Fifteen hundred years ago there lived a Chinese painter, Wu Tao-tzu, famous in Celestial lore, of whom it was said that it seemed as if a god possessed him and wielded the brush in his hand. This greatest of all Chinese masters was held in high esteem by the emperor. One day, wishing to possess a landscape of one of his favorite bits of scenery, the emperor directed Wu Tao-tzu to go forth and paint it. In the evening Wu Tao-tzu returned, but empty-handed. “Why!” exclaimed the emperor; “where is the landscape? You have nothing!” “O august Serenity, Son of Heaven!” replied Wu Tao-tzu, “I have it all, all the landscape, here in my heart.” Perhaps he made some discreet concession to the material side of the adventure, for straightway he proceeded to cover a wall of one of the apartments in the palace with a marvelous scene, such as the one he had spent the day in contemplating. The next morning it was finished. Delighted, the emperor came to view it. “Ah,” said he, “wonderful, wonderful! It is the river, the bamboo, and there those majestic rocks!” At the word, Wu Tao-tzu clapped his hands, and lo! there in the rocks of the picture a cavern appeared. Wu Tao-tzu stepped into it, the entrance closed, and Wu Tao-tzu disappeared from earth. Surely no legend better illustrates the Chinese point of view, that a painting is the home of the painter’s soul. That is the story which was told to me one day when, happening into a Chinese shop where some antiques and curios were offered for sale, I chanced to pick up a tiny bottle. It was not over two and a half inches high. Its weight proclaimed it crystal. A miniature scene and inscription were skilfully and beautifully painted inside. “This,” said the intelligent Chinese attendant, in answer to my question, “is little bit painting. Story one man artist man very much great. Him name Wu Tao-tzu.” Then he told me the story, a golden nail on which to hang a bottle! Surely enough, there was depicted Wu Tao-tzu entering the cavern. The inscription vouched for the incident. “But what a tiny bottle! What was it used for?” “Much little bottle China old time fine like this. More other bottle kinds use snuff for, medicine for. Look yes you please.” The Celestial showed me how the ivory “spoon,” running the depth of the bottle and fastened in the coral stopper, was manipulated to fetch forth portions of anything a vial of this sort might contain. In snuff-taking the “spoon” was emptied on the thumb nail and the “sniff” deftly taken. That was my introduction to the fact that snuff-taking in the Orient had fostered a fashion that produced objects of virtue fully as interesting and beautiful as, and certainly more curious than the snuff-boxes affected by the Europeans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.