It is only on two days in the month that the beggars are allowed the privilege of collecting their tax from the shopkeepers, for these latter have originally compounded with their king for a regular payment, which prevents them from being annoyed with their visits at any other time. As soon as the amount has been settled a printed form, with the picture of a gourd on it, is pasted over the door, and no beggar will dare to approach it for the purpose of asking alms. There are many specimens of humanity in China that, through destitution and in the bare struggle for existence, have to go through want and hunger and intense suffering both of mind and body, but for real degradation and acute acquaintance with the pains and penalties of poverty there is no one to be compared with the beggarman in this land. The beggar in the West is a royal personage when compared with him, clothed in purple and fine linen, and living sumptuously. He is often able to lay by money, and cases have been not infrequent that when he has died sovereigns and bank-notes have been found stitched in various parts of his garments. Such an experience in China is absolutely unknown. A beggar here is really poor, and always close up to the border line across which is starvation. Besides, he is nearly always diseased. A beggar, except he is a wandering minstrel, would fail to charm the solitary cash that is usually thrown at him, unless he had some glaring disease that would excite pity. The stock-in-trade of the begging fraternity is some hideous sore, or twisted legs or sightless eyes, or some abnormal deformity that disqualifies the person from gaining a living by manual labour. And then, too, the hovel into which he crawls when night drives him from the streets is something unspeakable for its wretchedness and discomfort. The beggars' camp is filthy, and so unsavoury that it may never be pitched within the precincts of the city, but is always erected in some open space outside its walls, where its smells and abominations may not contaminate the rest of society.