ABSTRACT
IT was odd to us that the “shraff” should be invariably Chinese, but he was. Whenever we had occasion to call at a foreign counting-house in Yokohama, Nagasaki, Kobe, or wherever it might be, the man that counted the money was a long-queued Celestial in flowing robes, never a short-haired, frock-coated subject of the Mikado. And this in Japan!—where the natives had held all China in contempt until they whipped her so soundly and speedily that the contempt changed into pity!
