rth, on the great broad rivers of
the east, and in the orchards of the south."

A CHINAMAN ON OXFORD

"Yes, I am a student," said the Chinaman, "And I came here to study the
English manners and customs."

We were seated on the top of the electric tram which goes to Hampton
Court. It was a bitterly cold spring day. The suburbs of London were not
looking their best.

"I spent three days at Oxford last week," he said.

"It's a beautiful place, is it not?" I remarked.

The Chinaman smiled. "The country which you see from the windows of the
railway carriages," he said, "on the way from Oxford to London strikes
me as being beautiful. It reminded me of the Chinese Plain, only it is
prettier. But the houses at Oxford are hideous: there is no symmetry
about them. The houses in this country are like blots on the landscape.
In China the houses are made to harmonise with the landscape just as
trees do."

"What did you see at Oxford?" I asked.

"I saw boat races," he said, "and a great many ignorant old men."

"What did you think of that?"

"I think," he said, "the young people seemed to enjoy it, and if they
enjoy it they are quite right to do it. But the way the older men talk
about these things struck me as being foolish. They talk as if these
games and these sports were a solemn affair, a moral or religious
question; they said the virtues and the prowess of the English race were
founded on these things. They said that competition was the mainspring
of life; they seemed to think exercise was the goal of existence. A man
whom I saw there and who, I learnt, had been chosen to teach the young
on account of his wisdom, told me that competition trained the man to
sharpen his faculties; and that the tension which it provoked is
in itself a useful training. I do not believe this. A cat or a boa
constrictor will lie absolutely idle until it perceives an object worthy
of its appetite; it will then catch it and swallow it, and once more
relapse into repose without thinking of keeping itself 'in training.'
But it will lie dormant and rise to the occasion when it occurs. These
people who talked of games seem to me to undervalue repose. They forget
that repose is the mother of action, and exercise only a frittering away
of the same."

"What did you think," I asked, "of the education that the students at
Oxford receive?"

"I think," said the Chinaman, "that inasmuch as the young men waste
their time in idleness they do we