Page:The Chinese Boy and Girl.djvu/119



was on a bright spring afternoon that a Chinese official and his little boy called at our home on Filial Piety Lane, in Peking.

The dresses of father and child were exactly alike—as though they had been twins, boots of black velvet or satin, blue silk trousers, a long blue silk garment, a waistcoat of blue brocade, and a black satin skullcap—the child was in every respect, even to the dignity of his bearing, a vest-pocket edition of his father.

He had a T'ao of books which I recognized as the Fifteen Magic Blocks, one of the most ingenious, if not the most remarkable, books I have ever seen.

A T'ao is two or any number of volumes of a book wrapped in a single cover. In this case it was two volumes. 115