represents two children swinging their arms and running, he repeated: 
See the children at their play,
Gathering flowers by the way.
"They are gathering pussy-willows," he added.
In another he represented a child standing before the front gate, where he had knocked in vain to gain admission. As he completed it he said, pointing to the apricot over the door:
Ten times he knocked upon the gate,
But nine, they opened not,
Above the wall he plainly saw,
A ripe, red apricot.
He continued to represent quotations from the poets and explain them as he went along.
There was one which indicated that some one was ascending the steps to the jade platform on which the dust had settled as it does on everything in Peking; at the same time the verse told us that 
Step by step we reach the platform,
All of jade of purest green,
Call a child to come and sweep it,
But he cannot sweep it clean.
123
