MODERN TRAVEL

represent a store of popular feeling and consciousness
with which it is well to keep in touch. . . . Thus from
observing the ways of Chinese servants, I grew to under-
stand certain things about China and Chinese feeling
and, through talking with them—and, more especially,
with Chang—, began to appreciate several points in the
national character; such, for example, as that method of
indirect approach to a subject, which comes so naturally
to the Oriental, but remains so alien to our unsubtle minds.

It cannot be denied, I think, that this habit of the
indirect approach in speech has its drawbacks for those
not accustomed to it. The Chinese is always on the
look-out for it, expecting it from the foreigner as much
as from men of his own blood. And so it was that,
one day, when I was handed by mistake some letters
addressed to my landlord, and laid them down on the
table, saying to myself idly at the same time, " Well, I
wonder what they are about," Chang naturally con-
cluded my words to be an injunction to him, and, before
I had realised what he was doing, had torn open the
envelopes and was informing me of their contents.

Often, too, from talking to him, I obtained in part
a conception of how the Chinese regard the various
actions of men, placing thereon a value entirely different
to ours. Thus, one morning, he remarked to me, by
way of opening a conversation :—

" Master interested in army ? "

" No."

Not at all discouraged, he continued proudly, " My
uncle a General in Chinese Army."

I betrayed no surprise, for it was proverbial in the
foreign colony here that, since the Civil Wars had
started, every Peking houseboy boasted a father or uncle
who was a General on either one side or the other ;
sometimes on both.

" Uncle very patriotic man," he went on.

" I am sure he is," I replied commendingly.

112