ecial revenue duty, so that salt smuggling is about equivalent to
blockading whiskey in America.

{146}

Recognized forms of punishment are death by starvation and "death by
the seventy-two cuts"--gradually chopping a man to pieces as if he
were a piece of wood. This latter punishment is for treason. To let a
bad criminal be hanged instead of beheaded is regarded as a favor, the
explanation being that the man who has his head cut off is supposed to
be without a head in the hereafter.

The worst feature of the whole system is the treatment of prisoners to
make them confess. The Chinese theory is that no one should be
punished unless he confesses with his own mouth. Consequently the most
brutal, sickening tortures are practised to extort confession, and, in
the end, thousands and thousands of innocent men, no doubt, rather
than live longer in miseries far worse than death, have professed
crimes of which they were innocent.

But let us turn now to happier topics--say to an illustration of
Chinese humor. Very well; here is the sort of story that tickles a
Chinaman: it is one they tell themselves:

A Chinaman had a magic jar. And when you think of a jar here don't
think of one of the tiny affairs such as Americans use for preserves
and jams. The jar here means a big affair about half the size of a
hogshead: I bathed in one this morning. It was in such jars that Ali
Baba's Forty Thieves concealed themselves. Well, this magic jar had
the power of multiplying whatever was put into it. If you put in a
suit of clothes, behold, you could pull out perhaps two or three dozen
suits! If you put in a silver dollar, you might get out a hundred
silver dollars. There doesn't seem to have been any regularity about
the jar's multiplying properties. Sometimes it might multiply by two,
while again it might multiply by a hundred.

At any rate, the owner of the magic receptacle was getting rich fairly
fast, when a greedy judge got word of the strange affair somehow.
Accordingly he made some kind of false charge against the man and made
him bring the jar into court. {149} Then the judge pretended that he
couldn't decide about the case, or else pretended that the man needed
punishment for something, and so wrongly refused to give the citizen's
property back. Instead the magistrate took the jar into his own home
and himself began to get rich on its labors.

{147}

[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.]
The building of the Great Wa