Among the novels, “The Story of the Three Kingdoms” (San Kuo Ch’i) is by far the most popular. It was written in the Yuan Dynasty and deals with the period of romantic chivalry, 221-265 A.D., when three dynasties ruled in three separate capitals. In it appear the cruel Tsao Tsao and the resourceful Chu Ko-liang, together with many another brave warrior. Every educated Chinese has read it, and the illiterate coolies have hired readers, that they too may learn of the stirring adventures of their more or less mythical heroes. The enthusiasm for this book is simply unbounded, as the following instance may serve to illustrate. Friends of mine in Peking, a young architect and his wife, were continually annoyed during hot August evenings by a fairly loud voice with a monotonous rising and falling inflection that kept coming over the wall of the adjoining courtyard from eight o’clock until midnight. It cast a shadow over conversation, it distracted attention from reading, and it effectually prevented peaceful sleep. My friends began by setting their victrola on their side of the wall to playing “Over There!” for an hour or two on end; next they sent out the house boy to buy firecrackers and ordered him to set off package after package under a tin pail; and finally they allowed a bottle of asafetida to trickle over the wall—but all to no avail. They recovered neither their peace of mind nor their slumber until the _shuo-shu-te_ had read to his coolie audience the last chapter of “The Three Kingdoms”, a novel as long as the whole Bible. An endless number of plays are based on this book of romantic history, which deserves to be called the national epic of the Chinese. A long list of “military plays” derive their plots from the “Shui Hu Chuan” (Story of the River Bank), a novel based upon the doings of a band of brigands who terrorized a number of provinces early in the twelfth century. Some of the swashbucklers in this story had Robin Hood’s habit of giving to the poor what they had stolen from the rich and corrupt officials. From the “Liao Chai” (translated by Mr. Giles, “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”) come many plays dealing with fairies and other supernatural beings. The novel that might be considered a possible rival in popularity to the story of “The Three Kingdoms”, is “The Dream of the Red Chamber” (Hung Lou Meng), the story of the love of a young idler for his two pretty cousins, and the decay of an old and wealthy family. Poetic love stories from this novel were brought on the stage only in recent years by Mei Lan-fang, the actor who is responsible for many innovations in the Peking theater. The play, “Burying the Flowers”, mentioned in the chapter on Mei Lan-fang, is one example of a dramatization of an episode from this book.