Page:Inside Canton.djvu/65

64 shopkeepers, but the latter always finished where they ought to have begun—that is to say, by parting with a few sapecs.

In a country where everyone wears a queue—not a villanous little wretched slender queue like that which used to grease the collars of our fathers' coats, but a good thick plait descending from the sinciput to the calf—the reader will perceive what importance, practical and social, the barbers must have achieved! They take a man in his cradle, and do not leave him till the day he enters the tomb; if they only chose to employ the influence at their command they might revolutionise China. The Figaros of the Central Empire constitute a most considerable corporation. A Protestant clergyman, who indulges in statistics after the fashion of M. Charles Dupin, assured me that there were more than 20,000 at Canton! There are itinerant barbers, barbers in their own room, barbers with shops, and barbers who stand at the corners of the streets, like the Paris commissionnaires. I have very often sent for the barber from the corner, and never had any reason to regret it.

This artist employs no soap; he simply moistens the skin several times; he then scrapes his customer with a razor resembling a clasp-knife without a spring, broken in half. This wretched blade, two inches long and one broad, is fitted into a piece of wood as a handle; but, however pitiable their