would dictate, generally reading from these magazines. Sometimes he dictated his own experiences, and grew so confidential that he told the boy a great deal of his private history, among the rest how he had been unjustly condemned, and had served two years for forgery, as I told you. Used it, apparently, for material in convict stories."

"Didn't the boy suspect anything all this time?" I asked. "I think I can see his mode of operations."

"He said he never thought about it till the other day, when he happened to see a proof lying about of a story he had copied out when he first came. Then the fellow's welshing him of his pay settled him. They were just having a jolly good row when I turned up. Do you know, I rather pride myself on that little surprise visit. If I hadn't caught the boy just when he was in a rage with the fellow, I should never have found all this out."

"Still," said I, not quite so well satisfied with his account of his prowess as an amateur detective, "you did not succeed in catching the chief culprit?"

"No, no; the sound of my name was enough for his guilty conscience. He was the man who went off down the back stairs with all the magazines he had been copying out of. He persuaded the boy to stay and interview me, and promised to set things straight if only he would hold on a bit."

"And the boy? You have got hold of him?"

"The boy? Oh, well, when I come to think of it, no; not exactly. To tell the truth, I-well, it was uncommon hard lines on him; he quite broke down, poor little chap-I really couldn't help it, I gave him something myself to make up for his loss, with a useful word of warning to avoid bad company in futu e got out of the way and I the

I was intensely annoyed. It is all very well to yield to the promptings of generosity; but then don't try to combine it with the part of an amateur detective. "Are you aware," I said slowly, "that you discovered a regular factory of fraudulent literature and managed to let the chief rogue go off with the proofs of his fraud, and actually helped the only witness to disappear?" As the unwelcome truth sank into his mind, the real Mr. Burton shrank visibly. His jaunty self-assurance scaled off him; he did not refer again to the wonderful example of Sherlock Holmes, but expressed his abasement by the help of divers sporting metaphors, among which I thought I heard, "Stumped, by Jove! off a curly slow!" But what ought I to do? What remained to be done? Doubtless duty, the cold, impersonal sense of public duty, bade one see that at all cost due punishment was meted out for the public good to this offender against social order. But alas for duty in abstract principle. To pursue it sometimes involves a sacrifice of the time, the money, the energy, claimed by other more immediately pressing duties-a sacrifice sometimes even of common sense. I have never known but one ideal citizen who consistently pursued his "ideal civism" and ensued it through sense and nonWe were talking of a novel he wanted to read; I offered to lend it him, and the next day brought him the volume, which I had acquired the last time I was abroad. He took it gingerly in his hand; turned it over; eyed it back, front, and sides with unbending judicial glance, and coldly remarked, "This is a Tauchnitz, is it not?" "Yes," I answered; "got it in Paris." "Then," he rejoined, in the same unmoved, impartially grave tone, "I fear I cannot read it," and, like a modern Cato, returned the poor contraband to my astonished grasp. Glorious churchwar

sense.

den! Impeccable educator of ebullient boyhood! I have my fears, yet may thy statuesque immobility of virtue succeed beyond my dubious expectation in impressing, forming, inspiring, that same ebulliency!

In my present case, however, abstract perfection seemed outside the range of the practicable. To cut the loss in my own case and warn other possible victims must be my decision. It would be difficult to lay hands upon the one useful; impossible to bring the charge of fraud home without citing chapter and verse to prove the "conveyance" of the story; search through a wilderness of magazines without any clue would certainly be costly, probably fruitless after all. Shall I confess to a sneaking relief at being spared the incalculable worry of prosecuting, underlying a very real and natural indignation at being unable to punish the rogue?

He

"Well," I said in conclusion to the crestfallen Mr. Benn Burton, "it was a clever trick and the rogue has got the best of it this time. I can see exactly what he did; it entirely accounts for his contributions being so wonderfully varied in character. He copied out stories from the American magazines which have no circulation over here, and sent them round to us unsuspecting editors who had never had a chance of seeing where they came from. had the great advantage of contributing stuff which had already passed muster with some editor on the other side of the Atlantic, so he was sure to find some one it suited over here if he tried the corresponding class of magazine in England; only, to be sure, he was a bit indiscriminate in his choice at first. However, I don't see how I can pin him down this time; to institute a wild-goose chase in the hope of tracking down the original of the story I accepted from him would be throwing good money after bad. No doubt he has reckoned on us

editors' pressure of business as well as most men's readiness to avoid unnecessary trouble; still, it would be strange if, like most petty criminals, he doesn't grow too bold with success and put himself into the hands of the avenger one of these days, especially after the general warning I mean to send round to-morrow."

But

Mr. Benn Burton did not prolong his stay. He took his leave vowing to hunt down the boy he had so imprudently befriended, and I am sure his self-confidence was shaken, because I noted next day, with a spice of feeling for which after this lapse of time I may express contrition, that he made a pair of spectacles against Yorkshire. from that day to this I heard no more of Mr. Benn Burton or the boy or the missing clue, nor did the imposter send in any more stories. Whether the boy, whose discovery would have given me the clue and brought back the real Mr. Burton with revived self-satisfaction, had found honest work elsewhere or had fled utterly from London, or under stress of poverty had even drifted back to a nefarious alliance with his old employer, I cannot say. Still, with him or without him, the skilfully organized syndicate for the exploitation of the Great Western Literary Goldfields was certainly refloated under another pseudonym. But alas for the precariousness of well-laid designs! Perhaps some word of warning from me fell upon heedful ears, while, as I had prophesied, the successful audacity of Mr. Benjamin Burton prompted him to more barefaced pilfering under various aliases. Be that as it may, I was still waiting for proofs which came not, when one day the legend, "Literary Forger sent to Jail" caught my eye on that page of my morning paper which devotes itself to police reports and other paragraphs of social interest. It was my superingenious friend. He had lifted an article entire from one Lon

don paper and boldly disposed of it to the editor of another. His plea that he thought it very good did not avail to save him from another term of imprisonment for obtaining money under false pretences.

The Cornhill Magazine.

As the "St. Martin's" is not likely to publish "Memoirs of a Misdemeanant," or "Peeps into Prison, by One who has Been There," I think I have seen the last of Mr. Benjamin Burton in my editorial capacity.

Leonard Huxley.

To those who, like the writer, look at the present crisis in Korea from the point of view of residents in the Far East, the interest of the present situation lies less in the outcome of the immediate issue, than in the ultimate results of the victory of either party. The actual fate of Manchuria and Korea, which is considered elsewhere in this number, is not of pressing interest to the traders in the Treaty Ports of China. The Korean, with his tall Welsh hat and disreputable appearance, is a familiar figure in the Treaty Ports of China, excelling in dirt and poverty even the Chinese themselves; but his country is of value to the sportsman rather than the trader. In Manchuria, the interests of Great Britain are small, and Niu-chwang has already become practically a Russian town.

The leadership of the Far East, which is the prize of the struggle, is a vague term, worthy of analysis. The unconcealed ambition of Japan, beyond her territorial aims, is to obtain such a position in China as will enable her to reform that Empire, and form a strong coalition of the two Yellow Powers; and one interest of the present struggle lies in its bearing on this object, and in the inherent possibility of this object itself.

The history of the relations of the West with Japan and China in the last century, is, up to a point, uniform.

Both countries were, and still are, firmly convinced of the superiority of their own civilization; both countries displayed a fixed intention to be rid of the foreigner, and, with that end, pursued the same policy of occasional massacre. Suddenly, it appeared that the Japanese had, for themselves, changed all that, and had become enamored of Western institutions and civilization. The central government was strengthened, a constitution on the Prussian model was introduced, new codes of law were published, Western science was studied; and the world thought that Japan had become a Western Power. It is now known that Japan had done nothing of the sort. She had adopted so much of the habits of the West as was necessary to save her existence, and no more; beneath all the surface changes, the old family life, manners, and ideals remained, unweakened and untouched. Even the national dress had been changed only for occasions observed by the foreigner; and it was soon seen, that all that Japan had done was, to get rid of the foreigner by a surer way than massacre, namely, by learning his own game and beating him at it. The result was the lapse of the old treaties and the abolition of extra-territoriality, the decline of Western commercial houses in Japan and the substitution of Japanese houses in their place, and the birth of new Japanese industries and manufactures, taught,

indeed, originally by the foreigner, but now under the sole control of the Japanese themselves.

It was the versatility of the Japanese character, and the intelligent initiative of the Japanese Government, that effected the change. Given the initiative from Japan, could China carry through a similar policy, and achieve a similar position?

The conditions under which foreign traders carry on business in the Far East explain largely the ease with which the Japanese have been able, little by little, to dispense with the resident foreigner. A foreign merchant in a Treaty Port in China or Japan, receiving goods for sale to the interior, sells them in the following manner. He employs a compradore at a nominal wage, who takes the whole responsibility of selling the goods off the foreigner's hands, making his own profits out of a commission. This compradore is a native merchant, usually having a considerable independent business of his own. On behalf of the foreigner he sells the goods to native purchasers, who are known to the compradore but not to the foreigner. The contract for sale is made between the compradore, in the name of the foreigner, and the native buyer. The compradore guarantees the native in all such contracts to the foreigner. It is obvious that the connection and good will of the business belong in such cases to the compradore, and that the foreigner is only an expensive conduit pipe for the purpose of getting credit for the goods from the West.

The Japanese were not slow to appreciate this fact; and, as a result, the compradore became the merchant, and the foreign merchant began to disappear from Japan. All that was needed to effect the change was, that the Japanese trader should raise himself to such a position that he could obtain credit outside his own country. Ac

cordingly, Japanese students were sent to study foreign methods of commerce abroad, agencies were started in Europe, and Japanese lines of steamers began to connect Japan with all the important centres of the world. And now there are many native firms in Japan having direct relations with commercial houses of the West.

There is no apparent reason why China should not repeat the process. The importance of this aspect of the question is obvious, when it is remembered, that the foreigner in the Far East is there only for the purpose of trade, and, once unnecessary as a trader, his raison d'être in that part of the world ceases. In many ways the Chinese are more fitted for commercial success than the Japanese. They have been a trading nation for centuries, and commerce is respected and pursued by their highest classes; whereas the Japanese, till very recently, regarded the commercial classes with contempt. As a result, the standard of commercial integrity in China is vastly higher than in Japan. In long-sighted enterprise, the Chinese merchant is inferior to none: he has a most efficient system of mercantile banking: no profit is too small for him. But he has never had his eyes opened to his commercial prospects outside China; a result which an intelligent Government, with a wide scheme of education, alone can achieve. The present writer has frequently asked more intelligent members of the compradore class why the compradore has never tried to trade directly with firms abroad. The answer invariably was, that the compradore is quite happy as he is, that he is already making plenty of money, and that he knows nothing of the world outside, from which the foreign merchandise comes. Once this knowledge is supplied, by the Government encouraging Chinese commercial students to emigrate and learn, and acquire credit abroad, the China