aisle, white
robed, with hand still outstretched.

After a moment of tense silence, he commenced to recite Burns'
immortal poem on brotherly love.

Never had Phil heard such elocution. The intonation, the fervour and
fire, the gesticulation were the perfect interpretation of a poet, a
mystic, a veritable Thespian. On and on Jim went in uninterrupted,
almost breathless silence. Phil was anxious for his friend's
well-being, but he stood at the door listening spellbound, as did the
Orientals about Jim, and the low whites who had straggled in toward
the end of the Chinese performance, half-drunk and doped.

Vigorously, Jim concluded:--

"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that."

When he finished there was a round of applause, in which the Chinamen
joined most noisily--an unusual thing for them who had sat throughout
the entire evening's play of their own without the slightest show of
appreciation.

Phil had heard somewhere that Scotsmen and Chinamen understand each
other better than any other nationalities on the globe do, but this
was the first time he had had a first-hand ocular demonstration that
the Chinaman appreciated the Doric of Robbie Burns, when delivered
with the true native feeling.

Langford bowed his acknowledgement in a courtly manner, as Sir Henry
Irving might have done before a royal audience.

Some of the maudlin white men shouted for an encore.

Nothing loth, Jim laughingly consented, and a hush went over the
crowd again, for there was a peculiar hypnotism coming from this
erratic individual that commanded the attention of all his listeners.

A little, old, monkey-faced Chinaman, carrying a parcel in his hand,
was standing close by. Langford caught hold of him gently and stood
the bashful individual before him. In paternal fashion he placed his
hand on the greasy, grey head and started impressively into the
farewell exhortation of Polonius to Laertes, out of Hamlet:

"And these few precepts in thy memory.
Look thou to character. Give thy thoughts no tongue
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but