pay my passage home. I am afraid, however, that they will not
believe my story of being able to repay them, and I do not desire
charity. In fact, now I come to think of it, it would be very foolish of
me to tell my story to the people at the Embassy.'

'Is it, then, such a wonderful story?'

'An Englishman would think so, but a Chinaman would not.'

For a few minutes Ping Wang was deep in thought, and Charlie got up to
look at a passing Norwegian ship. When he returned to his seat on the
coil of rope, Ping Wang said to him suddenly, 'Have you any Chinese
friends?'

'No.'

'Have you any English friends living in China?'

'No.'

Ping Wang gave a slight sigh of relief.

'Then, if you will promise not to repeat what I tell you,' he said, 'you
shall hear my story.'

'I promise,' Charlie answered. 'But I hope that you are not going to
tell me any anti-European plots.'

(_Continued on page 214._)

RICE-PAPER.

Chinese rice-paper is a thing which we frequently hear of, but do not
often see. It is very curious and pretty, but far too frail for most of
the uses to which we put our English paper; and, for this reason, it has
no commercial value in European countries, and is only brought away by
travellers and traders as a curiosity.

The rice-paper which I have seen was cut into small squares about three
by two inches, each of which had a beautiful coloured picture of a
Chinese man or woman. The paper was very white and thin, slightly rough,
like blotting-paper, stiff and brittle. It was impossible to fold it,
as the least effort to bend the sheet broke it in two. The pictures upon
these little sheets had evidently been painted by hand, and were very
beautiful and interesting. The surface of the paint was bright and
clear, and the paper was transparent enough to permit the picture to be
seen from the back, with all its colours and details only a little
dimmed, as if seen through a thin sheet of ground glass.

Notwithstanding its name, rice-paper has really nothing to do with rice.
It is not made from rice, nor even from the rice plant, but from the
pith of a kind of ivy, the _Aralia papyrifera_, which grows abundantly
in the island of Formosa. This _Aralia_ is not much like our English
ivy. It is, in fact, a small tree, which may attain a height of twenty
or thirty feet, and is crowned with a number of large leaves, shaped
like those of the sycamore. It bears clusters of small, pale yellow
flowers, which