IN THE EAST INDIES. 187 
here; Tom and I came across an announcement of it 
in an old Town Topics (April 4). We are simply 
reveling in Town Topics now; we have managed to 
secure three copies. 
This is a most attractive place, but very European, 
swell houses and gorgeously gotten up individuals, 
ete. It is quite a change from what we have been see- 
ing, that is, in the East Indies. Mr. Tennant, a 
Frenchman whom we met in Woo Chow, and who af- 
terwards came on the same boat with us to Shanghai, 
introduced us yesterday to Dr. Ward Hall, an Amer- 
ican dentist, who has lived here for years; he is a 
collector of old Chinese things and I never saw or 
imagined anything so filled to overflowing with at- 
tractive things as his house is. He has in one room 
a screen over fifteen feet high of dark wood heavily 
and magnificently earved with dragons, birds, clouds, 
bats, flowers, ete., and panels of mosaic silk, which 
looked like the finest embroidery. This came from 
an old emperor’s palace. Then he has two very finely 
earved black wood chests (with wonderfully worked 
locks and hinges) about eight feet high. His embroid- 
eries were simply beyond words; they were so ravish- 
ingly charming. But his tapestry, or rather brocade, 
of heavy orange yellow silk with a deep border, and a 
huge dragon of every shade in the centre, is his piece 
de resistance; this is about 12x6. Pa would have 
gone perfectly wild over his old China and porcelain, 
bronze incense burners and oi] vessels. He has been 
years and years collecting them and I eould not help 
thinking, when I looked at them, of the poor unfort- 
unates who suffered at his hands and who really paid 
for them. The dentist’s chair, among all these 
