about the country from one large fair to another, till they are either sold, or taken back to their point of departure. But should any inexperienced person be so rash as to wish to buy timber in the fifth moon, he will soon ascertain why the wisest of Orientals remarked that "there is a time to every purpose under the heaven."
In speaking of economy we have mentioned that as most Chinese tools are not to be had in a completed state, the customer buys the parts and has them united to suit himself, which does not comport with our conception of convenience.
The writer once instructed a servant to buy a hatchet for splitting wood. There was none to be had, but he returned instead with fourteen large (imported) horse-shoes, which a blacksmith hammered into something resembling a miner's pick, to which a carpenter affixed a handle, the total cost being much greater than that of a good foreign axe!
Few inconveniences of the Celestial Empire make upon the Western mind a more speedy and a more indelible impression than the entire absence of "sanitation." Whenever there has been an attempt made to accomplish something in the way of drainage, as in Peking, the resultant evils are very much greater than those which they were designed to cure. No matter how long one has lived in China, he remains in a condition of mental suspense, unable to decide that most interesting question so often raised, Which is the filthiest city in the Empire? A visitor from one of the northern provinces boasted to a resident in Amoy that, in offensiveness to the senses, no city in south China could equal those of the north. With a view to decide this moot point, the city of Amoy was extensively traversed, and found to be unexpectedly clean—that is, for a Chinese city. Jealous for the pre-eminence of his adopted home, the Amoy resident claimed that he was taken at a disadvantage, as a heavy rain had recently done much to wash the streets! The traveller thinks he has found
