The human beasts of burden--the rickshaw coolies of Hongkong, Shanghai, and the treaty ports--are directed by little of their own language. Only a few of the mercantile men on station learn the language. The foreign tourist generally learns two words, “kwai se” (go) and “man-man” (stop-stop), and the coolies, like beasts, therefore depend for directions as they race along in the heat, on a tap on the left or right shaft to indicate which street the “fare” desires to turn up. Hongkong proposes to have printed on a large bill-board at every chair and rickshaw stand a list of fares. Hongkong and Shanghai have become great tourist centers, whole shiploads landing there from New York and San Francisco, and the tourist’s generosity or lack of local information permits him to pay so large a fare that the expenses of the resident are raised beyond endurance. The example of Hongkong might well be copied at every tourist center over the world. “A fair price, but not a foolish price” is the watchword in these new days of economy and efficiency, because world-waste can be tolerated no longer. The regiments which from time to time come to garrison Hongkong reveal many interesting traits in their customs and uniform. The Royal Welsh Fusiliers, fresh from the Boer War, wore three silk ribbons down their backs. They are the only British regiment which is permitted thus to mourn the deprivation of the old “pig tail” of the bewigged regiments of the Georges, which custom they were the last regiment to discontinue. The Lincolnshires wear a band of green to show that they are foresters recruited in Robin Hood’s country. The Inneskilling Fusiliers and the Somersets at Tientsin retain their traditional territorial peculiarities. The Cameronians are the only British regiment which is allowed to bear arms into church service, as a reminder of the old strenuous days of surprise when the clans might leap like a wolf from behind even the pulpit. There are so many branches of the historic British service in Hongkong’s, Tientsin’s, etc., garrison life that American tourists are delightfully entertained and instructed in tradition that is far from uninteresting. The British have found that to recruit and fight a man as a number is not a success, as compared with the picturesque traditions in a territorial army of uniform, customs, names, fetish, romance, glory, flags, distinctive rights, etc. In other words, they humor Tommy Atkins as a boy, and he fights for them like a man, every time it is necessary. This was shown when the swagger regiments of the Guards of London, under Generals French, Paget and Roberts hit the Boer lines as hard as the Royal Welsh, who are recruited from sturdy fearless miners. Bret Harte’s “Caucasian showed that he was no more played out” on those occasions than he was when he rushed El Caney and San Juan Hill led by Roosevelt, Lawton, Chaffee and Wheeler. The Chinese of Peking and Tientsin in 1900 had a chance to see the brilliant performance