Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/174

they stood back a little and so widened the circle round me. They chose to interpret my remarks as an invitation, and pressed so close that I had scarcely elbow-room. There is something peculiar about the stolid, vacuous stare of a Chinese crowd. It affects one variously according to one's own particular mood; but I have never found it anything but unpleasant. It generally irritates. You feel a wild desire to rush in and hit out right and left, and chance the consequences. Nothing will move it when once it has made up its mind that it wishes to place you under its observation. It just stares with an exasperating, unblinking, vacuous stare. How often when gazing at the empty expressionless features of a Chinese face have I recalled the half-humorous query which a French diplomatist once put to a French bishop apostolic in China: "Et croyez-vous vraiement que les Chinois ont une âme?" On this occasion I innocently let fall an empty tin which had once contained potted meat. The effect among the juvenile portion of the audience was instantaneous; but when the air cleared after the struggle which