A week passes by, and you suddenly find two of them have vanished. You are staggered, for you remember that handkerchiefs have a fatal facility for disappearing. You put off the decision of the question by assuming they have gone to the wash, or they are hidden away in some of your pockets, and they will turn up by and by. Another week goes by, and others vanish, till in the course of no very long period only one is left. You question the servants, but blank and child-looking faces meet you at every inquiry that you make. It is never suggested that the cat has walked off with them, as might be in England, where all kinds of unspeakable immoralities are put down to that animal. Chinese civilization has never yet produced a cat that has got the reputation of the same species in the West. Everybody simply denies that he ever saw the handkerchiefs, or knew indeed that they existed; and yet it is quite probable that if you were to visit their homes, you would find the lady members of their families sporting them on all public occasions, and making their female members green with envy because they could not have the same. Now, it must not be inferred that the Chinese servants are systematic thieves, because they are not. With regard to the more valuable things in a house, they may be said to be strictly honest. Articles of considerable value, such as clocks, opera-glasses, and ornaments for the mantelpiece, one need never have any anxiety about. They would fetch much more than some of the other things that are bound, by a law as unvarying as that of the Medes and Persians, to disappear, but they are as safe in the rooms as though a policeman's eye was constantly upon them. What are the mental processes a Chinaman goes through to enable him with a good conscience to appropriate something worth a dozen cents or so, whilst he would scorn the idea of walking off with any of the more valuable property of his master, is a mystery to the foreigner. Perhaps he could hardly analyze his own feelings on the subject. His love for the indirect and curvilinear method of approaching a subject may have had some influence in making him unable to decide the question even for himself. There is one subject that must not be omitted in this discussion of the servants, and that is the percentages they claim upon everything that the dealers from outside bring into the house. These are quite distinct from those that the cook makes in his purchases, and he never lays claim for any share in them. Although they are perquisites that are supposed never to come to the ears of their superiors, and are strictly private transactions, they do in a certain sense seriously affect the pockets of their masters.