There are certain trades and professions in this Empire that are looked upon by the Chinese with respect, because they all represent an honourable attempt of men to earn their living in a straightforward and honest way. As in England, some of these are looked upon with more respect than others, and men pride themselves, just as in the countries of the West, on the higher local standing that their trade or profession gives them in the eyes of the community. Outside of the Government officials, there are practically only two respectable classes of professions, viz. the school-master and the doctor. There are of course others, such as the geomancer, the pettifogging lawyer, the priests, and members of the theatrical professions, and those who get their living in connection with the idols, but these are all looked upon with a suspicion that their morality is not of the highest, and consequently society refuses to accord to them the respect and honour that they spontaneously give either to the scholar or to the _bona fide_ medical man. This chapter will be devoted to an account of some of the more well-known professions that belong to this doubtful category of professional men, and the first that I shall take is the geomancer. This man is a product of the beliefs that the Chinese have regarding the dead, and also with regard to the malign and evil spirits that are supposed to people the air and to be always on the lookout to bring sorrow and calamities wherever the unwary have not taken measures to frustrate their evil designs. In spite of their high-sounding beliefs that life and death are all arranged and settled by Heaven, the Chinese universally hold that the ground in which a man is buried has much to do with his happiness in the Land of Shadows, and also with his ability to benefit the members of his family that still remain in the land of the living. [Illustration: A TEA HOUSE.] The study of this subject has become an exact science with the Chinese, and there are men that spend their lives in mastering its principles, and they become so familiar with them that they are constantly employed in pointing out the precise spots where the dead may be buried so as to secure the highest benefit both to them and to the living. The poorest and the commonest amongst the people have not the means of engaging these professors of the geomantic art, neither have they the funds to buy expensive plots of ground where the "Fung-Shuy," as it is popularly called, works with a strong and imperial will to summon to itself the forces in nature that will secure wealth and fortune and worldly honours to all that are connected with it. Their homes are narrow and will barely suffice to accommodate the living, and so the dead have to be hurried away and laid in any piece of ground on the side of a hill that some benevolent individual may make them a present of.