The age-herald., 1900-08-20

d
 women and girls-we take only men and boys. Women no count there. Four hun dred and seevnty-four million all boy and man..
 The war in China has quiskened the sales of their peculiar wares, the storied blue ware, the cups of rare porcelain with cov- CTS and dragons in bronzed china for han dles and the wonders in gorgeous silk em- broideries, where there Is no wrong side but the pattern is made alike stitcn for stitch on the reverse. It may be that the hands of the cunning artisans will be cut off literally and the fine arts become lost arts to the generations to come.
 The largest encyclopedia in the world was compiled by the Chinese in the reign of the Emperor Yunglo-ta-ti ten 1403 This vol ume consisted of twenty-two thousand books and was a complete compendium or knowledge but it was never published, and the books now existing in manuscript are imperfect, but have place of honor in the imperial library Four hundred years later the Emperor of the present dynasty set his scholars to work to produce similar set Of volumes He gave them the headings him. self to the number of 6,109 and his learned writers grew old and died in compiling the five thousand volumes, which consumed in their production forty years of skilled labor. They were finally printed In an edition limited to one hundred copies. One com plete copy is in the British Museum It is only natural that Chinese with their love of antiquities should prefer the first work with it's imperfect knowledge to the later one with its vast accumulation of new in- ventions and enterprises. Learning in literary sense is not original in China. They borrowed their knowledge from the Buddhist missionaries, who aroused their interest when they transla Ned the Sanskrit. into Chinese. Once having learned new theory, science or phisopohy, the Chinese never forget for the reason that they find it much easier to remember an old cult than to frmulate new one Their pa tience in collecting and classifying knowl- ] edge from established literature Is phe- nomenal but they are slow to originate thought and Ideas of their own.
 
 Straws show which way the wind blows, and a quaint little Chinese straw - the forerunner of many-has been sent out on a favoring commercial gale. It is happy thought in the shape of picture of two Chinese chldren-boyS-who are depicted in water colors or pastel on sheet or so1t velvety rice paper mounted on ordinary cardboard. The innocence of childhood shines through and through the small Ce- lestials, who seem to say in their childish expression, accentuated by their natlVe costume, 'We wouldn't hurt anyone-not muchee." One is braiding the inevitable pigtail, adding some purple ribbon to It's length. Down the side of the picture In tea chest characters is the phrase "Good Luck" At least that is what my Chinese washee man says it is, but 1t may be an edict from the Empress of China to call her subjects home, for all could prove to the contrary But the little pictures with no name to explain them are going like hot cakes with their red hieroglyphics and the vague daring of their message.
 When Minister Angel was in China he was invited to a feast where one or the dishes was announced as mouse-ear Wlth snails. Dr. Angell was like the French lady who excused herself from eating in discriminate dishes by saying that she ate only her acquaintance" He desired to know his food in a country where extreme connections are the rule, and he passed the mouse-ear without investigation, to learn later that it is an edible fungus, ana not the glutinous ears of native mice, while snails are a delicacy in both London and Paris. Doubtless it will be discovered when too late that the Chinese never ate 'lats," but have been comestibly slandered.
 An attempt has been made to exploit Chinese poetry, but the translations set ones teeth edge and the safest way to read it is in the original. It is pub lshed with glossary more bewildering than the poetry and quite as voluminous. Here is a love song. There is no such word as "dodder' in any language, but the Chinese lover, like other poets, coins words to make out a line, so his translator says in a footnote:
 When I go to pluck the dodder
 Fields and lanes of Meamong
 Guess you where my thoughts there wander
 To the fair-the eldest Kiang.
 Trys she gave at Sang-chung
 Was to meet me at Shang-kung
 And would me to Kli-Shang.
 None of the numerous verses indicate whether the fair Kiang saw him further or not. The Chinese may like that kind of poetry, but even its obscurity would not commend it in America.