stop at the designated halting place, from above came the notes of a' worn iano, and @ voice—apparently that of a young girl—broke into the strains of "Oh, I'll tak' the High! Road, and you'll tak' the low..." It has been our privilege to behold the "bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond," ang the song conjured up momentary vision of them amid! the squalid surroundings. This, like that of the Chinese masses educated to the point where a rat will bring, one dollar rather than that public health should suffer, quickly fader and was supplanted by the reflexion that bonny as are the Banks of Loch Lomond, they lack certain interesting features pertaining to the Banks of Szechuen Road and other localities.
These, apparently, were create?
bait! the impecunious. Each! flaunts the aggravating information, ""All Kinds of Money." Small wonder that the desperate, on learning this, heave bricks or ' cobbles throug! late glass windows in order to draw attention to their plight. - Not lonly this, but the firm names and styles are bewildering to a degree. One's objective, let_ us say, is the "Kong Doo Bank," or transactions leading one to hope for a favourable "rat" in exchange for the precious silver dollar tightly squeezed in the hand. Negotiations are unsatisfactory, and, glace ing up, one perceives that he is just next door to his objective and fat the "No Kong Doo Bank." This accounts for everything. The frank of the lot, of course, is the the Yeu Bank." Here one is very promptly shown.
Not far off is a more pretentious establishment, one devoted to faci lirating travel in troubled Cathay. No need for this one to claim "all kinds of money." Its very air is conclusive proof of such possession, Yet it is not above displaying sunlary kinds, very handsomely fram-Jed, in the window. Here are no narrow shelves -stocked with tins Jof cigarettes, daily papers, and weekly journals. Instead, there is Jwhat appears at a distance to be cubist landscape, but on approach revolves itself into the choicest ex-
Jamples of the lithographer's art. We learn that the government of Pish-Tush will pay the bearer: of the portrait of a purple cow bisect-_ ed by a vermilion locomotive in the' tender of which reposes a beige steamship, one silver dollar on de mand—assuming, of course, that jthe government of Pish-Tush is still functioning by the time the bearer gets there. If not, he may take a chance with the government of Pish-Tache, in the form of a Nile-green wheat field over which hovers an aeroplane, the whole flanked by a three-colour portrait of a gentleman who looks startlingly like our washerman. In view of the diversity of this establishment's "all kinds. of money," we should' not be istdhished, toy learn that the proprietors have been honoured with the Order of the Excellent Crop,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.