It must be that curio dealers descry their victims from afar and it may be equally true that the real lover of Chinese vertu can sniff a bargain in antiques miles away and discern genuine finds hidden away beneath layers of the most ordinary and unpromising dirt. Such seems the explanation for the discovery by Mrs. J. W. Gande. of the last Ningpo Ceremonial Junk in existence.
Mrs. Gande was accosted one morning by an enterprising curio vendor who had brought up with him from Ningpo the dismantled remains of one of the wonderful old junks or sampans, carried in all the important processions of Ningpo. There have never been but four of these junks, the Ningpo men say, and the other three have been broken up and destroyed since the good old days when ceremonies were carried through with proper regard for pomp and form.
But the junk as Mrs. Gande first saw it was very different from the junk which meets the eye to-day as it boldly rides the main, set up in the place of honour in the Gande home in 1 Thorburn Road, ranking above all the other examples of Chinese art which press about it. When the keen eye of the con-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.