Li Hung Chang was talking with his first secretary, smoking as usual his han pipe.

"The fellow must be executed,' he said, banging his fist on the table.

He was at the time the Viceroy of Kwangtung. A Taiping Rebellion veteran, a Prime Minister, a Counsellor of the State, and her only able diplomatist at the time, he was indeed the first statesman of the Empire. He had a world-wide reputation and enjoyed an authority that was denied to the other viceroys. Still, the first secretary felt quite uneasy about the decision just arrived at. To him there were dark forces everywhere.

'Far be it from me,' he said, 'to question the wisdom of Your Excellency's decision. Justice is justice, and normally it does not take expediency into consideration. But it may be worth while to bear in mind that the condemned man is the favorite-in fact, a relative—of the Manchu General here, and the Manchu General . . .'

'I am quite decided. You will please issue the order in five minutes,' replied the venerable man. He coughed a bit, and getting up slowly from his armchair he started to leave the room. 'By the way,' he remarked, 'I shall be in the garden. Kindly bring me the miscellaneous poems of Chi Shou Nan.'

The commander of the viceregal guards had a knotty problem on hand. He came rushing to the secretary, quite breathlessly, for consultation.

'What can I do?' he asked. 'His Excellency the Manchu General insists on an interview with His Excellency the Viceroy. But His Excellency the Viceroy is sound asleep in the garden.'

The secretary was a literary man. A literary man in China is a disciple of Confucius, and a disciple of Confucius always knows what is appropriate for any given situation. When his peace was disturbed he was inclined to be cross, but to show that his wits never deserted him he smiled an indulgent smile.

'Has it occurred to you that His Excellency may be awakened?'

"Yes, sir,' replied the military man. 'But for the last few months the orders have been not to disturb His Excellency when he is asleep, no matter under what circumstances.'

"That is quite so,' the secretary admitted. Quite so,' he repeated. He paced back and forth a few times, and, pointing suddenly at the bewildered commander, he said with authority: 'Conduct the Manchu General to the garden and let him wait. Explain to him that His Excellency must not be awakened, but that he will not sleep long.'

But in the garden the General waited for fully an hour. When finally Li Hung Chang woke up he found the General almost dying of anxiety.

'Excuse me,' he said, making a curtsey to the General. 'I was reading some miscellaneous poems here. getting on in age, I suppose, I soon fell asleep. Your Excellency cannot have been here long- at least I hope not.'

ible puppy, that scoundrel of a commander, has . .' Li Hung Chang was getting excited visibly as well as audibly.

'Pray, Your Excellency, calm yourself. I am here on a very grave business. I have heard that one of my poor relatives has committed a serious serious crime. I know his circumstances as no one else does, and they are very, very difficult indeed. Your Excellency has always believed that mercy comes before justice, if the purpose of the latter is not defeated by an indulgence in the former. I will therefore undertake to describe to Your Excellency the

'I take your word, my dear General. There is no need of going into the circumstances. Besides, I will do any thing to please you, General.' Whereupon, without a moment's hesitation, he sent for his secretary, and when the latter arrived he ordered him to rescind the first order and to send two cavalrymen to stay the execution.

In the meantime the Viceroy and the General laughed over the poems of Chi Shou Nan.

'I like that second sentence particularly,' Li Hung Chang said, caressing his white beard.

The horsemen soon reported that the execution had already taken place. 'What the devil are you talking about?' the venerable man inquired.

Yuan Shih Kai was for a while one of the secretaries to one of the secretaries to the Governor of Shantung. His colleagues as well as his immediate superiors were all literary men, bachelors, masters, and doctors. Some day, certain of them, he thought, will become governors and viceroys, wearing probably the three-eyed-peacock-tailed hats. He? Well, he was nothing, and very likely might remain nothing.

These thoughts flashed into his

mind when he was copying a report to the Emperor recommending somebody for promotion to a high office. He meditated, became visibly restless, and walking to the mirror he stared fixedly at it. 'So that is what I am,' he thought. His shabbiness, both sartorial and political, needed a great deal of refurbishment, and needed it soon. He sat down to copy the document. 'I will take a chance at it,' he murmured.

About a month later an Imperial edict was received by the Governor. It read: 'According to the recommendation of the Governor of Shantung, Yuan Shih Kai is hereby promoted to the office of-' and so forth.

The Governor was outraged, shocked, and, as we say in China, his hair stiffened to the extent of sending his hat to the clouds. He sent for Yuan immediately.

'You are aware of the crime you have committed, I suppose,' the Governor began.

'Yes, Your Excellency,' Yuan replied.

The Governor was amazed. He had expected to see Yuan trembling, but instead he found him cool and calm.

'You understand, of course, that the law applies to His Majesty's subjects as well as to His Majesty's servants, whatever their station may be.'

'Exactly, Your Excellency.'

'You know, of course, that the fact that you are a secretary in this Office cannot help you in the least.'

'No, Your Excellency.'

'You understand, of course, that there is no question of mercy. If I were in your position, I should expect punishment.'

'Yes, Your Excellency.'

'Have you any more to say?'
'No, Your Excellency.'

'You know the punishment, of course?'

"Yes, Your Excellency; for your humble servant it is death; for Your Excellency it is exile for life.'

'What?' the Governor cried.

'Lack of supervision, Your Excellency.'

When the interview was over, the Governor retired to his solitude. For several days thereafter his wife thought him 'queer.' He had not changed his jacket, he ate mechanically, and he was heard pacing back and forth in his library muttering, 'After all, this rascal may occupy the position as well as any other.'

General Bou was serving under Marquis Tso against the Taiping rebels. He was a solid, ready, and resolute man, and under the slightest provocation he was liable to explode. He was indeed a firecracker. He was illiterate. The only word he could write was his own surname.

He was trapped by the rebels in the province of Anhwei, and the town in which he took refuge was besieged. Food was getting scarce and the soldiers were already worn-out and disheartened. The town was sure to fall in three days.

'Send an urgent request to the Marquis,' said the General to his secretaries. 'Reënforcements, of course. Understand, not a moment is to be lost,' he reminded them.

The secretaries retired to their quarters and started their composition in good style. The Marquis was a literary man of the first rank, and was widely known to be intolerant of bad composition in official dispatches. The secretaries were scratching their heads to get the proper words, and singing their composition to see if it 'read well.' They were racing against time, and while they were hard at the task the General came rushing into their room.

'You fools! I have waited for fully half an hour, and here you are wagging your heads like dogs. Get out! I will write the dispatch myself.'

'But-' one of the secretaries ventured.

'Get out! Do you hear?' the General thundered.

The secretaries looked at each other in despair. While they were aware of the gravity of the situation, they could not escape the humor of it. The General could not write a single word beyond his own surname. 'How in the world is he going to do it?' each of them thought.

The next day the Marquis received a dispatch. He opened it, and the only word he saw was the word 'Bou,' encircled by numerous dots. For a moment he was puzzled. But then its meaning flashed into his mind, and he sent three thousand soldiers to rescue the desperate general.

His ears still echoed the last notes of the jazz orchestra, and his eyes still reflected the smiles of many women. He was happy. He was always happy, if we can call happiness consciousness of physical well-being combined with utter obliviousness to anything in life transcending that. But when he stepped into the street an uncanny chill made him shudder a chill that

did not belong to Madrid or to the mild, clear evening. It struck through him to the marrow with a sort of lunar frigidity that seemed to descend from the light over the entrance of the great hotel he was leaving and congeal his very soul.

He drew his overcoat tighter around him, glanced up at the pallid radiance above, and thought, 'Suppose I were to die?'

A new thrill of terror shot through Guillermo when he asked himself this question, as if the very suggestion were ominous. To reassure himself, he muttered with a smile: 'I must be feeling a little seedy.' But he glanced again, with a shadow of resentment in his eyes, at the steady white electric globe that seemed to flood him with the chill aseptic pallor of a hospital. When they light up for a party, they ought to have colored illuminations-something pink like roses, or ruddy like wine.

Guillermo did not formulate this idea clearly in his thoughts, but it lurked obscurely in the back of his mind. He felt that the white glare must be responsible for the vague dis

1 From Revista de Occidente (Madrid literary monthly), November

comfort and uneasy premonitions that had disturbed his early evening at the thé dansant. What a mob! What monotonous costumes! He recalled vividly the sad expression on the face of his fiancée and her mother's look of disapproval. He would have to parry that stroke in time. He could not delay longer.

Pondering thus, he looked eagerly for a taxi, humming meanwhile, to dissipate his gloom, the air of the foxtrot they were playing when he left. But every vehicle was engaged. Just as he was beginning to get impatient, a bus with shining glass windows and bright nickel trimmings chugged slowly down the opposite side of the street. It was the hour of heaviest traffic, and the thoroughfare was packed with an endless creeping line of glaring headlights, and filled with the discordant din of horns and motors sounding out of key. Guillermo darted between the moving vehicles to catch the bus. He was less than a yard away from it when he hit something. He heard shouts and grinding brakes. Almost under his nose the tattoo of a horse's hoofs struck sparks on the pavement. He hesitated. The rearing animal seemed to rise in front of him like a gigantic equestrian statue. He expected to be crushed. But the bus was so near that, with a final spring of incredible length and quickness, he gained its platform in a single bound just as it was starting.

'What was it?' asked a woman, evidently craving a sensation.

'Oh, some barbarian tried to run across between the motor-cars!'

'Won't our people ever get civilized?'

'In London

'Yes, and in New York 'Holy Virgin!'

Guillermo was so upset by the incident that he hardly knew whether he was standing on the platform or stretched out flat on the pavement. Every nerve in his body seemed to be humming, and he heard voices and saw things as through a mist. But the lights and the cheap glitter of the bus convinced him that he had escaped all right, and he laughed a loud, openmouthed laugh of triumph as he reflected that the barbarian they were discussing was himself.

The feeling of being surrounded by fog continued, but it was a pleasant sensation as if its vapor were a cloak that covered him and prevented people from detecting evidence of his recent fright. His fellow passengers apparently paid no attention to him. They talked about what had just happened, but they did not look his way, although he was the hero of the episode. 'By Jove, our people are getting to be polite,' thought Guillermo. 'How courteous of them not to stare at me, or to ask me questions!'

The conductor passed him twice. He made a movement to pay him, but the fellow did not offer him a ticket. Apparently he had overlooked him, although he glanced absent-mindedly toward the corner where Guillermo stood. The bus was running so smoothly that he hardly felt its motion. At length they reached a deserted, silent, fashionable avenue whose aristocratic mansions stood back in haughty seclusion in their ample grounds. His fiancée lived here. Guillermo left the bus with the secret satisfaction that every man feels

who gets a free ride from a corporation.

When he stepped on the ground he did not feel as if he were walking. He had rather the sensation of skating with remarkable ease and smoothness. He had always been an indefatigable dancer and an enthusiastic athlete. He had spent his life among the barbaric dissonances of Negro bands and the rhythmic racket of motor-cars. Now for the first time in his memory he took an exquisite delight in the silence of this retired and deserted street. He felt an impulse to loiter alone under the dancing shadows of the leafless acacia trees whose branches formed a black network between him and a sky studded with tiny, infinitely distant, stars.

But here was the entrance of his fiancée's house. Its lighted wroughtiron gate-lanterns, and the long line of waiting motor-cars, reminded him that he was unpardonably late-he who should have been the first arrival. He recognized the initials, the coat-ofarms, and even the model, of every automobile, with one exception a long, slender, black, spindle-shaped car designed to offer the minimum airresistance; a car with a suggestion of queerness about it, as if it were intended for a movie film.

Guillermo felt a vague irritation when he saw this car. It struck a discordant note in the unwonted harmony that filled his soul. Who could have come in that machine?

The doorman was pacing slowly to and fro in front of the entrance, the long skirts of his livery coat flapping in the breeze. Now and then two chauffeurs exchanged an indifferent remark in a low voice. Guillermo passed between them without attracting their notice. The doorman, instead of formally saluting him as usual by lifting his hand to the visor of his cap, uncere