"Possibly you allude to another great institution which I have visited," returned the traveller, with exquisite courtesy. "You justly pride yourself upon your advances in sanitary science, and I am a devout pilgrim seeking enlightenment. Judge, then, with what pleasure I saw your chief temple of the customs. What convenience and economy of arrangement! How singularly fitted for its purpose! You are indeed a great people. I passed into the main circular hall, and what purity of atmosphere, what admirable ventilation, what refreshing coolness and sweetness; it is, indeed, a sanitarium; nor can I wonder that you are proud of your progress and achievements in this science. But when I learned that the officers engaged in the public service in this temple, in the business of various accounts, and in determining the value of the products of the whole world, were appointed to the duty because of their zeal in providing candidates for offices and procuring votes for them, I was lost in admiration of institutions under which zealous shouting and running are evidence of skill to embroider muslin and to calculate interest. Truly you are a great people, and your institutions overflow with wisdom." The Easy Chair bowed and smiled, but the precise terms of an appropriate reply did not suggest themselves, until, remembering what was due to its native land, it began: "There can, however, illustrious son of Lien Chi Altangi, be no doubt that we are a very great and superior people, and that we have a very just pity and contempt for all the unhappy victims of the effete despotisms and hoary empires of the older world--not that we believe the other continents to be actually older, for our own favored continent doubtless emerged first from chaos, but it is an expression which, with the generosity of our institutions, we are willing to tolerate." "I cannot deny your greatness," politely said the yellowish-visaged gentleman, "and far be it from me to question your superiority. It was but yesterday evening that I attended a social assembly which was described to me as a full-undress party, and as I entered and beheld many of the other sex, I was struck by the accuracy of the description. As I promenaded through the brilliant throng with one of the loveliest of your young persons of that sex, she said to me, with a bewitching smile, 'Dear Mr. Altangi, is it true that Chinese women squeeze their feet for beauty? How very funny!'