The next time I visited Canton was in '70. The gates were open, and the walls were of no avail to keep the foreign devils out. The American merchant Nye, who was familiarly known as the Napoleon of China, because of his gigantic enterprises, took me over the city. I had read and heard about Chinamen eating rats, but this was the only time I ever saw the thing done, and I could hardly believe my eyes. A Chinaman came up to Mr. Nye and me in the street, and offered to sell us a rat, a big fellow still alive. I asked if it was to be eaten, and the Chinaman said it was. "But it is not cooked," I objected. "I am not going to begin on live rats." The Chinaman said he would prepare it--the rat cooked and served to cost me two cents. I told him to go ahead. To my surprise he took a little stove from under his arm, lighted a fire, and in a few minutes had the rodent roasted to a crisp. I was astonished--and ashamed--to see how nice it looked. It did appear toothsome. I said to the Chinaman, "Now, you can eat it." He did, and with great gusto and smacking of the lips. So he got his rat and my two cents, also. But I ascertained that there is about as much truth in the common stories in our silly juvenile literature about Chinamen generally eating rats as there is in stories of other marvelous things in far-off lands. I also found that there is no deadly upas-tree in Java, which was a distinct shock to me. I had been reared, so to speak, in the fatal shade of that upas. I had watched birds drop dead as they tried to fly across its swath of malignant shadow; I had seen animals stricken by its fatal exudations and writhing in agony. I saw all these things in the old New England farmhouse, which was the headquarters of the Methodists; but in Java, they had all disappeared. There was no upas-tree, and the mortality among birds and animals was no greater than necessary to satisfy the predatory natures of other animals, birds, and men. And now to find in China that the New England stories about general rat-eating were false, was another shock.