The Continental arrangement of the Members' desks and the raised tribune of the Speaker, with its rows of clerks and recorders, make an impression of orderliness, tinged nevertheless with a faint revolutionary flavour. Perhaps it is the straight black Chinese hair and the rich silk clothing, set on a very plain and unadorned background, which recall the pictures of the French Revolution. It is somehow natural in such circumstances that there should occasionally be dramatic outbursts with the blood of offenders bitterly demanded as though we were not living in the Twentieth Century when blood alone is admittedly no satisfaction. The presence of armed House police at every door, and in the front rows of the strangers' gallery as well, contributes to this impression which has certain qualities of the theatre about it and is oddly stimulating. China at work legislating has already created her first traditions: she is proceeding deliberately armed--with the lessons of the immediate past fully noted. This being the home of a literary race, papers and notebooks are on most Members' desks. As the electric bells ring sharply an unending procession of men file in to take their seats, for there has been a recess and the House has been only half-filled. Nearly every one is in Chinese dress (_pien-yi_) with the Member's badge pinned conspicuously on the breast. The idea speedily becomes a conviction that this after all is not extraneous to the nation, but actually of the living flesh, a vital and imperative thing. The vastness and audacity of it all cannot fail to strike the imaginative mind, for the four or five hundred men who are gathered here typify, if they do not yet represent, the four or five hundred millions who make up the country. You see as it were the nation in profile, a ponderous, slow-moving mass, quickly responsive to curious sub-conscious influences--suddenly angry and suddenly calm again because Reason has after all always been the great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim fingers speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It would be interesting to write the story of China from a study of the hands.