As for his grand scheme, he had settled it in his own mind that the first step to be taken toward carrying it out was to contrive a way of getting it before some influential public man or men--a thing itself of infinite difficulty. With this end in view, though, of course, to make his living also, he sought and obtained the position of private secretary to the Hon. Peter Parker, then Commissioner of the United States to China, hoping that it would be the means of affording him the access he desired. Becoming satisfied upon a sufficient trial that it was not likely to answer his expectations in this regard, he resigned the place after a few months. He now attempted another way of compassing the matter. There was at Hong Kong an English bar consisting of a dozen or so lawyers doing business for the foreign commercial houses of that City. Wing bethought him that the standing and acquaintance resulting from his becoming a member of that bar might not improbably bring him the opportunity he sought. Accordingly, he entered one of the offices as a student. But presently it got out among the lawyers who this young man was, what his education had been, and they saw that his competition with them for legal practice of a Chinese city was a thing not to be allowed if it could be prevented. And so his principal, pleading the commands of his legal brethren, informed him, with many courteous expressions of regret, that he must find another place to study law in. And as there was no other place, he had to give it up. After this followed an interval of nearly two years, during which he occupied himself with Chinese and other studies, earning his bread by such commercial translation as he could find to do, and waited for the right thing to turn up. He then, in the same hope that led him to his previous experiments, took a place in the Customs Service at Shanghai. But neither did this, on trial, promise, in his judgment, a _pou sto_ for his operations, and he soon abandoned it.