As I opened Hop Sing's letter, there fluttered to the ground a square
strip of yellow paper covered with hieroglyphics, which, at first
glance, I innocently took to be the label from a pack of Chinese
fire-crackers. But the same envelope also contained a smaller strip of
rice-paper, with two Chinese characters traced in India ink, that I
at once knew to be Hop Sing's visiting-card. The whole, as afterwards
literally translated, ran as follows:--
“To the stranger the gates of my house are not closed: the rice-jar is
on the left, and the sweetmeats on the right, as you enter.