THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1912. EASTERN CUSTOMS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10711, 5 November 1912, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1912. EASTERN CUSTOMS.

I 'Hie suicide of General Nogi, after the I death of the Emperor of Japan, emphasised the persistence* with which Eastern customs an* perpetuated.; Sir Valentino Chirol, of the staff of The Times, and one of the foremost'authorities on the East, is reminded by General 'Nogi's supremo sacrifice of another equally striking, though less heroic, illustration of the differences that separate East and West. Fifteen years ago, he says in a letter in The Times, one of the most interesting figures in tho Diplomatic Corps in Londoß was the Chinese Minister, Lo-,Fung-Luh. Educated in the West, ho I had acquired an unusual knowledge of European, and especially of English, literature. Ho was a line Shakespearean scholar, and he knew Cliau-' cor, Herbert Spencer, and . John Stuart Mill equally well. It was he who composed Li-Hung-Chang's speeches for him when that statesman visited England,, and astonished the f British public by what they thought' was his own liberal and lofty, philosophy. And Sir Valentino Chirol says that once when Li-Hung-Chang rebuked him for some act, the Minister replied boldly, "Your Excellency must not lay the blame for my shortcomings I on my Western education, for T had to the best of all I had learnt in the West outside of your Yamon door when I entored your Excellency's service." Yet this able and .highminded Chinaman, who had absorbed Western ideals and believed in them, when he came to die, reverted to the witchcraft of the East. He died in London of a , painful disease, and though ho consulted many Western specialists, lip shrank from following their advice. Sir Valentine Chirol, who was an old friend of his, visited him as ho lay dying. With "a curious •whimsical smile" the Chinese Minister asked his visitor to be seated until < he had dono with "this gentleman," the latter being a wizened little China- '

man crouching beside him over a smoking brazier. For about fivo minutes tho Chinese modicino man went oh chanting in a shrill nasal voice, taking up ashes from time to time mid sprinkling them over the patient's body with s trail go p.i ssi's and incantations. "I thought, my dear friend," Lo-Fung-Luh said to the Englishm«m, "it might interest you to see how a Chinaman, steeped in your Western literature, saturated with your Waf.te.rn science and philosophy, dies —a Chinaman!" Sir Valentine Chirol says he will never forget "this weird ;:nd pitiful scene, ■enacted in the heart of London, nor tho pathos and sincerity of the lesson which it was meant to convey."