represents two children swinging their arms and running,
he repeated:

See the children at their
play,
Gathering flowers by the
way.

"They are gathering pussy-willows," he added.

In another he represented a child standing before the
front gate, where he had knocked in vain to gain admission.
As he completed it he said, pointing to the apricot
over the door:

Ten times he knocked upon the gate,
But nine, they opened not,
Above the wall he plainly saw,
A ripe, red apricot.

He continued to represent quotations from the poets and explain
them as he went along.

There was one which indicated that some one was ascending
the steps to the jade platform on which the dust had settled
as it does on everything in Peking; at the same time the
verse told us that

Step by step we reach the platform,
All of jade of purest green,