Here we saw Chinamen for the first time on native heath. They came out to us in sampans, always with one or two children in the bow, to get scraps to eat at the port-holes aft, or empty bottles, which they much prized; or drifted past us on the swift tide, watching like birds of prey for anything that might be thrown overboard. And we saw the attitude of Japanese toward Chinamen for the first time, as well, and all the time one memory, incongruous and unjust though it was, hung in my mind--the memory of a town-bred mulatto in a high hat with his thumbs in the arm-holes of a white waistcoat, and loftily talking to a country brother of deeper shade in the market-place of a certain Southern town. One day a sampan, with a very old man and a young one aboard, made fast to the gangway. They had fish to sell, and during the haggling that followed, a Japanese sprang aboard, dropped a coin or two, picked up the fish, and tried to cast the sampan away--the Chinamen sputtering voluble but feeble protests meanwhile. In the confusion, the stern of the sampan struck a ship's boat that was swinging on a long hawser from the same gangway, the bow of it struck the ship's side, and the racing tide did the rest. The boat was overturned, old man and young one disappeared and all under water shot away. We thought they were gone, but there were two lean, yellow arms fastened by yellow talons to the keel, and in a moment the young man was dragging the old man to safety on the bottom of the boat. The ship's boat was cast away, the Japanese who had caused the trouble sprang aboard with the crew, gave chase to the bobbing wreck, caught it several hundred yards away, righted it, and later we saw the young Chinaman working it, half submerged, toward the distant shore, and the shivering, bedraggled old one being brought back to the ship. We were all indignant, for the officers of the ship, far from interfering, laughed during the whole affair, and, laughing, watched the old man and the young one sweep away. But no sooner was the old man aboard than the servants and interpreters gave him rice, saki, empty bottles, and clothes, and took up a subscription for him; and when the young one got to the ship an hour later the old man climbed into the sampan, mellow and happy. It seemed a heartless piece of cruelty at first, but it was perhaps, after all, only the cruelty of children, for which they were at once sorry and at once tried to make amends. To me, its significance was in the loftily superior, contemptuously patronizing attitude of the Japanese toward the yellow brother from whom he got civilization, art, classical models, and a written speech. Later, I found the same bearing raised to the ninth degree in Manchuria. Knowing the grotesque results in the efforts of one imitative race to adopt another civilization in my own country, the parallelism has struck me forcibly over here in dress, Occidental manners, the love of interpreters for ponderous phraseology