e very much
secluded. They may be seen on the streets at almost any time, while the
temple courts and adjacent streets, on fair days, are crowded with
women and girls, dressed in the most gorgeous colours, their hair
decorated with all kinds of artificial flowers, followed by little boys
and girls as gaily dressed as themselves. Here they find all kinds of
toys, curios, and articles of general use, from a top to a broom, from
bits of jade or other precious stones, to a snuff bottle hollowed out
of a solid quartz crystal, or a market basket or a dust-pan made of
reeds.

Peking being the city of the court, and the headquarters of many of the
greatest officials, is the receptacle of the finest products of the
oldest and greatest non-Christian people the world has ever known.
China easily leads the world in the making of porcelain, the best of
which has always gone to Peking for use in the palace, and so we can
find here the best products of every reign from the time of Kang Hsi,
as well as those of the former dynasties, to that of Kuang Hsu and the
Empress Dowager. The same is true of her brass and bronze
incense-burners and images, her wood and ivory carvings, her beautiful
embroideries, her magnificent tapestries, and her paintings by old
masters of six or eight hundred years ago. Here we can find the finest
Oriental rugs, in a good state of preservation, with the "tone" that
only age can give, made long before the time of Washington.

There is no better market for fine bits of embroidery, mandarin coats,
and all the better products of needle, silk and floss, of which the
Chinese have been masters for centuries, than the city of the court.
The population consists largely of great officials and their families,
whose cast-off clothing, toned down by the use of years, often without
a blemish or a spot, finds its way into the hands of dealers. The
finest furs,--seal, otter, squirrel, sable and ermine,--are brought
from Siberia, Manchuria and elsewhere, for the officials and the court,
and can be secured for less than half what they would cost in America.
Pearls, of which the Chinese ladies and the court are more fond than of
diamonds, may be found in abundance in all the bazars, which are many,
and judging from the way they are purchased by tourists, are both
cheaper and better than elsewhere.

The Chinese have little appreciation of diamonds as jewelry. On one
occasion there was offered to me a beautiful ring containing