On a Chinese Screen

made a little bonfire, and when it was well alight she took the three bowls and poured out some of their contents before the smouldering joss-sticks. She bowed herself three times and muttered certain words. She stirred the burning paper so that the flames burned brightly. Then she emptied the bowls on the stones and again bowed three times. No one took the smallest notice of her. She took a few more paper cash from her basket and flung them in the fire. Then without further ado, she took up her basket, and with the same leisurely, rather heavy tread, walked away. The gods were duly propitiated, and like an old peasant woman in France who has satisfactorily done her day’s housekeeping, she went about her business.

Endnote

1. I owe it to the kindness of my friend Mr. P. W. Davidson. ↩

Colophon

On a Chinese Screen
was published in 1922 by
W. Somerset Maugham.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Hui-chang Wang,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2015 by
Dianna Adair, zsak, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at
Google Books.

The cover page is adapted from
Canton Waterfront (The Hongs at Canton),
a painting completed around 1840 by
Anonymous.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
October 18, 2021, 7:49 p.m.
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Uncopyright

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