28 MEMOli Y. 



temples, his pagodfis, his joss-paper ; and so con- 

 tinue till all one knows about himself, his coun- 

 try, his manufactures, and his customs is fairly 

 exhausted, down even to his rice and his chop- 

 sticks, his ivory carvings, and his children's toys. 

 Why, it is not too much to say that, if one were 

 to write down deliberately in black and white all 

 that an average schoolgirl of ten years old knows 

 about China and Chinamen, it would run to a list 

 of several hundred facts, of which we have here 

 briefly enumerated in passing but twenty-eight! 

 If anybody doubts it, let him take a pencil and 

 paper for himself, and, after rigorous self-examina- 

 tion, allowing one point to lead up to another, 

 write down in the form of a numbered catalogue 

 every distinct and separate item he can possibly 

 remember about the Chinese, their land, and 

 their habits. He will probably be astonished him- 

 self at the result of the experiment. For, recol- 

 lect that we have said nothing at all here about 

 Peking and Cauton, Shanghai and Hon Kong, the 

 Summer Palace and the great rivers, the square- 

 holed money and the vermilion pencil, the roast 

 rats and the floating rafts, or a thousand other 

 familiar commonplaces of undigested popular 

 knowledge. The truth is that every individual 

 human being carries about with him in his own 

 head, without ever suspecting it, a vast collection 

 of jjigeon-holed facts and fancies, a store of mem- 



