McKippen lived there. She replied, "Yes; I am she." I said, "Perhaps
you don't remember me?" She said, "No; but I know your voice." I told
her that I was Arthur Knights. "Aye, laddie," she cried, "I heard that
you was drowned at sea twenty-five years ago." Well, I need hardly say
that I was welcome to her and her husband, who was a retired business
man. Poor old gentleman, he cried as a child when she told him of my
taking the trouble to come and see her, and how when I was a small boy
at a juvenile party I was sore distressed by my dancing slippers being
too big and that they kept slipping off. Then she came to the rescue and
took me to one side and stitched them to the heel of my stocking to
enable me to have a good time.

I spent a couple of days with my friends and then went on my way, and I
have often wondered whether that lady could possibly have connected my
manhood voice with that of my childhood.



An Incident of the Great Taiping Rebellion.



In the latter part of 1862 I left Shanghai on my usual voyage to Hankow.
This port is six hundred miles up the Yangtse River. After we had got
about sixty miles up the river, which is here about ten miles wide, our
attention was drawn to a number of human bodies floating down the river,
most of them mutilated. This lasted about thirty hours. As we steamed
along near the shore, the farmers, with their families, were for miles
gathered here and there, gesticulating, prostrating themselves, and
praying for us to take them on board. The poor creatures were between