5. _No Chinese ever pays a debt till he is dunned._ To us this also seems a strange practice. Most of us have grown up with a fixed idea that as a debt must be paid, "if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." The mind of a Chinese operates in quite a different way. His view is, "If it must be done, it were best done when it is done as deliberately as the case admits." 6. It seems also to be the rule, that _no Chinese will pay his debts till he has been dunned a great number of times_. Here again he is at the opposite pole from that which we occupy. We do not like to be dunned, and would rather make considerable sacrifices than to have needy persons dogging us for the collection of debts which we honestly owe, which we must ultimately pay, and not to arrange for the payment of which at once is more or less of a disgrace. By "we" we mean of course the average foreigner, for it is not to be denied that Western lands have their full proportion of impecunious and shameless rascals who "live off the interest of their debts," and who swindle all those whom they can. But the Chinese of whom we are speaking do not belong to this class. The mass of the Chinese people we believe to be honest, and they fully intend to pay all that they owe, but they do not intend to pay until they are ready to do so, and neither gods nor men can tell when that will be. It is a current saying that when a person has many debts he is no longer concerned about them, just as when one has many parasites he ceases to scratch!