Finally she said, "I have studied literature, but that of China was not included." "Your history," I continued, "begins in 1492; our written history begins in the twenty-third century before Christ, and the years down to 720 B. C. are particularly well covered, while our legends run back for thousands of years." But my companion had never heard of the _Shoo-King_. It was so with the _Chun Tsew_[4] of Confucius and the _Four Books_--_Ta-h[ue]-[uo]_,[5] _Chung-yung_,[6] _Lun-yu_,[7] _M[ua]ng-tsze_.[8] She had never heard of them. I told her of the invention of paper by the Marquis Tsae several centuries before Christ, and she laughingly replied that she supposed that I would claim next that the Chinese had libraries like those Mr. Carnegie is founding. I was delighted to assure her that her assumption was correct, and drew a little picture of a well-known Chinese library, founded two thousand years ago, the Han Library, with its 3,123 classics, its 2,706 works on philosophy, its 2,528 books on mathematics, its 790 works on war, its 868 books on medicine, 1,318 on poetry, not to speak of thousands of essays. I could not but wonder as I talked, where were the Americans and their literature when our fathers were reading these books two thousand years ago! Even the English people were wild savages, living in caves and huts, when our people were printing books and encyclopedias of knowledge. I dwelt upon our poetry, the National Airs, Greater Eulogies, dating back several thousand years. I told her of the splendors of our great versifier, _Le-Tai-Pih_; and I might have said that many American poets, like Walt Whitman, had doubtless read the translations to their advantage. I had the pleasure at least of commanding this lady's attention, and I believe she was the first American who deigned to take a Chinaman seriously. The facts of our literature are available, but only scholars make a study of it, and so far as I could learn not a word of Chinese literature is ever taught in American schools, though in the great universities there are facilities, and the best educated people are familiar with our history.