From nine until eleven he was at the War Department, of which he was President. Being a member of the Board of Punishment, he was in attendance at the office of that body daily from twelve until two, and, as one of the senior Ministers of the Foreign Office, he spent every day, from two till five or six in the afternoon, there. These were his regular daily duties. In addition to them he was frequently appointed to serve on special boards or commissions, and these he sandwiched in between the others as he could. He seldom reached home before seven or eight o'clock in the evening." It is not strange to be told that this officer died six months after this conversation, from overwork and exhaustion, nor is it at all unlikely that the same state of things may put an end to many careers in China the continuance of which would have been valuable to the interests of the government.
The quality of extension, of which we have spoken, applies to the number of those who are industrious, but it also applies to the extent of time covered by that industry, which, as we have seen, is very great. The Chinese day begins at a dim period, often not at a great remove from midnight. The Emperor holds his daily audiences at an hour when every Court of Europe is wrapped in the embrace of Morpheus. To an Occidental this seems simply inexplicable, but to a Chinese it doubtless appears the most natural thing in the world. And the conduct of the Son of Heaven is imitated more or less closely by the subjects of the Son of Heaven, in all parts of his Empire. The copper workers of Canton, the tinfoil workers of Foochow, the wood-carvers of Ningpo, the rice-mill workers of Shanghai, the cotton-cleaners and workers in the treadmill for bolting flour in the northern provinces, may all be heard late at night, and at a preposterous hour in the morning. Long before daylight the traveller comes upon a countryman who has already reached a distance of many miles from his home, where he is posted in the darkness waiting for the coming of dayhght, when he will begin the sale of his cabbages!
