in false characters. Sometimes the character which is employed is more complex than the one which should have been used, showing that the error was not due to a wish to economise work, but it is rather to be credited to the fact that ordinarily accuracy is considered as of no importance. A like carelessness of notation is met with in far greater abundance in common letters, a character being often represented by another of the same sound, the mistake being due as much to illiteracy as to carelessness.
Indifference to precision is nowhere more flagrantly manifested than in the superscription of epistles. An ordinary Chinese letter is addressed in bold characters, to "My Father Great Man," "Compassionate Mother Great Man," "Ancestral Uncle Great Man," "Virtuous Younger Brother Great Man," etc., etc., generally with no hint as to the name of the "Great Man" addressed.
It certainly appears singular that an eminently practical people like the Chinese should be so inexact in regard to their own personal names as observation indicates them to be. It js very common to find these names written now with one character and again with another, and either one, we are informed, will answer. But this is not so confusing as the fact that the same man often has several different names, his family name, his "style," and, strange to say, a wholly different one, used only on registering for admission to literary examinations. It is for this reason not uncommon for a foreigner to mistake one Chinese for two or three. The names of villages are not less uncertain, sometimes appearing in two or even three entirely different forms, and no one of them is admitted to be more "right" than another. If one should be an acknowledged corruption of another, they may be employed interchangeably, or the correct name may be used in official papers and the other in ordinary speech, or yet again, the
