faithfully all that went on there, all that you did, all that you
said; but I had nobody in Macao. So will you please tell me what
happened in the latter place?"

When the I.G. refused, saying the business concerned only himself and
the Yamên, the fellow was first genuinely amazed, then righteously
indignant, finally secretly vindictive. He nursed the grievance for
years, and revenged himself at last by memorializing against the
I.G.'s famous Land Tax Scheme, which, weathering a storm of bitter
criticism, lived to enjoy great praise.

Once this Mission was over, the I.G. travelled no more. Things were so
well established by this time that there was no need for him to tour
the ports, and increasing work kept him ever closer to his desk in
Peking. Never was a man, I think, who lived a quieter or more orderly
life, or who had less recreation in his days. He went little
into society; when he did, his rare appearances were immensely
remarked--much as the passage of a comet might have been--and if he
made a visit, it was talked of with pride all through the community.
Indeed, the hostess who could say "The I.G. took tea with me to-day,"
was something of a heroine. He read much and wrote prodigiously,
sending out--and receiving too--the mail of a Prime Minister.

One extravagance, and only one, did he permit himself--I am thinking
of his private band. Yet even that he did not deliberately seek. The
idea came to him unexpectedly, put into his head by the Commissioner
of Customs at Tientsin, who wrote one day that he had among his
subordinates the very man for a bandmaster. Pathetic derelict, a
bandmaster without a band! Acting upon a sudden inspiration--perhaps
with some subtle intuition of the important part the music was to play