a large
sapphire encircled by twenty diamonds. When I offered the dealer less
than he asked for it, he said: "No, rather than sell it for that price,
I will tear it apart, and sell the diamonds separately for drill-points
to the tinkers who mend dishes. I can make more from it in that way,
only I dislike to spoil the ring." The Empress Dowager during her late
years, and many of the ladies and gentlemen of the more progressive
type, affected, whether genuinely or not, an appreciation of the
diamond as a piece of jewelry, especially in the form of rings, though
coloured stones, polished, but not cut, have always been more popular
with the Chinese. The turquoise, the emerald, the sapphire, the ruby
and the other precious stones with colour have, therefore, always
graced the tables of the bazars in the capital, while the diamond until
very recently was relegated to the point of the tinker's drill.

There is another method of bringing bits of their ancient handiwork to
the capital which most of those living in Peking, even, know nothing
about. A company, whose headquarters is at an inn, called the Hsing
Lung Tien, sends agents all over the empire, to purchase and bring to
them everything in the nature of a curio, whether porcelain, painting,
embroidery, pottery or even an ancient tile or inkstone, which they
then, at public auction, sell to the dealers. The sale is at noon each
day. The first time I visited it was with a friend from Iowa who was
anxious to get some unique bits of porcelain. The auctioneer does not
"cry" the wares. Neither buyer nor seller says a word. Nobody knows
what anybody else has offered. The goods are passed out of a closed
room from a high window where the crowd can see them, and then each one
wanting them tries to be first in securing the hand of the auctioneer,
which is ensconced in his long sleeve, where, by squeezing his fingers,
they tell him how much they will give for the particular piece. It is
the only real case of "talking in the sleeve" I have ever seen, and
each piece is sold to the first person offering a fair profit on the
money invested, though he might get much more by allowing them to bid
against each other.

Among the attractive sights in Peking, none are quite so interesting as
the places where His Majesty worships, and of these the most beautiful
in architecture, the grandest in conception, and the one laid out on
the most magnificent scale, is the Temple of Heaven.

Think of s