the most ingenious corset shop in Paris; his abdomen protruded several feet in front of his knees; his was a masterly embonpoint of glut.
There must have been a hundred big joss-sticks burning in the room—not the poor, slight things sold in Europe, but Chinese incense at its best and most pungent.
The mandarin used chop-sticks. The boy and his tutor ate with silver forks.
The food was delicious, and Muir ate heartily. But the child and the old man ate little. Both were sick at heart. Five of the mandarin's concubines brought in fruit and sweetmeats. The boy took a glacé persimmon, and smiled at the woman. He knew them all by name (there were a score or more in the "fragrant apartments"), and he liked most of them and often played with them. The mandarin paid no heed to them whatever. Such of their names as he had once known he had quite forgotten. The old celibate lived for China and for his grandson. But he kept his Chinese state in China, and always would. And his women were well clad, well fed, well treated and reasonably happy. And if one of them died she was replaced, and so was one that took the smallpox and was disfigured. But one was rarely scolded, and never was one beaten. Wu Ching Yu rarely remembered their existence. When he did it bored him. But they were part of his retinue, and it no more occurs to an important Chinese to discard his retinue than it does to a portly and decent Scot to discard his kilt in broad daylight on Princes Street. The one discard would be as indecent as the other. Manners make men everywhere, and they have no small share in making manhood, in China as in Edinburgh. They differ in different districts, but, after all, their difference
