Whatever your degree of objection to monopolies, a single reason enumerated by the autocrat seeking to enter your employ is sufficient to swing you into a feeble acquiescence, for, to tell the truth, you are not impressed favorably by the mob of jostling, shoving yellow humanity on shore, naked to the waist, who seem to be accentuating with menacing gestures their demands upon your patronage. You wonder how long a white man can be on shore without having his throat cut, and reason that if Ah Cum John can bully a sovereign-born American into accepting him as guide, when you had wanted somebody else, why is he not the very man to control the passions of a fanatical Chinese mob? His administrative ability impresses by the manner in which he directs affairs from the instant his control is confessed by your party of seven native Americans, and after breakfast this born leader sets forth at the head of the timid pleiad longing to explore the great human warren of China--the thugs of the river bank are now your bearers and devoted subjects, four to a chair, and countless assistants and relatives trail at the end of the procession. The cavalcade attracts good-natured attention from shopkeepers drawn to the fronts of their stalls by the yelping of forty lusty Mongol throats, commanding all and sundry wayfarers to allow honorable visitors to pass. So narrow are the filth-smeared streets that a sight-seer might help himself at will from shops on either side of the way. Hundreds of messes stewing over braziers in the thoroughfare have to be moved, and now and then the bearers of a native dignitary slide into a conveniently wide place that the procession of "foreign devils" may not be inconvenienced. But a mandarin, in his palanquin and preceded by an orderly mounted on a short-legged pony, and guarded front and rear by forty wicked-looking soldiers armed with carbines, has precedence so instantly accorded him that the clients of Ah Cum's third son are almost precipitated sideways into a row of shops. The mighty official passes without so much as casting a glance of compliment at the women of the party, thereby making it evident that Canton mandarins have a code of deportment peculiarly their own.