same manner, "three eighteens" make "sixty," and so on generally. We have heard of a case in which an imperial courier failed to make a certain distance in the limits of time allowed by rule, and it was set up in his defence that the "sixty li" were "large." As this was a fair plea, the magistrate ordered the distance measured, when it was found that it was in reality "eighty-three li," and it has continued to be so reckoned ever since.
Several villages scattered about at distances from a city varying from one li to six, may each be called "The Three-Li Village." One often notices that a distance which would otherwise be reckoned as about a li, if there are houses on each side of the road, is called five li, and every person in that hamlet will gravely assure us that such is the real length of the street.
Under these circumstances, it cannot be a matter of surprise to find that the regulation of standards is a thing which each individual undertakes for himself. The steel-yard maker perambulates the street, and puts in the little dots (called "stars") according to the preferences of each customer, who will have not less than two sets of balances, one for buying and one for selling. A ready-made balance, unless it might be an old one, is not to be had, for the whole scale of standards is in a fluid condition, to be solidified only by each successive purchaser.
The same general truth is illustrated by the statements in regard to age, particularity in which is a national trait of the Chinese. While it is easy to ascertain one's age with exactness, by the animal governing the year in which he was born, and to which he therefore "belongs," nothing is more common than to hear the wildest approximation to exactness. An old man is "seventy or eighty years of age," when you know to a certainty that he was seventy only a year ago. The fact is, that in China a person becomes "eighty" the moment
