bow:
"Sirs Lamas," said he, "your mathematics are better than mine." "Oh, not
at all," replied we, with a bow equally profound; "your souan-pan is
excellent, but who ever heard of a calculator always exempt from error?
People like you may very well be mistaken once and a way, whereas poor
simple folks like us make blunders ten thousand times. Now, however, we
have fortunately concurred in our reckoning, thanks to the pains you have
taken." These phrases were rigorously required under the circumstances,
by Chinese politeness. Whenever any person in China is compromised by
any awkward incident, those present always carefully refrain from any
observation which may make him blush, or as the Chinese phrase it, take
away his face.

After our conciliatory address had restored self-possession to all
present, everybody drew round the piece of paper on which we had cast up
our sum in Arabic numerals. "That is a fine souan-pan," said one to
another; "simple, sure, and speedy."--"Sirs Lamas," asked the principal,
"what do these characters mean? What souan-pan is this?" "This
souan-pan is infallible," returned we; "the characters are those which
the Mandarins of Celestial Literature use in calculating eclipses, and
the course of the seasons." {116} After a brief conversation on the
merits of the Arabic numerals, the cashier handed us the full amount of
sapeks, and we parted good friends.

The Chinese are sometimes victims to their own knavery, and we have known
even Tartars catch them in a snare. One day a Mongol presented himself
at the counter of a Chinese moneychanger, with a youen-pao carefully
packed and sealed. A youen-pao is an ingot of silver weighing three
pounds--in China there are sixteen ounces to the pound; the three pounds
are never very rigorously exacted; there being generally four or five
ounces over, so that the usual weight of an ingot of silver is fifty-two
ounces. The Tartar had no sooner unpacked his youen-pao than the Chinese
clerk resolved to defraud him of an ounce or two, and weighing it, he
pronounced it to be fifty ounces. "My youen-pao weighs fifty-two
ounces," exclaimed the Tartar. "I weighed it before I left home." "Oh,
your Tartar scales are all very well for sheep; but they don't do for
weighing bullion." After much haggling, the bargain was concluded, the
youen-pao was purchased as weighing fifty ounces, and the Tartar, having
first required and obtained a certificate of the stated