About the same time, in a very wide and extended district, a rumour arose that the missionaries, when any of their converts died, took out their eyes and made them into opium. The thing was so utterly absurd and the number of Christians then so very small, that it seemed as though the monstrous report must speedily die a natural death. But this was not the case. It spread with remarkable rapidity through towns and villages and hamlets, and was implicitly believed in not merely by coolies and rough, uncultivated labourers, but also by scholars of high degree and by great mandarins, and for more than twenty years it was a prime article of faith with millions of people. It is the unexpected that so often happens in Chinese life that has given such an air of mystery to this strange and wonderful people. The very opposite virtues and vices seem to flourish and exist in the same individuals. The Chinese, for example, in ordinary and everyday life have no sense of truth. It is not that they are any worse than other nations of the East. The moment you pass through the Suez Canal and have come upon the confines of the Orient, you realize that truth as it is looked upon in the West does not exist in all the vast and glowing regions beyond. You are in a new land, and the atmosphere of straightforward honest expression of thought has vanished, and now it seems that, except in the most trivial affairs of life, where concealment is unnecessary, you are in a world where every one has a mask on, and the great aim is to conceal the face that lies behind. The oblique and angular way by which a Chinese loves to express the intention he has in his mind has no doubt intensified the Oriental disposition to lie, until now he seems to have absolutely no conscience on the subject. A Chinese coolie one day made some statement to me that I knew to be false. I was exceedingly annoyed at this, and so told him, and yet I could not help being amused, for the look of childish simplicity and artlessness that beamed over his face was so real and natural that I could not but admire the perfect acting of this rough, uncultivated fellow. "You are mistaken," he said to me, "when you accuse me of telling you a falsehood, for I assure you that I never told a lie in all my life." I instinctively thought of a picture that appeared in _Punch_ many years ago, where two rough miners stood by the roadside, one of them having a kettle in his hand, which was to be given to the one that could tell the greatest lie. A person comes along who asks them what they are talking about? When told, he was shocked, and declared that he had never told a lie in his life, and he was rather taken aback when the kettle was handed to him, and he was told that he rightly earned it. I thought if only I had had a kettle at hand I would have passed it over to him and told him the legend.