Note {21} — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY.

Educated Chinese often exercise themselves in what they call “handsome talkee,” or “talkee leeson” (i.e., reason), by sitting down and uttering, by way of assertion and rejoinder, all the learned and wise sentences which they can recall. In their conversation and on their crockery, before every house and behind every counter, the elegant formula makes its appearance, teaching people not merely how to think, but what should be thought, and when.