"I took good care to laugh heartily too. After which I made signs the
counterpart of his. He looked anxious. I put my hand in my pocket, and
drew out my gloves. He stared. _I put them on_, and nodded, to show that
that was the way we barbarians did it.
"'Eyah!' cried the silk-robed old gentleman.
"'Eyah!' echoed the horse-boys and the crowd.
"Then I laughed, and the horse-boys laughed loudly, and the crowd louder
still, and finally the old gentleman doubled himself up in his blue silk
fur-lined robe in fits of laughter.
"An Asiatic only relishes one thing better than being outwitted--that is
to outwit.
"'Eyah! Eyah! Ha! ha! ha!' they cried as we rode away.
"'Ha! ha! ha!' replied I, waving a well-gloved hand, on my road to
Pekin."
WAVES OF THE GREAT SOUTH SEAS.
(_Founded on Fact_.)
"Very likely the man who drew it had been nearly drowned by one
himself."
"Very likely nothing of the sort!"
"How could he draw it if he hadn't seen it?"
"Why, they always do. Look at Uncle Alfred, he drew a splendid picture
of a shipwreck. Don't you remember his doing it at the dining-room
table, and James coming in to lay the cloth, and he would have a bit of
the table left clear for him, because he was in the middle of putting in
the drowning men, and wanted to get them in before luncheon? And Uncle
Herbert wrote a beautiful poem to it, and they were both put into a real
magazine.
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