A CHINESE DINNER-PARTY 
247 
spend so many of the best years of his life in a place 
like Kashgar. But it was nothing of the sort to Mr. 
Petrovsky. He had learned to like the place ; and he 
had an inexhaustible fund of interest in its historical 
and archaeological treasures which he had unearthed. 
There was one thing about Mr. Petrovsky which had for 
me an especial attraction. He was always cheerful, always 
in excellent good humour ; for, when you come to think of 
it, what is there that can give greater or truer pleasure 
than to associate with people who see life and the world 
in bright colours, and are perfectly contented with the lot 
destiny has shaped for them ? At the same time he was 
both philosopher and critic. With biting wit and scathing 
irony he would lash the minor follies of the world, more 
especially everything that savoured of toadyism and 
servility. Throughout all my travels I have met no man 
who made a deeper or more real impression upon me than 
Mr. Petrovsk y ; nor is there any I would so gladly meet 
again and yet again. 
In a word, I had a splendid time of it in Kashgar. I 
was quartered in a cosy little room in a pavilion in the 
consulate garden, and after breakfast used to stroll back- 
wards and forwards under the shady mulberry and plane 
trees, along a terrace which commanded a wide view of 
the desolate regions through which I was shortly to 
journey on my way to the Far East. I had constant 
company in a colony of swallows, which had built their 
nests under the projecting eaves, and which were quite 
at home, flying freely in and out of the open doors and 
Windows, for, the sumnier air being warm, the doors and 
Windows stood wide open all day and all night long. On 
Easter morning I was awakened by the clear melodious 
echoes of a church bell, which the day before had arrived 
from Narynsk, and was hung in the chapel of the Russian 
consulate. I spent my time there working all day, and 
Wrote two or three geographical papers. Altogether, it 
'''as in every way a delightful existence, and just suited me 
down to the ground. I heard the wind whispering in the 
tops of the plane trees. What it really said I knew not ; 
