"Six. There, I told you so― and there comes another one!"

"Seven."

แ

"Lady Phips. If Cotton Mather was not ashamed to be afraid, why should I be?" The shadowy door trembled again, like a

anguish.

"The mighty dead! What's that?"

"It sounds human! Oh, captain, this is an awful night. I feel as though my hair were turning white. What shall we do?"

The clock-case began to tremble. There was a sound as of scratching within.

"Eight," said Lady Merriweather.

"I can't count any more," said the captain. "That scratching sound all unstrings me." "Nine," said Lady Merriweather. "What do you suppose will happen when it gets to twelve?

"Nine of them apostles have come out, and some of 'em are goin' in again. I wish it was mornin' Je-ru-sa-lem! What was that?"

There seemed a struggle going on in the clock-case. The side weight knocked to and fro. Then something fell with a thud, and it was that last startling sound that caused the captain's exclamation.

The clock made eleven strokes, and twelve. The two stood with staring eyes, "like geese going to a funeral," as Lady Merriweather afterward said.

"I believe that the clock is goin' to turn into a human being, face, hands, eyes, and all," said the captain. It was that wink that all unstrung me."

66

"I can't stand this a minute longer. Let us run."

"No, Captain Tuttle."

"Then I will! You follow!"

The hero of the lamps and pitchers seized his hat, banged the door hurriedly, and the rapid tap, tap, tap of his cane was heard vanishing in diminuendo down the long street.

Lady Merriweather stood like a statue. A head looked out of the clock door cautiously and inquiringly, and uttered a pitiful, longdrawn, but very familiar cry.

"You blessed cat!" She sank into a chair by the fire. The ghost of the clock-case came to her, purring, and leaped into her lap. “You blessed, blessed cat! How light I do feel - my head and all! My heart is as light as a feather. He has forfeited his claim now. It has been our last Hallowe'en."

Not so, Lady Merriweather.

The night when the dead visit the world came again. Lady Merriweather had been told that year that Captain Tuttle had reformed, that he had had a "visitation from the invisible world" and been under "concern," and that these experiences had wrought a well nigh marvelous change in his character.

"Heaven save us now! It's coming," said the captain.

แ

The catch of the clock door parted with a snap, and the door itself opened and stood still. Maybe 't is that mad sailor," said the captain," or Ann Hibbin, or some other body that old Governor Phips hung. I can feel my wig crawl all around my head."

The door of the clock started again, and slowly opened a little wider.

66

Lady Merriweather, this may be the last time. I have a confession to make. I have something on my soul, and I must speak it out. Lady Merriweather, I-am-scared. Hear my heart beat! I never yet feared the face of clay, but I can't stand these things of the invisible world. Cotton Mather could n't. My heart is weak, and my nerves shaky. I must speak true in the face of all these awful things. One can't afford to be insincere when the heavens are tumbling. Oh, Lady Merriweather — "

The clock door gave a shadowy jerk, as if suddenly shaken by an unseen hand.

"She's comin'," said Captain Tuttle, in a nervous spasm.

"Who, Captain Tuttle? Who 's coming?"

lay on the rug by the fire.

The old rap came on the door; the old guest took his seat by the fire again.

"Lady Merriweather, I have reformed. The powers of the invisible world were too much for me. Stands to reason I don't want to die, and go there. Now I am not going to stay until midnight this Hallowe'en to see no apostles nor nothin'. I'm comin' to business at once. I have been sober for a year, and I am never goin' to drink any more, except the water from the well in Spring Lane. You said in that case you would have me-tut, tut!—you said so — eh, Lady Merriweather?"

"Any man can reform if he have a sufficient reason. But, Captain Tuttle, I was not the cause of your reformation. Love was not. That was not a sufficient reason."

"What was, Lady Merriweather?" "Fear."

66

'Oh, Lady Merriweather, that is a sorry word."

"Captain Tuttle, what do you think it was that was in the clock that night—last Hallowe'en?"

"That Phips woman." "No, Captain Tuttle."

A's

Never-moving mass of strange figures, scenes, and colors, a wilderness of untranslatable sights, sounds, and odors; from which nebulæ certain coherent or incoherent forms and recollections have taken shape in my mind. From these impressions I shall endeavor to tell, in shadowy outline, of a great living reality.

In the dim gray of the morning the river steamer, a grand floating hotel, approached the city. The river was muddy, and swiftly flowing between low-lying banks of bright

green, level fields that faded into thin haze. A few Chinese boats lay anchored, or here and there floated with the stream.

A little gaudy-colored toy-junk, decked out with bright paper and tinsel, drifting seaward, passed close to our bows, and disappeared under our great paddle-wheels. It was an offering to joss, an inarticulate prayer for the repose of a dweller in the regions of death.

To the south a tall pagoda rose boldly on the riverside; a graceful column 120 or 130 feet high, built in eight or nine tiers, each

slightly smaller than the one beneath. Birds had carried hither seeds of the banian-tree or thick foliage vines, and from the balconies were festoons of drooping dark-green creepers fall ing sometimes to the stage below and partly hiding the narrow doors and windows showing in the walls of the tower. Here was another symbol of joss-worship, a sort of constant and automatic prayer for a blessing upon the fields.

As pink and yellow sun's rays were lighting up the sky we drew within sight of a multitude of roofs and buildings. A dull pall of smoke hung over the whole city-smoke risen during the past night and evening from the million fires, the illuminations, and the incense-sticks burning in this huge human ant-hive.

Boat-life soon began to be vigorously animate; hundreds of craft swarmed about us, some plying up-stream, others down-stream. Sometimes, as if his very soul were in jeopardy, a native boatman struggled to cross our bows, and, having succeeded, rested idly, gazing at the ship, and waited until he saw us steam away from him.

Then came to us the clamor of the boatcity. There were apparently millions of people in boats; the water was alive with them. Boat lay against boat - Chinese gunboats, junks, house-boats, sampans, slipper-boats, canoes, all full of busy figures. The great steamer,

overshadowing all in size, threaded her way slowly through this endless maze of flotsam humanity. Closer we drew to the city, and the lighter craft gathered around us, full of yelling, gesticulating men, women, and children, all touting for the custom of the hundreds of their countrymen who were passengers by the river steamer. The wharves were built out into the stream, and in the recesses between them lay the slipper-boats, packed together like driftwood on a quiet eddy of a flooded river, and so named because they resemble nothing in the world so much as an old slipper with a pointed toe.

A Chinese guide speaking English was of course necessary to an English-speaking foreigner; also two chairs, one for the guide, one for me. These chairs-comfortable, deepseated trays or boxes of wickerwork fixed on the middle of two springy shafts about sixteen feet long-were provided with a high-backed seat and a thick green awning. Two of the chair-bearers lifted the ends of the shafts to their shoulders; two others stepped underneath and between them, and with a strap from shaft to shaft assisted to carry the weight upon the backs of their necks. And then away they trotted merrily down some exceedingly narrow and crooked lanes thronged with rapidly moving people.

I had expected soon to reach the streets, but

after a while it dawned on me that from the first I had been in the streets, and, what is more, in the principal streets, of the city. Through miles and miles of streets ran the bearersstreets tortuous and winding, which twisted and crossed one another; over rough granite bridges spanning muddy ditches, under granite archways, through walls twenty or thirty feet thick; streets lined on each side with shops, endless shops, interspersed here and there with dwelling-houses or temples; then shops again, and restaurants, and open stalls in wider places, where native artists might be seen plying their trades, and shops where sat more affluent merchants disposing of wares made elsewhere.

Little if any sunlight struck down into these ways. Their narrowness would have prevented the intrusion of any but vertical beams, or those slanting parallel with the street, and, to guard against even these, a shade-loving people had hung matting overhead. This gave the city the aspect of a huge straggling bazaar sheltered beneath a great ragged roof.

The awning over my chair interrupting vision, I had it removed, and when, as sometimes happened, we came into places where the dazzling sunshine was so fierce as to be almost painful, I held up an ordinary umbrella. But often I had to close the umbrella lest it should catch in the walls or door-jambs on each side of the way. Once or twice when a coolie, wearing his large flat head-gear, passed us, he stopped, and tilted his hat upon one side to prevent its being knocked off by the chair. There was not room for the chair and the hat side by side in the same street.

The thoroughfares in the older portions of the city vary from about four to six or seven feet in width. In the newer quarters there are frequently ten and even fifteen feet of space between the houses on each side.

These narrow ways were thronged with tens of thousands of people; looking along them it seemed almost as if one could walk upon men's heads, so close were they. High and low, rich and poor, all rubbed shoulders. Coolies, naked save for loose drawers rolled high up the thighs, carried, on each end of a six-foot stick, water, firewood, and burdens of various sorts; when an exceptionally heavy load was to be carried, some four coolies bore it, slung on the middle of a bamboo, two at each end of the pole. Peddlers carried their wares in baskets slung at each end of a stick, or in flat trays hung like an old-fashioned pair of scales, with the pole or beam on their shoulders. Carriers thus bore creels of fruit, fish, and all sorts of esculents; live rats, cats, and dogs in wicker baskets; fat pigs in wicker cylinders, sometimes with their les hanging out; and boxes, bales, and trays of toys. Through the throng exalted Chinamen,

fan in hand, in silken gowns, and with queues pendent far down the back, made their slow way in dignity. There were plenty of women and children also in the crowd; some of the women hobbling painfully along on their tortured and distorted feet, which, from the tight binding, were so shrunken and diseased that their shin bones had become fleshless skeleton supports covered with a wrinkled parchment skin, and their legs seemed to be little better than gnarled and knotted stumps. Occasionally an empty chair was seen in this crowd, or a chair in which sat some mandarin, with awning and delicately fashioned lattice-blinds closely drawn, or a man who hawked small wares or sweets for sale, and carried in one hand a little flat metal plate and a string with a small weight tied to one finger. With each twitch of his finger a clear, musical note rang sharply in the air. Ping! ping! ping! sounded his little gong, heralding his approach from a long way off. Who knows? Perhaps from this primitive but artistic appliance has in the course of ages been evolved our muffin-bell-sweet music in the ears of those setting forth in quest of five-o'clock teas. Anon our progress was checked by a funeral procession, which struggled past us amid a blare of discordant trumpets, beating of gongs, and screeching of stringed instruments, the mourners bearing aloft paper and tinsel dolls, bright streamers, or little trays of food and sticks of incense.

The coolies, who had their queues knotted up, wore, for the most part, a hat shaped like a flat lamp-shade about two feet across. A little cup-shaped wicker basket fixed underneath it held this covering over their heads, and it served more as a sun- and rain-shade for the body than an actual head-covering. Clerks, merchants, and well-to-do people carried their queues loose, and were either bareheaded, or covered with a black satin or very fine black wicker skullcap with a coral button on the top.

Every one seemed busy; no one seemed unhappy; each individual was polite, and prepared to make way for another. To keep to the right was the rule of the road, a rule strictly adhered to, without which all progress would have been impossible. As I looked along the crowded way, I could see always two long lines of people in single file, passing one another, and keeping close to their respective right sides. In places the streets so narrowed in that passersby rubbed shoulders. Every one stood aside for the passage of a funeral or a priestly procession, after which the acknowledged order of precedence was first a chair with a passenger,- though even this moved aside to allow a passage to the lowest-class laborer staggering beneath a heavy load,— then any person carrying a load, and lastly those who were unen