Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/373

 they possess neither the energy nor the ingenuity to make a start. The Chinese, on the other hand, will many of them trade on nothing ; and some seem capable of living on nothing too, until by patience and thrift, if they ever have the ghost of a chance, they manage to obtain a fair living.

The shops in Peking, both outside and within doors, are very attractive objects. Many of their fronts are elaborately carved, painted and gilded; while as for the interiors, these are fitted up and finished with an equally scrupulous care, the owners ready for business inside, clothed in their silks, and looking a supremely contented tribe. I could discover evidences of distribution of the wealth of the official classes in all those shops which in any way supplied their wants, or ministered to their tastes. On the other hand, signs of squalor and misery were apparent every- where in the unwelcome and uncared-for poor ; all the more apparent, perhaps, when brought face to face with the tokens of wealth and refinement.

I have not space to relate a tenth of what I beheld or expe- rienced in this great capital; how its naked beggars were found in the winter mornings dead at its gates; how a cart might be met going its rounds to pick up the bodies of infants too young to require the sacred rites of sepulture ; how the destitute were to be seen crowding into a sort of casual ward already full, and craving permission to stand inside its walls, so as to obtain shelter from the wintry blast that would freeze their hearts be- fore the dawn. There are acres of hovels at Peking, in which the Imperial bannermen herd, and filth seems to be deposited like tribute before the very palace gates ; indeed, there is hardly a spot in the capital that does not make one long for a single glimpse of that Chinese paradise we had pictured to ourselves in our youth — for the bright sky, the tea-fields, orange-groves