346 Sport and Life. 



Lam Sam send his wife, come and fetch you in a hack, no catchee 

 more cold ; tell boss champagene heap good." 



After an interval of a year's absence in England, I met Lam 

 Sam in Victoria again. He rushed up, greeting me effusively, and 

 asked me to come and see his wife on the following Sunday. It 

 was rather a shock, however, to my friend who went with me, as 

 well as to myself, to find on entering the woman's room two wives, 

 one of whom was much older than the one whom I had seen 

 before. 



"This my oldest, first wife," explained Sam, "this wife you 

 know, she young." They both rose and shook hands, the younger 

 woman having to climb over the piles of blue cotton Chinese 

 blouses by which she was surrounded, and the buttonholes of which 

 she seemed to be manufacturing. Fung had grown into a lanky 

 damsel, and had her face already much rouged and powdered. 

 There were two smaller children in the room, who, in their fits of 

 shyness alternately took refuge first with one woman and then with 

 the other, so that we never knew which was the mother, and felt a 

 certain delicacy about asking. Neither of the wives spoke English, 

 but smiled and nodded at us continually, while the younger one 

 shuffled in and out of the room, bringing us sweetmeats, wine, and 

 cake, and what we did not eat they insisted on doing up in two 

 bundles, wrapping each in a red handkerchief, and presenting one 

 to my friend and one to me. With these we had to leave the 

 house, and run the gauntlet of all the town. We should dearly 

 have loved to leave them behind or drop them, but were afraid of 

 mortally offending our hostesses. 



When my husband advertised for Chinese labour for some work 

 up in Kootenay, there was great rivalry between the would-be 

 suppliers of this labour. The Chinese contractors all called on 

 him, and tried to find out the terms offered by their rivals, and 

 if possible to underbid them. One Chinaman came upon me 

 unawares in the garden one day, after he had left the house, where 

 he had been confabulating with my husband. Looking round 

 cautiously to see if anyone was within hearing, he came up and 



