Page:Glimpses into Chinese homes.djvu/35

meat in platters, and thirteen pounds boiled with vegetables; one fowl, one duck, twelve pitchers of water, the milk of twenty-five cows, and ten parcels of tea."

This extraordinary bill of fare can hardly be regarded as trustworthy, for the Chinese do not eat butter or milk.

The inmates of the royal palaces are so secluded that but little information can be obtained concerning their mode of life. In their conservatism and conceit they shut themselves in from the barbaric world, and regard their effete institutions and false religions with complacency and satisfaction.