As I did not quite agree with him, I expressed my views, and so did the Herr Director. I said I thought I noticed among the Chinese and even among the Japanese the influence of this new environment, and could tell of conversations with groups of graduates of our colleges, in which not only the influence of this country was noticeable, but the influence of the particular institution from which they graduated. Anecdotes are not easily accepted as scientific proof; but this being an informal luncheon, I ventured a few of them which every one seemed to relish except the Herr Director, and he is not to blame for that, as anecdotes are rarely international. I do blame him, however, for telling me that he had never heard stupider jokes in his life. One of these ethnic anecdotes I told upon the authority of the Bishop of the Yangtsze district. Perhaps like all anecdotes it may have grown in the telling. The Bishop had picked out an unusually bright Chinese lad to have educated in the United States and then become his curate. When he returned to China, after having attended both a college and a theological seminary, he was assisting the Bishop. Evidently he had not thoroughly mastered the ritual of the church; for this Oriental, who had "separated himself from the ethnic root," moved close to the Bishop, poked his elbow into the ecclesiastical ribs of his superior and asked: "Say, Bishop, where do I butt in?" Our host wanted to know whether I was sure that he did not say: "Bish"; I thought to reach the point of being able to express himself so briefly and directly the Oriental would need at least another geologic period. One of the staff asked whether that anecdote was not my invention; to which I took the liberty of replying that if I could invent such good stories he might offer me an editorship. How imperfectly, after all, the Oriental may absorb the spirit of our language, I told in the story which is supposed to have its origin at the University of Michigan; although like all such stories it may be claimed by innumerable birthplaces. A Hindoo student, who had not quite finished his academic career and had to return home on account of illness in his family, wrote back to his faculty adviser, notifying him of the death of his mother-in-law, in this characteristic, brief, Occidental way: "Alas! the hand which rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket." The Herr Director thought this anecdote funny enough, but it proved the opposite from that for which I was contending. "Who but an Oriental could invent such highly picturesque figures of speech?" The conversation drifted into soberer channels when our host took up the question as to what constitutes the American, who after all is hybrid and frequently so mixed that he does not know just how he is ethnically constituted.