Wallett, who had been clowning in Franconi’s circus, then located in Dublin, joined Pablo Fanque in Glasgow, and between them they devised an entertainment which was found attractive, but which produced most ludicrous consequences. There was a posturer in the company, whose Hibernian origin was concealed under the _nom d’arena_ of Vilderini; and it was proposed that this man should be transformed, in semblance at least, into a Chinese. The Irishman did not object, though the process involved the shaving of his head, and the staining of his skin with a wash to the dusky yellow tint characteristic of the veritable compatriots of Confucius. The metamorphosis was completed by arraying him in a Chinese costume, and conferring upon him the name of Ki-hi-chin-fan-foo, which appeared upon the bills in Chinese characters, as well as in the English equivalents. Whether his sponsors had recourse to a professor of the peculiar language of the Flowery Land, or took the characters from the more convenient source presented by a tea-chest or a cake of Indian ink, I am unable to say; but the strange scrawl served its purpose, which was to attract attention and excite curiosity, and the few Celestials in Glasgow were either more unsophisticated than the ‘heathen Chinee’ immortalized by Bret Harte, and suspected no deception, or they were too illiterate to detect it. It happened that an enterprising tea-dealer in the city had, some time previously, conceived the idea of engaging a native of China to stand at the shop-door, in Chinese costume, and give handbills to the Glasgowegians as they passed. A Chinese was soon obtained, and posted at the door, where, in a few weeks, he found himself confronted with a fellow-countryman, who was similarly engaged at a rival tea-shop on the other side of the street. The two Chineses—Milton is my authority for that word—could not behold the circus bills, with their graphic design of a Chinese festival and the large characters forming the name of the great posturer who had performed before the brother of the sun and the moon, without being moved. They went to the circus, and, in a posturing act, to which a Chinese character was imparted by a profuse display of Chinese lanterns and a discordant beating of gongs, thumping of tom-toms, and clashing of cymbals, by supernumeraries in Chinese costumes, they beheld the great Ki-hi-chin-fan-foo.