THE CANTONESE MADE EASY Vocabulary,' 2nd Edition 1.00 75 AN ENGLISH-CANTONESE Pocket Vocabulary'. EASY SENTENCES IN THE CANTONESE DIALECT with a Vocabulary,' 2.00 1.00 75 2.00 THINGS CHINESE. ABACUS.-The abacus, or counting-board, is as much a necessity in a merchant's office, or shroff's counting-room, as his account-books: without the abacus he would be at a complete loss to make up his accounts, and his books would therefore be unnecessary. Arithmetic forms no part of a school-boy's work: no little heathen Chince ever has to sing'The rule of three it bothers me, And fractions drive me mad,' as both the one and the other are utterly unknown to him. Not even the simplest knowledge of arithmetic will ever be learned by him as a lesson, unless he is destined for a mercantile life, or to be a tradesman, or hawker, &c.; and then he learns as much or as little as it is absolutely necessary for him to know as a part of his business training. What little idea of figures he possesses, he picks up when bargaining for food or toys, or when staking a few cash for sweetmeats at the wayside stall. The ordinary Celestial is content to get through life with as little knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as would serve an English youngster of six or eight years of age.' A very little goes a long way with him, but nearly every man can finger the abacus to a greater or lesser extent; and those who have much to do with accounts get very dexterous in the use of it, going through the calculations most rapidly. We once had the curiosity to time a Chinese accountant from a native shipping office when turning Λ different items expressed in taels and their decimals-itemsof four, five, and six figures-into dollars and cents, and we found he worked these sums out in from ten to fifteen seconds. The modus operandi is as follows:-Putting his abacus down on the table before him, and his books a trifle more to the left, the accountant commences his calculations, using the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to flick the little balls up or down as he requires, only using his other threefingers, when, his sum done, he sweeps the upper balls to the top of the board, and the lower ones down to the bottomthe positions they occupy when not in actual use. The principle is simply that of the framework of wires with coloured beads used in England to teach children to count. With the Chinese, however, it is an oblong tray with bars running from top to bottom, and a transverse partition running from one side to the other, dividing the board intotwo unequal divisions. On each bar are seven balls, two in the upper division and five in the lower, each of those below stands for one, each of those above, for five; so, if one is to be represented, one of the lower ones is pushed up against the cross-bar, if two, two are pushed up, and so on till four. after which all the lower balls are pushed back again, and one of the upper ones is pushed down to the middle. partition to stand for five. If six is to be represented, one of the lower balls is pushed up to the cross-bar, on the other side of which is the upper ball, for five and one make six. The other lower balls are added one after the other to represent seven, eight, and nine respectively, and for ten one on the next bar to the left is used, and the calculation goes on in the same way as before. The operator fixing then on one of the upright bars as representing units, the next bar to the left stands for tens, the next one for hundreds, the next for thousands, and so on, while in the oppositedirection, to the right hand, the decimals-tenths, hundredths, thousandths, and so on-are represented on the consecutive. bars. The great defect of the abacus is that it simply represents the process of calculation as it proceeds, for, as |