once asked him. "Whenever I deal with other people, and especially
with Chinese," was the answer, "I always ask myself two questions:
what idea that I do not want them to have will my remark suggest to
them, and what answer will my remark allow them to make to me?"

The habit of deliberating before he made a statement grew upon him,
as habits will, exaggerated with time, and provided an excuse for at
least one _bon mot_. A certain French Professor whom he had brought
out with him for the Tung Wen Kwan once went to interview his chief.

"Well," said his colleagues on his return. "What did the I.G. say
about such and such a thing?" The Frenchman shook his head ruefully:
"He rolled the answer back and forth seven times, and then he did not
make it." Probably the I.G. had learned by experience that a person
can seldom pick up a hasty speech just where he dropped it.

Another time a very charming lady went up to him at a soirée with a
rose in her hand. "May I offer you my boutonnière?" said she, smiling.
The mere fact of a question having been asked him suddenly put him
instinctively upon his guard; an uncommunicative look spread over his
face, and to her horror and his own subsequent amusement, he answered,
"I should prefer to consider the matter before answering."

In 1868 came the affair of the Burlingame Mission, with which--as with
all the other events of the time in China--Robert Hart had much to do.
Mr. Burlingame was then United States Minister in Peking, a personal
friend of the I.G.'s and a most charming man with a genius for
hospitality. Nothing pleased him more than to see half a dozen
nationalities seated at his table. At one of these little dinners
Burlingame noticed that a certain discussion was growing too serious