moment's pause, to my great astonishment, the letter came flying in the
window, circled twice around the room, and then dropped gently, like
a bird upon my table. Before I had got over my surprise, Wan Lee
re-appeared, smiled, looked at the letter and then at me, said, "So,
John," and then remained gravely silent. I said nothing further; but it
was understood that this was his first official act.

His next performance, I grieve to say, was not attended with equal
success. One of our regular paper-carriers fell sick, and, at a pinch,
Wan Lee was ordered to fill his place. To prevent mistakes, he was shown
over the route the previous evening, and supplied at about daylight with
the usual number of subscribers' copies. He returned, after an hour,
in good spirits, and without the papers. He had delivered them all, he
said.

Unfortunately for Wan Lee, at about eight o'clock, indignant subscribers
began to arrive at the office. They had received their copies; but how?
In the form of hard-pressed cannon-balls, delivered by a single shot,
and a mere tour de force, through the glass of bedroom-windows. They had
received them full in the face, like a base ball, if they happened to be
up and stirring; they had received them in quarter-sheets, tucked in at
separate windows; they had found them in the chimney, pinned against
the door, shot through attic-windows, delivered in long slips through
convenient keyholes, stuffed into ventilators, and occupying the same
can with the morning's milk. One subscriber, who waited for some time
at the office-door to have a personal interview with Wan Lee (then
comfortably locked in my bedroom), told me, with tears of rage in
his eyes, that he had been awakened at five o'clock by a most hideous
yelling below his windows; that, on rising in great agitation, he was
startled by the sudden appearance of "The Northern Star," rolled hard,