he Military Governor of this portion of the
province, and a little further is the more crowded yamen of the Fu
Magistrate. Here, as in all yamens, the detached wall or fixed screen of
stone facing the entrance is painted with the gigantic representation of
a mythical monster in red trying to swallow the sun--the Chinese
illustration of the French saying "_prendre la lune avec les dents_." It
is the warning against covetousness, the exhortation against squeezing,
and is as little likely to be attended to by the magistrate here as it
would be by his brother in Chicago. We visited the Confucian Temple
among the trees and the examination hall close by, and another yamen,
and the Temple of the God of Riches. In the yamen, at the time of our
visit, a young official, seated in his four-bearer chair, was waiting in
the outer court; he had sent in his visiting card, and attended the
pleasure of his superior officer. China may be uncivilised and may yearn
for the missionaries, but there was refined etiquette in China, and an
interchange of many of the pleasantest courtesies of modern
civilisation, when we noble Britons were grubbing in the forest, painted
savages with a clout.

As we went out of the west gate, I was shown the spot where a few days
before a young woman, taken in adultery, was done to death in a cage
amid a crowd of spectators, who witnessed her agony for three days. She
had to stand on tiptoe in the cage, her head projecting through a hole
in the roof, and here she had to remain until death by exhaustion or
strangulation ensued, or till some kind friend, seeking to accumulate
merit in heaven, passed into her mouth sufficient opium to poison her,
and so end her struggles.

On the gate itself a man not so long ago was nailed with red-hot nails
hammered through his wrists above the hands. In this way he was exposed
in turn at each of the four gates of the city, so that every man, woman,
and child could see his torture. He survived four days, having
unsuccessfully attempted to shorten his pain by beating his head against
the woodwork, an attempt which was frustrated by padding the woodwork.
This man had murdered and robbed two travellers on the high road, and,
as things are in China, his punishment was not too severe.

No people are more cruel in their punishments than the Chinese, and
obviously the reason is that the sensory nervous system of a Chinaman is
either blunted or of arrested development. Can anyone doubt