As a looker on, PUNCHINELLO would suggest
to the political parties, as applicable in this case, the following
quotation from VIRGIL:
----"_timeo Dana-os et dona ferentes_."
* * * * *
SOME TRAITS OF THE CHINESE.
[Illustration: 'O']
Of all human races, next to the monkies, the Mongolians are the most
imitative. They are only a little lower than the monkies in this
respect, and we have seen some trained ones that could successfully
compete with the Simians on their own ground.
A Chinaman employed in the North Adams shoe factory, for instance, was
asked to imitate exactly a boot of a particular style, which was shown
to him. After a few trials, he imitated the boot so perfectly, that a
customer who came in took him to be the fellow of it, and was not
undeceived until he went to try him on. No wonder that the regular
Crispins are jealous of a foreign cordwainer who can do this.
In the art of dress-making for ladies the Chinese display wonderful
skill. Their taste and inventiveness in this branch are unrivalled even
by the best French _modistes_. The _panier_ with which it pleases the
ladies of the period to protuberate their persons was of Chinese origin.
It was revealed in an opium dream to a celebrated male mantua-maker of
Pekin, who sold the idea to a Yankee-Notions man travelling in China for
a Paris house. The inventor was so chagrined at hearing afterwards of
the immense fortune realized from it by the man of the West, that he
committed suicide by hanging himself on a willow-pattern plate.
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