The North China _Herald_ gives the following as a sample of a Chinese boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the services, was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and makes private of anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts as a rascal. He discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you lost things which are determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request of Missy (the employer’s wife) which as possible as you can. But I am unliking at there Master to do anythings, I am much obliged to come to my new place under of your charges (recommendation) and beg you to bless me as boy or coolie business for my content at all, or please you to commence the any other places you know of. So I hope you to grant me a good report, for I am beg it to you on knees. Shall be much obediently and obliged. Address me to here as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain, Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.” For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you do not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief, or Chief of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you from loss and annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that he is earning his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know where the watchman is, so that he may operate in safety if the owner has not taken out the usual insurance. A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him the dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of going to the inferior regions. _In ignorantia salus!_ On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s fear, not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said the Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and they are as strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in a retreat before many claimants?” There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets. The Hongkong _Telegraph_ writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel door, desiring to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper, with its usual wit, suggests that an officer of the law should peer into the fakir’s immediate future! The same paper coins this aphorism: “We never know how many friends we have till we don’t need them; or how few friends we have till we need them.” A motor truck was rushing by with a load of empty barrels. “Nothing can stop them,” suggested the admiring Chan. “Nothing but corks,” replied the punnist Choi.