who had long heard through the dim distance the engaging echoes of Peking a real visit to thie place was like an entrance to fairyland. Here was the writer actually, for the first time, within the precincts of this great city, this master creation of Ming and Manchu.
I carried with me a diary of Kim, a Korean who visited the city 1712. He was younger brother of the envoy and had come in a mighty train of five hundred men. They reached Peking on a cold D: cember day, the 51st year of Kang-shi. By the East Gate they entered, passed beneath the pailous along Hata-men to the corner of Legation Street where they swept west, over the Jade Bridge and into the yamen. But no cup of tea awaited them, or warm room, or smiling face, only a. wild whistling building with the paper off the walls driven with dust and windy spooks. "I inquired," said Kim, "as to the monies appropriated for the upkeep of the place," when the Chinaman in charge said Yes, large money there was but in its passage from the Chancellor of the Exch-quer down to the paper-hanger it bad in the most un-
ed."
Sesona table way wholly evaporate
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.