water, which is required for rubbing up the ink. The pen cannot be used without considerable previous manipulation to soften its delicate hairs; it is very liable to be injured by inexpert handling, and lasts but a comparatively short time. The Chinese have no substitute for the pen, such as lead-pencils, nor if they had them would they be able to keep them in repair, since they have no penknives, and no pockets in which to carry them. We have previously endeavoured, in speaking of the economy of the Chinese, to do justice to their great skill in accomplishing excellent results with very inadequate means, but it is not the less true that such labour-saving devices as are so constantly met in Western lands are unknown in China. In a modern hotel in the Occident one has but to push something or to pull something and he gets whatever he wants—hot or cold water, lights, heat, service. But the finest hostelry in the Eighteen Provinces, like all inferior places of accommodation, obliges its guest, whenever he is conscious of an unsupplied need, to go to the outer door of his apartment and yell at the top of his voice, vainly hoping to be heard for his much speaking.
Many articles constantly required by the Chinese are not to be had on demand, but only when the dealer in the same happens to make his irregular appearance. At all other times one might as well find himself dropped in the interior of the Soudan, so far as the supply of current wants is concerned. In the city every one carries a lantern at night, yet in some cities, at least, lanterns are to be had only when the peddler brings them around, and those who want them buy at such times, as we do of a milkman or a dealer in fresh yeast. That percentage of the whole population which lives in Chinese cities cannot be a large one, and in the country this limitation of traffic is the rule and not the exception. In some districts, for example, it is customary to sell timber for house-building in the second moon, and the same logs are often dragged
