In his Study of Sociology Herbert Spencer tells a tale of a Frenchman “who, having been three weeks in England, proposed to write a book on English characteristics, who after three months found that he was not quite ready, and who, after three years, concltided that he knew nothing about it.” We can vouch for the accuracy of the tale, except that the hero did not happen to be a Frenchman visiting England, but was an Englishman or American visiting China. We have known him well. He went there as globe-trotter, remained awhile as visitor, and lastly made up his mind to become a resident of the Far Eastern paradise of puzzles and problems.

Let us study him awhile and inquire how it came to pass that his enthusiasm for printer's ink met with such a remarkable collapse.

The explanation is that travel reveals the differences between one race and another–differences which are chiefly external and concern such things as Carlyle would sum up in the one word clothes. While residence reveals the similarities beneath all externals–the essential human characteristics common to mankind the wide world over. Add to this that Far Eastern races produce the illusion of similarity of feature in the traveller's mind, whose most frequent remark is that “the Chinese are all alike.”