come back to the old thoughts that you had before, which you are certain after all are right. Circumstances of this kind are of exceedingly frequent occurrence. You go into a bank that has a large business. The manager is an energetic, shrewd business man. He is full of schemes and plans to promote the interests of the establishment, and people speak of him as being the cause of the prosperity that is now giving it a golden reputation. The real man who lies at the back of all this success is the Chinese compradore. He is a most unpretentious man, and if you visit him in the little room that he uses as an office, you would be anything but struck by him. His clothes are of a very common description, rather slovenly and untidy, and his shoes are slipshod. He is perhaps smoking a long bamboo pipe of vile-smelling native tobacco, but this quiet, unassuming Chinaman is the force that lies behind the business that brings in such large dividends to the shareholders. He has the whole of the markets in his brain, he knows which of the clients of the bank are prosperous and which are tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. He finds out to whom amongst his countrymen loans may be made with safety, and he will know by a single glance at documents that have been drawn up in the hieroglyphic language of the Chinese of what value they are for the purpose of negotiating large monetary transactions. No bank in China, and no large business firm could exist for a month without its compradore. The hypnotic influence of the Chinaman is seen in almost any direction in which you like to turn. The mistress of a home is as wax in the hands of her cook, whose words, as far as the table is concerned, are a law that even she would be very chary of opposing. A foreigner engages a Chinese teacher, and ere long he comes so thoroughly under his influence that he will accept every word that he says about Chinese subjects, will repeat his very mistakes, and will refuse to listen to any criticism that outsiders may make either regarding his scholarship or his methods of teaching. Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of the dominating influence of the Chinaman is seen in the foreign Consulates. In each of these there is a Chinese official employed that is called a writer. He is a gentleman and a member of the literary class. His duties are to write dispatches in Chinese to the mandarins and to be the one connecting link between the native authorities and the particular foreign Consul in whose service he happens to be. All petitions or complaints from the Chinese have to go through his hands, so that his position is one of great responsibility and power.