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to be candid, and perhaps it is as well—as well, I mean, that you should know me,' she added, apparently unmoved.

'I am content,' he answered, catching her spirit.

'And so am I,' she said.

'To no one else in the world would

I have said as much as I have said to you. To no other man would I say, "Win a living, and I will be yours!" But I say it to you. Do as much as that for me and I will marry you, Stephen. If you cannot, I cannot.'

'You are very prosaic,' he replied, lapsing into bitterness again.

'Oh, if you are not content' she retorted.

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He did not let her finish the sentence. You will marry me on the day I obtain a living?' he asked.

'I will,' she answered bravely.

She was standing up now, and he too-standing where the rector had stood an hour before. She let him pass his arm round her waist, but when he would have drawn her closer to him, and bent his head to kiss her, she hung back. 'No,' she said, blushing hotly, 'I think '—with a shy laugh—that you are making too certain, sir.'

'Do you wish me not to succeed?' he replied, looking down at her; and it must be confessed the lover's rôle became him better than nine-tenths of those who knew his dark, rugged face would bave believed.

She shook her head, smiling.

•Then if you wish me success,' he replied, you must send me out with some guerdon of your favour.' And this time she did not resist. He drew her to him and kissed her thrice. Then she escaped from him and took refuge on the other side of the fireplace.

'You must not do that again,' she said, biting her lip and trying to look at him reproachfully. At any rate, you have had back a victor I will crown

your guerdon now. When you come you, but until then we are friends only. You understand, sir?' And, though he demurred, he presently said he understood.

(To be continued.)

257

ADVERTISING IN CHINA.

IN the Voyage of the Sunbeam the late Lady Brassey translated from Brazilian newspapers certain advertisements of slaves for sale, remarking that the presence of announcements of such a kind in journals of standing showed, not only that the sale of slaves was carried on freely and openly in Brazil, but that Brazilian public opinion found nothing to object to in the practice. There can be little doubt, indeed, of the value to an inquiring sociologist of the advertising columns of a leading paper. Advertisements give unconscious, and therefore trustworthy, evidence of the current standards of intelligence, morality, and refinement, quite as much as of the prosperity or poverty of a country. It is not time wasted, then, to take up the advertisement-sheet of that comparatively modern institution the Chinese vernacular press, and see what light it throws on Chinese manners and morals.

In China proper there are at present four daily papers-one published at Canton, one at Tientsin, and two at Shanghai. Of these, the first is the only one not under foreign protection, and probably for this very reason its advertisement-sheet contains little of interest. It is largely occupied, in fact, by the puffs of an enterprising English druggist. The most characteristic advertisements are to be found, for those who have patience and eyesight, in the Shên Pao, or Shanghai Gazette. This paper was started in 1872 by an English resident as a commercial speculation. The native editor was given practically a free hand, while immunity from mandarin resentment was secured by the foreign ownership. In consequence the new venture, when its merits were once understood, became a Cave of Adullam for all Chinamen with a grievance. It took, in fact, the place of the indigenous nameless placard.' What that was (and is) the unfortunate foreign settlers in the Yangtse valley know only too well. If a Chinaman considers himself wronged, and believes that the wrongdoer has the ear of the parent of his people,' the local magistrate, he does not-for that were folly-go to law. Nor does he lie in wait for his adversary and knife him surreptitiously-your true Chinaman is far too prudent for that. Early some morning appears on a convenient and conspicuous wall, by choice in the near neighbourhood of the

offender, a full and particular, though possibly not over-true, account of his transgression, the whole professedly written by a Friend to Justice. Precisely how far in the direction of scurrility the writer will venture to go depends on the amount of support he can expect from public opinion. If the party attacked be the self-denying Sisters of Mercy with their hospitals and crèches, or the Catholic missionaries (who, pace the correspondent of Truth, are not beloved by the Chinese), then any amount of filthy abuse may be indulged in with comparative impunity. Officialdom, on the other hand, must only be impugned in general terms. To say that 'every civilian has three hands, every army officer three feet'-in other words, to impute venality to the magistrates and cowardice to the military-is a stale truism which no official would venture to confute by a beating; but if the Friend of Justice indicts some individual magistrate by name, as he sometimes does, then matters will be made serious for him-when he is caught. Now, it very soon occurred to the Friends of Justice aforesaid that, all things considered, it would be much more satisfactory if the necessary reviling could be performed without any of the unpleasant consequences usually found to result from manuscript placarding. Accordingly they hastened to patronise the new press, protected as it was by the still powerful foreigner. Of course, the obscene lies directed against foreign missionaries were inadmissible, and too luxuriant abuse was pruned down. Still, enough remained to furnish forth a crop of libel actions had China been blessed with a Lord Campbell, and to keep several deserving barristers from starvation if the genus had been known in China. For many weeks the columns of the Shanghai paper a few years ago were adorned with the portrait of a bespectacled and befeathered mandarin. Above the portrait appeared the legend, 'He still wears a red button and a peacock's feather'-as who should say, He still styles himself a Right Honourable and a K.C.B. Below the portrait was the indictment, commencing with this promising sentence: 'Behold a cashiered Intendant of Hupeh, a man without a conscience, an avaricious schemer, one whose vileness is patent to all!' Then followed names and details, which it were tedious to repeat. The defendant, if we may so regard him, bad overdrawn his account at his pawnbroker's, and, as an official of his degree might do, had repudiated the debt. The sole redress the plaintiff could obtain was the pleasure of seeing his enemy posted everywhere as 'expelled from the Service, leaving a legacy of disgrace to his

descendants, ashamed of himself, but still boasting of his rank.' The moral to us seems, How very much more lively, and to novelists of the Charles Reade school more valuable, would the columns of the 'Tiser be if English pawnbrokers were allowed to advertise their transactions and libel their customers in this very outspoken fashion!

Here is another advertisement of the same class, but of wider interest :

A Husband in search of his Wife.

In July, 1878, I, Chang Shan-ch'un, of Wu-chang, married the daughter-in-law of one Wang, a girl whose maiden name had been Kung, in my native district, and marriage-papers were drawn up in evidence. We lived together as husband and wife in kindness and affection for seven years, without any break in our friendly relations. My wife is 27 years old this year. My nephew was transferred the year before last to Tientsin by H.E. Li Hung-chang, and invited me to accompany him, which, owing to the strong opposition of my wife, I did not do. Last June, however, I followed my battalion to their quarters near the West Gate of Shanghai. This March we removed to the Hui-fang Lou, when, it seems, my wife, under the pseudonym of Chou Ai-ch'ing (Chou l'Amoureuse), began to frequent the Ti-i teahouse, a circumstance of which I was at the time in total ignorance. Later on a Huchou man, whose name I do not know, went privately with my wife to a temple to burn incense. He had the effrontery to wear a blue button and the medallion and beads of an official. This went on until at eight o'clock on the evening of the 17th instant my wife secretly fled from our house taking with her a bundle. I cross-questioned the nurse and so became acquainted with the foregoing facts.

I cannot control my wrath and bitterness. My wife has, it is plain, been enticed away by this rascal's deceit. How, I wonder, can a mere tailor's block like this succeed in beguiling a girl who has a lawful husband? Surely he has not law or justice before his eyes. It is on this account that I am advertising. Should any kind-hearted gentleman who can do so give me information by letter, I will reward him with twenty dollars; should he bring her back, I will gratefully give him forty. I will most certainly not eat my words. His kindness and benevolence for a myriad generations, to all eternity, shall not be forgotten.

But before my eyes is still my one-year-old baby-girl, wailing and weeping night and morning. Should that rascal presume on his position and obstinately retain her as his mistress, not only to all eternity shall he be infamous, not only shall he cut short the line of his ancestors and be bereft of posterity, but we three-father, son, and little daughter—will risk our lives to punish him. I hope and trust he will think thrice, and so avoid an after-repentance. I make this plain declaration expressly.

Letters may be addressed to No. 4 Hui-fang Lou.

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Note the neat allusion to my nephew,' who is under the patronage of no less a person than His Excellency the Viceroy of Chihli.

About the same time appeared in the Shên Pao an advertisement which I translated for its English contemporary, the North

China Herald. I was gratified, some months later, to find that it had, by the obliging instrumentality of the Central News Agency, been disseminated among various home papers. But the agent (to whom I make my bow) did not consider the form of my translation suited to English ideas. In my anxiety to preserve the spirit of the original I had translated it literally, so that the heading ran 'Beware of incurring Death by Thunder!' The agent (I humbly acknowledge the extent of his erudition) knew that death, if it happens at all under these circumstances, is not, in England nowadays, ascribed to thunder. He therefore altered the heading to Death by Lightning.' Last century one of the Jesuit missionaries in Peking (I think Père Amyot) complained, but not quite as deferentially as I have done, of similar editing. 'I wrote,' he said, 'in my letters to Paris of the drawbacks to Peking streets, describing them as full of dust in winter and a sea of mud in summer. My publisher objected to this as contrary to universalthat is, to his—experience, and has made me speak of the mud in winter and the dust in summer, as though Peking were Paris.' In Chinese thunderstorms the lightning plays a comparatively innocuous part: its sole use is to enable the offended deity to see his victim and so wield the bolt with deadlier effect. I had to thank the agent for other corrections which were no doubt, from a literary point of view, great improvements, but were not a closer rendering of the original. That ran as follows:

Beware of incurring Death by Thunder !

Your mother is weeping bitterly as she writes this for her boy Joy to see. When you ran away on the 30th of the 8th moon the shop-people came and inquired for you, and that was the first news we had. I nearly died of fear at the time, and since then sleep and food have been in vain, and I am weeping and sobbing still. The letter that came from beyond the horizon I have, but it gives no place or abode where I might seek you. I am now at my last gasp, and the family has suffered for many days from grievous insults. If you delay longer and do not return, I cannot, cannot bear it, and shall surely seek an end to my life, and then you will stand in peril of death by thunder. If you come, no matter how, everything is sure to be arranged. I have thought of a plan, and your father may still be kept in ignorance. My life or death hangs on the issue of these few days. Only I pray that all kind-hearted people everywhere will spread this abroad so that the right person may hear of it. So will they lay up for themselves a boundless store of secret merit.

Written by one in Soochow city.

The hue and cry is constantly raised in the columns of the Shên Pao and its contemporaries. Advertisements of this class

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