Here is a story of merry days at Peking. The legation ladies had informed the Manchu princess that she must be modern since the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi had decreed it; that she must learn English, music and dancing. As it was the trend of the hour, the suggestion was accepted. The Manchu learned various things. It came to be her duty in time to receive a delegation of earnest missionary ladies, to whom she was ready to prove that she was modern, and had received the foreign branding. “I know modern American hymn; national anthem of great flowery flag country; hail to America. I will sing it and I will dance it.” She danced it and she sang it, and here is what the horrified missionary ladies heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill: _Waltz Me Around Again, Willie_. “With butter at fifty cents a pound and eggs at fifty cents a dozen in your honorable country, I should think you’d move the piano out, and move the cow and hens into your best room so as to be sure of the precious creatures,” said a Chinese economist, who was reading the last American paper at the Hankau guild, and who was satisfied with three cents a dozen for his eggs. The tea-tasters employed are all foreigners, and it is essential that the taster shall abstain from liquors and tobacco. When the first man among them is seen at the bar in a foreign club at Canton or Hankau, it is a surer sign than the calendar that July 1st is around again. Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations until he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him short; that as he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not know any other way in which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland were living he might say that this Chinese was the first attorney for the tariff, and its progeny. The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of the waves to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies its strange actions because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah, a swift snake boat pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing junk, which was boarded. After robbing the crew, the pirates battened them down beneath secured hatches, and made good their escape, smiling at their aptitude in carpentry.