uld not therefore and thereby destroy our play.
Play cannot exist for us without fun, and for us the open air, the
fields, and the meadows are like wine: if we feel inclined, we roam and
jump about in them, but we should never submit to standing to attention
for hours lest a ball should escape us. Besides which, we invented the
foundations of all our games many thousand of years ago. We invented and
played at 'Diabolo' when the Britons were painted blue and lived in
the woods. The English knew how to play once, in the days of Queen
Elizabeth; then they had masques and madrigals and Morris dances
and music. A gentleman was ashamed if he did not speak six or seven
languages, handle the sword with a deadly dexterity, play chess, and
write good sonnets. Men were broken on the wheel for an idea: they were
brave, cultivated, and gay; they fought, they played, and they wrote
excellent verse. Now they organise games and lay claim to a special
morality and to a special mission; they send out missionaries to
civilise us savages; and if our people resent having an alien creed
stuffed down their throats, they take our hand and burn our homes in
the name of Charity, Progress, and Civilisation. They seek for one
thing--gold; they preach competition, but competition for what? For
this: who shall possess the most, who shall most successfully 'do' his
neighbour. These ideals and aims do not tempt us. The quality of the
life is to us more important than the quantity of what is done and
achieved. We live, as we play, for the sake of living. I did not say
this to the professors because we have a proverb that when you are in a
man's country you should not speak ill of it. I say it to you because I
see you have an inquiring mind, and you will feel it more insulting to
be served with meaningless phrases and empty civilities than with the
truth, however bitter. For those who have once looked the truth in the
face cannot afterwards be put off with false semblances."

"You speak true words," I said, "but what do you like best in England?"

"The gardens," he answered, "and the little yellow flowers that are
sprinkled like stars on your green grass."

"And what do you like least in England?"

"The horrible smells," he said.

"Have you no smells in China?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "we have natural smells, but not the smell of gas and
smoke and coal which sickens me here. It is strange to me that people
can find the smell of human beings d