re milk!

I seized the dairyman with a hazy idea of making an end of him, when,
lo and behold, there slipped from his capacious sleeve a piece of
thick bamboo containing about two pints of water. From the lower part
of this wooden bottle projected another piece of bamboo about the
thickness of a cigar, which served as a tube.

The swindle was now discovered, and the culprit, after the first shock
to his feelings had abated, showed me, with evident if subdued
satisfaction, how the ingenious device worked.

Concealing the bottle and letting the sleeve fall well down over his
wrist, he held the bamboo tube and a cow's teat in one hand, and so,
the moment one's eyes were averted, he was able to turn on the tap
and let water flow into the pail together with the milk.

I now had the upper hand and promised to refrain from taking steps
against him if he would in future furnish me with a pure supply. This
he cheerfully agreed to do, and for a time I fared sumptuously, but it
was not long ere my boy informed me that, the cows having run dry, the
dairyman had returned to his home in the country.

Prior to the Manchu conquest of China two hundred and fifty years ago,
men allowed the hair to grow long and then rolled it up in a tuft on
the top of the head.

The Manchus, however, introduced the custom of partly shaving the
scalp and braiding the back hair into a pig-tail, any man not
conforming to this rule being considered a rebel, and as such liable
to summary decapitation. This visible token of loyalty to the present
dynasty is therefore universal, and obtains from the cradle to the
grave, it being a matter of considerable importance to all who value a
whole skin, and "Olo custom" being an extremely strong _motif_, it
would now be well-nigh impossible to abolish this badge of servitude,
even were the enforcement of it abandoned. In addition to this
national obligation it is the custom for men to clean shave until they
become grandfathers, when a moustache is cultivated, and later on
sometimes a beard, though these hirsute appendages are of a lean and
meagre kind.

As you may readily imagine, the amount of tonsorial operations
indulged in by so dense a population call for an unlimited number of
shavers and braiders of hair, albeit it is considered an employment of
the lowest grade; but although the number of barbers is legion there
are none who know how to _cut_ hair until taught to do so by
Europeans, so that in out-of-t