i., 26).
In China longevity is the highest of the five grades of felicity.
Triumphal arches are erected all over the kingdom in honour of those who have attained the patriarchal age which among us seems only to be assured to those who partake in sufficient quantity of certain fruit-salts and pills.

Age when not known is guessed by the length of the beard, which is never allowed to grow till the thirty-second year.
Now it happens that I am clean-shaven, and, as it is a well-known fact that the face of the European is an enigma to the Oriental, just as the face of the Chinaman is an inscrutable mystery to most of us, I have often been amused by the varying estimates of my age advanced by curious bystanders.

It has been estimated as low as twelve--"look at the foreigner," they said, "there's a fine fat boy!"-- and never higher than twenty-two.

But it is not only in China that a youthful appearance has hampered me in my walk through life.
I remember that on one occasion, some years ago, I obliged a medical friend by taking his practice while he went away for a few days to be married.

It was in a semi-barbarian village named Portree, in a forgotten remnant of Scotland called the Isle of Skye.