man regards me
with a look of utter bewilderment, and forthwith betakes himself off to
the outer edge of the crowd, henceforth contenting himself to join the
general mass of open-eyed inquisitives. Another attempt to again enlist
his services only results in alienating his sympathies still further: he
has been grossly taken in by my assumption of intelligence. Having
discovered in me a jackass incapable of the Fat-shan pronunciation of
Sam-shue, he retires on his dignity from further interest in my affairs.

Female faces peer curiously through little barred apertures in the gate,
and grin amusedly at the sight of a Fankwae, as I stand for a few minutes
uncertain of what course to pursue. From sheer inability to conceive of
anything else I seize upon a well-dressed youngster among the crowd,
tender him a coin, and address him questioningly--"Sam-shue lo.
Sam-shue lo." The youth regards me with monkeyish curiosity for a second,
and then looks round at the crowd and giggles. Nothing is plainer than
the evidence that nobody present has the slightest conception of what I
want to do, or where I wish to go. Not that my pronunciation of Sam-shue
is unintelligible (as I afterward discover), but they cannot conceive of
a Fankwae in the streets of Fat-shan inquiring for Sam-shue; doubtless
many have never heard of that city, and perhaps not one in the crowd has
ever been there or knows anything of the road. As a matter of fact, there
is no "road," and the best anyone could do would be to point out its
direction in a general way. All this, however, comes with
after-knowledge.

Imagine a lone Chinaman who desired to learn the road to Philadelphia
surrounded by a dense crowd in the Bowery, New York, and uttering the one
word "Phaladilfi," and the reader gains a feeble conception of my own
predicament in Fat-shan, and the ludicrousness of the situation. Finally
the people immediately about me motion for me to proceed down the street.

Like a drowning man, I am willing to clutch wildly even at a straw, in
the absence of anything more satisfactory, and so follow their
directions. Passing through squalid streets occupied by loathsome
beggars, naked youngsters, slatternly women, matronly sows with Utters of
young pigs, and mangy pariahs, we emerge into the more respectable
business thoroughfares again, traversing streets that I recognize as
having passed through an hour ago. Having brought me here, the leaders in
the latest movement see