alleys ; or perhaps it is a reel of cotton which they are spinning. But idle they are not.
The indefatigable activity of the classes which have been named is well matched by that of the merchants and their employés. The life of a merchant's clerk, even in Western lands, is not that of one who holds a sinecure, but as compared with that of a Chinese clerk it is comparative idleness. For to the work of the latter there is no end. His hoHdays are few and his tasks heavy, though they may be interspersed with periods of comparative torpor.
Chinese shops are always opened early, and they close late. The system of bookkeeping by a species of double entry appears to be so minute that the accountants are often kept busy till a very late hour recording the sales and balancing the entries. When nothing else remains to be done, clerks can be set to sorting over the brass cash taken in, in quest of rare coins which may be sold at a profit.
It is a matter of surprise that the most hard-worked class of the Chinese race is that class which is most envied, and into which every ambitious Chinese strives to raise himself — to wit, the official. The number and variety of transactions with which a Chinese official of any rank must occupy himself, and for the success of which he is not only theoretically but very practically responsible, is likewise surprising. How would our Labor Unions, who are so strenuous about the coming Eight Hours a Day, relish a programme of a day's work such as the following, which is taken from a statement made to an interpreter in one of the Foreign Legations in Peking by an eminent Chinese statesman? I once asked a member of the Chinese cabinet, who was complaining of fatigue and over-work, for an account of his daily routine. He replied that he left home every morning at two o'clock, as he was on duty at the Palace from three to six. As a member of the Privy Council, he was engaged in that body from six until nine.
