"After all, he is only one of the Emperor's slaves 1" This official is not entirely free from sus picions of being a scientific smuggler. The legal salary of the mandarins is ab surdly small, but like their Tammany breth ren, they manage to eke out a living. Meadows guesses that the highest mandarin "makes" ten times, the lowest fifty times, his actual pay. Fourteen thousand dollars would not be an unusual income for a lower post. The yamun, or court house, official resi dence and prison in one, is a " hive of indus try," and added to the buzz of talk is the constant " flail-like " sound of the bamboo descending lustily upon the human frame. To the average Chinaman the yamun by day is much more a thing of terror than a haunted house by night. The sanctum of this inclusive dwelling is the private quarters of the chief. There no male servant may enter. The en tire household of a yamun varies in number from two hundred to five hundred. The Shi-ye — judicial advisers and private secretaries — are the nearest approach to a lawyer which China knows. They are the only class which devote themselves solely to the study of the law. They are rarely made mandarins, and are not supposed to act as counselors. Their one business in life is to protect the interests of the mandarins who employ them, — that is, to give the magis trates the cues of their judicial examinations and to see to it that decisions are legal and justified by the facts in the case. The Code of the Board of Civil Office is indeed full of pitfalls for the unwary magistrate. Another duty of the Adviser is drafting and revising documents. Although a person who has universal respect and is almost invariably a man of genuine scholarship and fine legal capacity, the Adviser can never be anything more than the hired servant of a mandarin,
unrecognized by name in official circles, — a prompter, a thinking machine, who is never permitted to be present at official judicial examinations. The punishment-list-Shi-ye specialize in criminal law, while the revenueShi-ye turn their attention to fiscal law. The write-report and manage-account-Shi-ye, on the other hand, are nothing more than private secretaries. A mandarin will pay his criminal Adviser from $5,000 to $8,000 a year, and a private secretary may draw only two hundred dollars. As a rule every yamun has one Adviser and one Secretary from a class. In a book of anecdotes the story ' is told of a young man who was accused of the shocking crime of knocking out his father's teeth. The unnatural child was immediately condemned to death, but was left alone for a few moments with an Adviser, who walked rapidly about the room, talking every moment. "It's a bad case," the Adviser finally whispered in the boy's ear. Thereupon he bit the ear very hard. "What do you mean? " shouted the boy, jumping up and raising his fist. "That you are saved! You need only to show the prints of my teeth and say that they were made by your father, whose teeth,' being shaky, dropped out!" The class known as Tai-shu may also per haps be termed Advisers, since they act for litigants to the extent of drawing up their documents. In order to be qualified, the "notary " must pass an examination before his mandarin. This process is equivalent to a bar examination. If he is successful, the candidate is given the wooden stamps, with out which no accusations or petitions may be formally received at the yamun. The notary pastes on his door a large red card telling his occupation and the name of his yamun. His business is supposed to be 1 See A Cyclt in Cathay, by W. A. P. Martin, D.D.
