by the invitation, I declined without regret and announced my intention of returning in half an hour.
During this interval I visited the town, wandering along the principal street, where all sorts of shops, restaurants, inns, opium dens and gambling houses jostled one another. Both sides of the roadway were lined with great and small poles, which carried many forms of red and black signs advertising commercial wares or the products of the manufacturing shops, whose fronts opened on the street.
In one of these was a bakery, or rather a confectioner's shop, where several half-naked Chinese were making steamed dumplings or man-t'ou and other dainties. Bootmakers, tailors, locksmiths and tinkers all worked in dark and smelly quarters. Farther on against a sunny wall two barbers plied their trade, one of them scraping the hair from the head and face of his sleeping client with a spoon-shaped razor, while the other washed and rebraided a pigtail, finishing it off with the tassel of black silk at the end.
A fat old Chinese, decked with a pair of immense black-rimmed spectacles, readily accepted by all as indubitable sign of his wisdom, sat gravely behind a little table that carried the regulation inkstone, Chinese pens, a package of paper and the familiar long envelopes with a broad red band down the middle. His business was the writing of petitions to the authorities and private letters to the relatives of those who had never been initiated into the mysteries of chirography. He was also not beneath proclaiming loudly the merits of his services, which he averred would bring sure results.
At another table sat a doctor, clad in a long grey overgown and also wearing the spectacles of wisdom and importance. He listened to the complaints of the suf-
