an electric fan pop out of somewhere and fan me to sleep. It was
really an Oriental fairy tale of an apartment.

As Kuang Hsu grew to boyhood he heard that out in this great
wonderful world, which he had never seen except with the eyes of
a child, there was a method of sending messages to distant cities
and provinces with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. For
centuries he and his ancestors had been sending their edicts, and
their Peking Gazette or court newspaper--the oldest journal in
the world--by runner, or relays of post horses, and the
possibility of sending them by a lightning flash appealed to him.
He believed in doing things, and, as we shall see later, he
wanted to do them as rapidly as they could be done. He therefore
ordered that a telegraph outfit be secured for him, which he
"played with" as he had done with his most ingenious toys, and
the telegraph was soon established for court use throughout the
empire.

One day a number of officials came to us at the Peking University
and in the course of a conversation they said:

"The Emperor has heard that the foreigners have invented a talk
box. Is that true?"

"Quite true," we replied, "and as we have one in the physical
laboratory of the college we will let you see it."

We had one of the old Edison phonographs which worked with a
pedal, and looked very much like a sewing-machine, and we took
them to the laboratory, allowed one of them to talk into it, and