lacquer gate, heavily barred, and that's your house. The
gateman opens to your ring, and as the big doors swing back you see
nothing of the courtyard or of the houses within the inclosure; you are
confronted by the devil screen, a high stone wall about fifteen feet
long and ten feet high. This devil screen blocks the evil spirits that
fly in when the compound gates are opened--the blind evil spirits, that
can fly only in straight paths, and hence crash against the devil
screen when they enter. As to yourself, the gateman leads you round the
screen, and across the compound to the master's house. Along the
compound wall that gives on the street are the servants' quarters, the
house for the rickshaws, the stables for the big mules and the Peking
carts, and the house of the gateman. Life is none too secure in these
compounds. Robbers abound, and scale the walls, and slip from the roofs
of adjacent buildings into the compounds. Every household is in a
constant state of alertness, of defense. Broken glass covers the tops of
the walls, and in the courtyards Mongolian watch-dogs guard the
premises, huge, fierce, long-haired creatures, like a woolly mastiff.
Through the day they are chained, but at night they are unloosed. Oh,
there is not only style but excitement in living in a native house in
Peking! We have looked at a good many Chinese houses, but can't quite
make up our minds about renting one. If we decide to stay, it will mean
that we must give up our trip to Angkor, and it was to make that trip
that we came out to the Orient!

Not every foreigner lives in a Chinese house, however. There are a few
European ones, scattered about the Tartar City, looking so out of place,
so insignificant and ugly! The foreigners who live here a long time seem
to like them, however. They tell us that after a time China gets on
one's nerves. Chinese things become utterly distasteful, and one becomes
so sick of Chinese art and architecture and furniture that one must
approximate a home like those of one's own country. Therefore there are
a certain number of these "foreign-style" houses to be found, furnished
with golden oak furniture, ugly and commonplace to a degree. I don't
know how a long residence in Peking would affect us. At present we are
too newly arrived, too enthusiastic, to feel any sympathy with this
point of view. Let me add that when a foreign-style house is furnished
with a few Chinese articles tucked in a background of mission