dollars from me, to be repaid when we land at Yokohama—if he approaches me again I shall refuse him firmly. And the fat vaudeville manager from Cincinnati, who plays fan-tan every night with a heap of Chinese brass cash and a bowl borrowed from the ship's dining-room!     

       As I mused, I felt the Port Watch gazing at me again over his siphon. I believe he would pour out his story, were I to permit it. But I do not choose to hear. After all, I am not a romancer, but a scientific man. My concern is not with the curious and personal tangle of human affairs, but with impersonal fact and sober deductions therefrom.     

       Sir Robert was now defining culture as the touchstone of civilization—from the British point of view, of course. God, that voice! And then, without a thought in my head as to where the talk was leading—suddenly—he plumped squarely down on my subject. It was the first time in the twelve days of our voyage. Until this moment, the tribal god referred to in his national anthem had spared him. My subject! The one thing I know more about than any other human being. I had him.     

       “The surest test of the culture of a people,” said he, ex cathedra,       “is the music of that people. Primitive races invariably express their emotions in primitive music. They try to tell me that the Chinese are a civilized people. 'Very well,' I say then; 'let me hear their music.' No nation has progressed far along the great highroad of civilization without coming into an understanding of the diatonic system. The Chinese civilized? When their finest musical instrument is the little sheng, a crude collection of twelve pipes that are not even in tune? When they have failed to arrive at even a rudimentary perception of tonality and scale relationships? No; I tell you, the Chinese civilization is to the European as the little sheng is to the grand piano. The piano, on which all scales are related, all harmomes possible, is the supreme artistic achievement of the highest civilization.”     

       This was enough. I got right up and went over to the round table. My forehead was burning; I must have been red as fire.     

       “You do not know what you are talking about,” I cried out. I had to lean over the shoulder of one of the weak-minded in order to catch Sir Robert's eye. “It is the piano that has killed music in Europe! The piano is 

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