The incident will be recalled in Judges, Chapter 12, where the Gileadites slew the Ephraimites who could only pronounce the word “shibboleth” as “sibboleth”. The Manchus are thicker of tongue than the Chinese. An ingenious story got about in October, 1911, that the rebels of General Li’s army were testing some disguised Manchus with the pronunciation of the numeral six, “Liu”, before killing them in retaliation for a massacre, the Manchus being unable to get the sound far enough back in their mouths and around their tongue in the proper Chinese fashion. The proper tone, lisp and aspirate makes all the difference, for the same written word “ho” means river and fire; the word “shui” means water and sleep; “chih” means gas and red, and so on. English, and not German, has been prescribed as the language to be used in the study of science and world politics. The Chinese idiom and ideograph could not come near enough to distinct expression. For instance, the best they could do with fire-engine, steam-roller, Elijah’s chariot of fire, and automobile, was to call them all “fire carriage”; and electricity, globe, and flash-light were all three “lightning breath”. Geography, the world, and panorama were all called “All Under Heaven” (Tien Hsia). “Heavenly Literature” (Tien Wen) represented the words theology and astronomy. Lacking pronouns, the language adopts peculiar expedients. Thus an affix meaning “near” answers to “my”, and “that side” answers to “your”. That is, “near house” is my house; “that side house” is obviously your house. If this does not clearly convey the idea, the arbitrary ideographic affix of “honorable” and “despisable” will; that is, the “honorable house” is your house of course, and the “despisable house” with so effusively mannerly a people could only be my house. On account of their experience with the difficult and beautiful Chinese character which requires accuracy, the Chinese penman who learns to write English, does it in the most beautiful Spencerian copper-plate. The same care and skill is shown in copying drawings from our modern text-books, which have been translated for their new schools. The Chinese think in pictures. The characters for “many stars, clouds wait” means a clear night, as “clouds many, stars wait” means a gathering storm. This is why they have chosen English for its exactness, as they can not well express the word gathering. “It is bad walking” is rendered by “Walk not attain” (Tsou puh te). Passenger boats or skiffs are not so named. Those in use at Hongkong are called “san pans” (meaning three boards), and the famous light boats of the Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien are called “wu pans” (five boards). The forcible etymology of some Chinese words is illustrated by the words for “fan tan” gambling, which literally means “turn and part”. The cup is turned over a lot of coins, and the rest of the heap is brushed aside. Then the cup is