knew misery more?

* * * * * *

They have their glories and earth's diadems
Have nought so bright as genius' gilded gems.

The lines were written by Sir John Bowring, English scholar and
traveler, who visited Macao in the latter half of the last century, and
the expense of the memorial and its grounds was borne by a patriotic
Portuguese, Lorenco Marques, whose name has been preserved by being
given to the seaport on Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa.

For a place whose commerce is notoriously in eclipse, you are curious to
learn whence springs the golden shower giving the appearance of
prosperity to Macao, for the general air of the colony suggests an easy
affluence. To keep the governor's palace and the judiciary buildings
covered with paint costs something, you know, while the paved streets
and bridges and viaducts give support to the surmise of an exchequer not
permanently depleted. Portugal, nowadays almost robbing Peter to pay
Paul, is in no condition to succor an impecunious colony situated in
another hemisphere, you are aware, and you appeal for elucidation of the
fiscal problem. "Very easy, dear sir," your cicerone promptly rejoins,
"this is the Monte Carlo of the Far East. Gambling is here a
business--all the business there is, and the concessions for the fan-tan
and lottery monopolies pay for everything, practically making taxation
unnecessary."

The statement would cause something of a shock to a guileless stranger,
especially to one who had believed he had perceived a natural likeness
between the little principality on the Mediterranean and this beauty
spot of the Orient. But China is rather too far to the eastward of Suez
for simon-pure guile, and the globe-trotter decides to thoroughly
explore local conditions by way of adding to his worldly knowledge. If
you go to the post-office to mail a letter, you recognize perforce how
backward a colony of Portugal may be in supplying the trifling
requirements of life, for you stand minutes in a nondescript line before
your stamp is sheared from a sheet by a functionary having a capacity
for activity possibly rivaled by an Alpine glacier--then you wait at the
communal mucilage pot to secure in turn the required adhesive substance.
A good correspondent in Macao would pass half his time at the
post-office, you conclude.

But there is nothing backward, nothing harking back to the middle ages,
in the plan by which t