The magistrate is supposed to be a kind of living embodiment of all the Confucian virtues, and therefore to look with extreme favour on any one whose words or conduct show him to be dutiful to his father, punctilious in serving the spirits of the dead, respectful to old age, a wise and good parent, industrious, honest in his dealings with his neighbours, and law-abiding. No litigant neglects an opportunity of showing that he possesses each and all of these qualities; and sometimes it is done cleverly and with an appearance of artlessness. A man brought an action against another for debt. In the course of his statement he said: "Whenever I demand the money from him he reviles me. (Cross-examined). I never reviled him in return. I didn't dare to do so because he had a beard and I had none. How could I dare to revile a man with a beard?" This of course means in plain language, "He was my elder, and therefore I with my well-known regard for the proprieties could not presume to answer him back." It is not usual in China for a man to grow a beard or moustache until he has reached middle age. A litigant also tries to ingratiate himself with the magistrate by an affectation of extreme humility. A villager is asked if he can write. He says no. When it is subsequently discovered that he can read and write with fluency and he is taxed with his falsehood, he merely explains that he did not dare to boast of his accomplishments in the presence of the magistrate. The meaning is that the magistrate's scholarly attainments are (theoretically) so overwhelmingly brilliant that the litigant's own poor scraps of learning sink into utter nothingness by comparison. In other words, it is politeness and humility that impel the man to say he cannot write. Among the cases that cause the greatest difficulty and sometimes embarrassment to an English magistrate are those that turn on some foolish old custom or deeply-rooted superstition. Sometimes it happens that by deciding the case one way the magistrate may be upholding a popular view at the cost of doing violence to his own feelings of what is right and proper; by deciding it in another way he may provoke a strong local feeling of resentment against the ignorant judgments of foreigners who do not understand the ways of the people. As a rule it is best to ascertain the views of the oldest and most respectable members of the village or district concerned, and give judgment accordingly. It is interesting to observe that the old folks will not in all cases give their vote for the pro-superstition view. A lawsuit of the kind referred to arose recently out of a dispute in a village as to the digging of a well. The plaintiffs petition ran as follows: