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Title: The Yellow Pearl
A Story of the East and the West
Author: Adeline M. (Adeline Margaret) Teskey
Release Date: July 9, 2018 [eBook #57473]
Language: English
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THE YELLOW PEARL
A Story of the East and the West
by
ADELINE M. TESKEY
Author of "Where the Sugar Maple
Grows," etc.
[Illustration: Logo]
Hodder and Stoughton
New York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1911,
By George H. Doran Company
[Illustration: Frontispiece]
THE YELLOW PEARL
ADELINE M. TESKEY
THE YELLOW PEARL
_March 1st, 1----_
Here I am in this strange country about which I have learned in the
geography and history, and about which I heard my father talk. The
daughter of an American man and a Chinese woman, I suppose I am what is
called a mongrel. My father was a Commissioner of Customs in China, and
living for years in that country he fell in love with my mother and
married her--as was natural. Who could help falling in love with my
dear, yellow, winsome, little mother? My name is Margaret, called after
my father's mother; my father said that the word Margaret means a pearl,
so he gave me the pet name "Pearl." Dear father!
"It was a monstrous thing for Brother George to marry away there," I
overheard my Aunt Gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "Why
could he not have come back home to his own country and found a
wife?--And above all to have married a heathen Chinese!"
"Not a heathen," said my grandmother, reproachfully, "she had previously
embraced the faith of Europeans; so my dear George wrote me from that
far-away country."
"Oh, they are all heathens in my estimation," cried my Aunt Gwendolin,
scornfully; "what faith they embrace does not change the fact that they
belong to the yellow people."
My mother died while I was yet a child, and my father has died and left
me alone in the world within the last year. Grandmother, my father's
mother, when she learned about her son's death, sent at once for me.
"I cannot leave a granddaughter of mine in that country, and among that
heathen, if not barbarous, people," she wrote to the American consul,
"and I ask your services to assist her to come to my home in America."
The consul, absent-minded, gave me my grandmother's letter to read, and
thus I learned her feeling about my mother's people and country. I never
would have come to this horrible America if I could have helped myself;
but I am scarcely of age, and by my father's will grandmother is
appointed my guardian.
The result of it all is, that having crossed the intervening waters, I
am here in the home of my grandmother, my Aunt Gwendolin and my Uncle
Theodore Morgan.
When I arrived this morning I was ushered into the sitting-room by a
maid, and the first one I beheld was my grandmother, sitting in a
rocking-chair. She called me to her, and crossing the room, I kotowed to
her, that is I went down on my hands and knees and touched my forehead
to the floor, as my Chinese nurse had taught me when I was yet a baby
that I should always do when I came into the presence of an elderly
woman, a mother of children.
"My _dear_ grandchild!" cried my grandmother, "_do_ get up. All you
should do is to kiss me--your grandmother!" And she put out her hand and
assisted me from the floor.
Grandmother is the dearest, prettiest little woman I ever saw, with
white hair and the brightest of eyes, and I have to love her, although I
had made up my mind to hate everything in America. A moment after she
had lifted me from the floor, my Aunt Gwendolin came in. She is tall and
thin, not nearly so beautiful a woman as my Chinese mother. She wears
skirts that drag on the floor, and her hair is built up into a sort of a
mountain on top of her head. I am reminded every time I look at her of a
certain peak in the Thian Shan mountains. I very much prefer little
women, like my own dear mother, like the women of my own country.
My Uncle Theodore is long-armed, long-legged, long-bodied. He looks a
little like my father, and for that reason I hate him a little less than
my Aunt Gwendolin.
After my mother's death, my father brought into our home a French
governess, daughter of a French consul, to teach me. Father seemed to
be lost in his business, or his grief at the loss of my mother, and paid
very little heed to me after the arrival of the governess.
"She is an educated woman," he told me when he had engaged her, "and I
want her to teach you all you could learn in a first-class girls' school
in Europe or America."
After that the French governess spent hours with me every day, and I saw
my father only at intervals. How much we talked about, that French lady
and I! Everything, almost, except religion; _that_ my father vetoed, as
her faith was not the one he wished me to embrace. "I'll take you over
to your grandmother by and by," he used to say, "to get the proper
religious instruction."
The governess said that I inherited more from my father's side of the
house than my mother's; that although I was born in China, I was more
of an Occidental than an Oriental; more than once she said that my
American mannerisms and tricks of speech were really remarkable, and
that I was a living example of the power of heredity. But I am never
going back on my mother's people, _never_, my dear little oval-faced
mother whose grave is under a spreading camphor tree at the heart of the
world.
Does it not mean something that China is at the centre of the world--the
kernel?
"The girl is not bad to look at, in fact I think she is a beauty--a face
filled with the indescribable dash of the Orient," said my Uncle
Theodore, when they were talking me over in the sitting-room after I had
retired to my chamber upstairs. Evidently they had forgotten the
opening in the floor which had been left by the workmen while making
some changes in the plumbing. And they did not know my extraordinary
keenness of hearing, which my governess said was an Oriental trait.
It seemed to give my governess some pleasure to talk about that keen
sense of the Orientals, and to speculate as to how they had acquired it.
"They have lived in a country where it is necessary, for
self-protection, to hear all that is being plotted and planned," she
said, "a country of conspiracies and intrigues, of plots and
counterplots. Centuries of this have developed abnormal hearing."
"She has a superb figure," said my uncle, continuing to talk about me,
"and that oval face of hers, with her creamy complexion, is really
bewitching."
"Yellow! you mean, _yellow_!" interrupted my Aunt Gwendolin; "she's
entirely too yellow for beauty. I'm terribly afraid that some of our set
will discover her nationality. That's _one_ thing you must remember,
Theodore, nobody on this continent is ever to learn anything about her
Chinese blood. They are so despised here as a race. She is our brother's
daughter, with some foreign strain inherited from her mother; that
is enough; never, _never_, let us acknowledge the Chinese. The
Italians and Spanish are yellowish too,--I have it!" she exclaimed,
"_Spanish!_--Spanish will do!--Some of those are _our_ people now, you
know! It will be quite interesting to have her a native of one of our
Dependencies--a descendant of some old Spanish family!"
"Do not be foolish, Gwendolin," said my grandmother.
"I could not endure the thought of introducing a Celestial," continued
my aunt. "None must know that we have introduced the Yellow Peril into
the country!"
"Why, Gwendolin, how you do talk," said my grandmother; "the child's
father was an American, and she was admitted into this country as an
American."
"You must talk with the girl to-morrow, Theodore," continued my aunt,
ignoring my grandmother's remark, "and tell her to keep sacred her
progenitors. She speaks such perfect English no one would suspect that
there was much foreign about her."
"She has a striking, unusual air that would attract a second glance
from most people," said my uncle. "If you can keep her nationality from
Professor Ballington you will do better than I think you can; he is a
great ethnologist; it is his life-work to make discoveries in that
line."
"Well it _must_ be kept, no matter what means we resort to," returned my
Aunt Gwendolin, with a ring of determination in her voice.
"Poor child," said my dear old grandmother, "she is my granddaughter,
and I love her already, my George's child. She looks beautiful to me
whether yellow or no."
I had gone down to dinner on this first evening in a soft yellow silk,
with long flowing sleeves trimmed with dragons, I know I looked well in
it. Governess always said I did. It was partly Chinese and partly
European in design. Governess planned it herself, and she said the
French were born with a knowledge how to dress artistically; she boasted
that she made it to suit my peculiar style.
"Did you notice that China silk she had on at dinner?" said Aunt
Gwendolin; "there must be an end to all that; a ban must be put on
everything Chinese."
"It was rather becoming I thought," said Uncle Theodore, "in harmony
with the clear yellow of her skin. Let her dress alone, she seems to
know how to put it. That is a born gift with some women, and if it is
not, they never seem to acquire it. There is great elegance in the
straight lines of the Oriental dress."
"Let her alone," said Aunt Gwendolin scornfully, "and let the whole city
know we have introduced the Yellow Per----"
"Gwendolin, dear," interrupted grandmother, "do not speak so."
"Those Chinese silks, of which she seems to have gowns galore--I was at
the unpacking of her trunks--must be tabooed," said my aunt. "Her father
has evidently intended her to dress like an European or American; she
has _some_ waist line, and does not wear the sacque the women wear in
China; but her sleeves are _years_ old."
"The dear child may object to having her attire changed at once," said
my grandmother. "She is used to those soft clinging silks, and may not
want to give them up. And sleeves are of little consequence. Let her
alone for awhile."
"Let her alone!" again retorted Aunt Gwendolin, "and let Professor
Ballington see her? He'd know her nationality at once in that yellow
silk covered with sprawling dragons, as almost anybody might. I cannot
have anything so mortifying occur when the girl is calling me 'aunt'!"
"Ballington is a curious kind of a chap, and values people on their own
merits; _he'd_ think none the less of the girl because she has some
Chinese blood in her," returned Uncle Theodore.
"I'll take her out to-morrow," continued my aunt, "and buy her some
taffeta silks and French muslins, and dress her up as a Christian
_should_ be dressed."
Grandmother said no more. The mother is not the head of the house in
America as she is in dear old China. I suppose it is the daughter who
rules in this country.
I am so sleepy I cannot listen any longer, even to talk about myself. My
governess has taught me that eavesdropping is not honourable, but I
cannot avoid hearing so long as I stay in my room, and I have nowhere
else to go. I will turn out the electric light, throw myself on the bed,
yellow silk and all, and cry myself asleep. I wonder is that an American
or a Chinese act? My governess was continually tracing my actions to one
or other of the nations.
_March 2, 1----_
It happened this morning! That man Aunt Gwendolin thought would be so
sure to know that I was the Yellow Pearl, came to the house, and was
ushered into my uncle's den by the maid, a few moments after I had been
sent in there to have the "talk" with him which was spoken about the
night before.
"He is a tall man, very, very white," were my thoughts regarding him,
as he bowed politely before me, when my uncle introduced us; and I
suppose his thoughts regarding me were: "She is a short woman, very,
very, yellow."
He left after a few moments' conversation with my uncle; and turning to
me the latter said, "That gentleman who has just gone is professor of
ethnology in the State University. He knows all about the peculiarities
of all the peoples and tribes that ever have graced or disgraced the
face of this planet we call the world---- Has your aunt told you that
she thinks it better that you should say nothing about your Chinese
ancestry?" he added hastily and awkwardly.
"Have the Chinese done anything disgraceful?" I asked him.
"No, no, I don't suppose they really have," he answered with an air of
annoyance. "A girl like you cannot understand; you had better simply
follow instructions. I hope it will not be necessary to mention this
subject again," he added meaningly.
I could not mistake him; I must not _dare_ tell Professor Ballington or
any one else in this great country that my mother was a Chinese woman.
In the afternoon Aunt Gwendolin took me down into the shops of the city,
"to select an outfit," she said.
We stood for hours, it seemed to me, over counters laden with silks and
muslins of every colour in the rainbow. Aunt Gwendolin held the various
shades up against my face to see which best became my "Spanish
complexion." This was said, I suppose, for the ears of the sales-people,
and the fashionable customers standing around.
When selections were made among the goods, I was taken to the
establishment of a "Parisienne modiste," where I was pinched, puckered,
and pulled until I was nearly numb. A sort of a steel waist was put on
me, which my aunt and the modiste called a "corset," and was so tightly
pulled I could scarcely breathe.
"I can't stand it, Aunt Gwendolin," I whisperingly gasped.
"Yes, you _can_!" she returned peremptorily, "you'll get used to it;
that's nothing like as tight as the girls all wear them in this
country."
"I can't breathe," I gasped again, when the modiste had turned her back;
(Aunt Gwendolin had signed to me the first time not to let her hear me).
"Hush!" said my aunt; "for pity sake do not let the modiste know that
you never had a corset on before."
"I'd rather have my feet bound like the women do in Chi----"
Aunt Gwendolin placed her jewelled fingers over my mouth before I had
finished the sentence.
Just as I was through being "fitted," one of Aunt Gwendolin's
fashionable friends came in. "Arabella," my aunt called her, but the
modiste called her Mrs. Delaney. I was not noticed, and slipped off into
a corner, and this newcomer and my relative fell into a deep and
absorbing talk about the new style of sleeve. I saw my opportunity and
slipped unnoticed out the front door, which fortunately was behind them.
Hurrying down a few blocks I reached a bookseller's window. With one
glance I had noticed, when my aunt and I were passing the window on the
way to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste, the word China on
the cover of a book. "I'll buy that book," I had said to myself, "and
learn what there is about China that makes Americans despise her
people."
Entering the store, I found a number of books about China and the
Chinese: "One of China's Scholars," "How the Chinese Think," "The
Greatest Novels of China," "Chinese Life." I paid for them all and
ordered them sent to my grandmother's house.
The bookseller looked at me very curiously for several moments, and then
ventured, "You speak English very well."
"Of course I do," I said, tossing my head and trying to act saucily, as
my governess had told me the American girls did. I would not have dared
to treat a man that way in China.
He did not venture to speak again. It is funny to be able in this
America to frighten a man! Confucius says that women should "be always
modest and respectful in demeanour, and prefer others to themselves";
but I have not to mind Confucius any longer; I am now in the "sweet land
of liberty," as they sing in their national anthem. I heard my father
say once that the gentleness and modesty of Oriental women was really
beautiful; but it would not be beautiful in America.
I hurried back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste, and found
my aunt and her friend still talking about sleeves. They had never
noticed my absence. How very important sleeves are in America! I never
heard them talked about in China.
The talkers had evidently forgotten me, so I slipped out again, and
walked several blocks, watching the manners, and catching snatches of
the conversation of Americans.
"I'm going to have mine eighteen gores----"
"Pleating down the front, frills at the side----"
"Pocahontas hat, and Prince Chap suit----"
"Front panel, and revers turned----"
"Frills and pipings all around----"
"Gored, or cut in one piece----"
"Oh, pompadour, by all means, with----"
These were the snatches of conversation which I caught from the women as
they passed me. The men were mostly silent and glum.
This curious country, that Aunt Gwendolin says has gone away ahead of
the rest of the world, why do its women talk more about dress than
anything else? And why have its men such pushing, hurrying,
knock-you-down-if-you-stand-in-my-way faces?
When I got back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste I found
my aunt ready to take me to the milliner's to be "outfitted with hats."
Walking a block or two we entered a much-decorated room, and at my
aunt's request an attendant brought several hats for our
inspection--curious-looking things like straw bee-hives, or huge wasps'
nests, covered over largely with wings and the heads of poor little dead
birds, ends and loops of ribbon, roses and leaves, looking as if they
were only half sewed on and liable to tumble off if touched, and long
feathers, buckles, and pins. My aunt selected several, fitted them on
my head, and declared they were very becoming to my Spanish style of
beauty. I, almost in tears, whispered into her ear, so the attendant
would not hear me, "I shall not have to wear them where any one can see
me, shall I?" Aunt Gwendolin smiled (the attendant was looking) and
replied sweetly, "Yes, they are very pretty, indeed."
We in China could never kill our birds and wear them on our heads--the
breasts of our beautiful mandarin ducks, the wings of our gold and
silver pheasants, the heads of our pretty parrakeets--we never could do
it--we would feel like murderers. Our majestic-looking wild geese, that
fly over our heads in flocks sometimes thirty miles in length, going
south in the autumn and north in the spring, we never molest them. The
Buddhists believe that all geese perform an aerial pilgrimage to the
holiest of the lakes in the mountains every year, transporting the sins
of the neighbourhood, returning to the valley with a new stock of
inspiration for the people in the locality where they choose to alight.
Here in this civilised country--I have been reading in one of their
magazines that grandmother loaned me--they catch the beautiful
water-fowls, kill them, and hack off their downy breasts to make ladies'
hats. And the little young birds starve in the nest, because the mother
never returns to feed them. Ugh! Civilised countries are dreadful!
When the hats were selected my aunt conducted me to the furrier's.
"The cold weather is not over yet," she said, "and while we are about it
I shall select some necessary furs."
I had noticed as we were passing through the streets that the ladies
had curious looking things around their necks and shoulders, capes
trimmed with heads of animals, and tails and paws of the same. I
wondered the dogs did not bark at them. They looked like some hunters
who had been out shooting and had thrown their dead game over their
shoulders.
The furrier whose shop we had entered seemed to know my aunt, and as
soon as she said, "I want you to show me some of your best fur garments
suitable for a young lady," he brought down from some shelves the
greatest quantity of fur articles, ermine, mink, seal, sable, all
covered with heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, mouths, teeth, whiskers. I
shuddered and drew back when my aunt went to place one around my neck.
"Oh, auntie!" I cried, "don't touch it to me!"
"Ha, ha, ha," softly and politely laughed the shopkeeper, "the young
lady has not become acquainted with the newest thing in furs, so
beautiful and realistic--so charming!"
Aunt Gwendolin frowned. She evidently did not like my display of nerves,
and resolutely fastened around my throat an ermine scarf with seven or
eight heads, and twice as many tails. "There!" she said, "that will do
nicely, it is very becoming to her creamy Spanish."
"It could not be better," said the polite shopkeeper.
A muff was then chosen to match the scarf, with just as many horrible
grinning heads, and little snaky tails; and paying for them, my aunt
ordered them sent home.
On my return home I dropped a silver coin into the housemaid's hand,
and told her when the parcel of books arrived she was to carry it up to
my room and say nothing about it. She seemed to understand, and asked no
questions.
An hour later she came to my door with the books in her arms, and found
me examining my new set of furs.
"Betty," I cried, throwing wide the door of my room, "come in and tell
me all about my furs--how the man that sells them gets all those little
heads and tails. Where do they get them? And how do they catch them? I
want to know it all."
"Oh, miss," said Betty, stepping briskly into the room, nothing loath to
accept the invitation to examine the new furs, "they lives out in the
wild woods--these little critters, an' men poisons 'em, an' traps 'em.
An' when they is dead, they skins 'em, tans the skins, an' makes 'em up
into muffs, an' boas, an' tippets, an' fur coats, an' so forth, an' so
forth."
"Poison and trap them!" I cried, "doesn't that make the little creatures
suffer?"
"You bet!" said Betty.
"How cruel!" I added.
"Yes, miss, ain't it awful?" returned Betty, making a wry face. "They's
a book just been throwed in at the door to-day telling all as to how it
is done. The American Humane Association has wrote the book--_they_
don't approve of killin' things. I'll bring it up an' let you read it."
Suiting the action to the thought Betty rushed away down to the kitchen
for the book.
She returned in a few moments with a small pamphlet, and thrust it
hastily into my hand--my aunt was calling her--and hastened away.
I glanced down at a picture on the front page--a hare caught by the hind
leg in a trap. A most agonised expression was on the little animal's
face. Below the picture was the title of the story, "_The Cost of a
Skin_." I dropped into a rocking-chair and read the story:
"Furs are luxuries, and it cannot be said in apology for the wrongs
done in obtaining them that they are essential to human life. Skins
and dead birds are not half so beautiful as flowers, or ribbons, or
velvets, or mohair. They are popular because they are barbaric.
They appeal to the vulgarians. Our ideas of art, like our
impulses, and like human psychology generally, are still largely in
the savage state of evolution. No one but a vulgarian would attempt
to adorn herself by putting the dead bodies of birds on her head,
or muffling her shoulders in grinning weasels, and dangling
mink-tails. Indeed, to one who sees things as they are, in the full
light of adult understanding, a woman rigged out in such cemeterial
appurtenances is repulsive. She is a concourse of unnecessary
funerals; she is about as fascinating, about as choice and
ingenious in her decorations, as she would be, embellished with a
necklace of human scalps. She should excite pity and contempt. She
is a pathetic example of a being trying to add to her charms by
high crimes and misdemeanours, and succeeding only in advertising
her indifference to feeling.
"Of all the accessories gathered from every quarter of the earth to
garnish human vanity, furs are the most expensive; for in no way
does man show such complete indifference to the feelings of his
victims as he does in the fur trade.
"The most of the skins used for furs are obtained by catching their
owners in traps, and death in such cases comes usually at the close
of hours, or even days, of the most intense suffering and terror.
The principal device used by professional trappers is the
steel-trap, the most villanous instrument of arrest that was ever
invented by the human mind. It is not an uncommon thing for the
savage jaws of this monstrous instrument to bite off the leg of
their would-be captive at a single stroke. If the leg is not
completely amputated by the snap of the terrible steel, it is
likely to be so deeply cut as to encourage the animal to gnaw or
twist it off. This latter is the common road to escape of many
animals. Trappers say that on an average one animal in every five
caught has only three legs."
"We'd never do it in China--_never_!" I cried, throwing the leaflet from
me. "It is only this horrid, civilised America that could be so terribly
cruel! I shall never wear my furs--_never_! I shall beg grandmother--she
seems to be the only civilised being I know that has any heart--to allow
me to go without them!"
I looked again at my leaflet, which I had picked from the floor, and
continued to read the words of the author:
"I would rather be an insect--a bee or a butterfly--and float in
dim dreams among the wild flowers of summer than be a man and feel
the wrongs of this wretched world."
I rose from my chair and thrust my headed and tailed ermine scarf and
muff into a box, and pushed them far back on the closet shelf.
"Stay there! Stay there!" I cried. "The Yellow Pearl will have nothing
to do with civilisation!"
"Yellow Pearl," I said to myself, accusingly, half an hour later, "_you_
know that they have fur in China, that the rich wear fur-lined
garments." "Yes," I replied to that accusing _I_, "the rich wear
fur-lined garments, but they procure the fur from animals that have to
be killed for food, or for man's self-preservation. They are not caught
in the cruel steely traps of America. Linings, mind you, _linings_," I
reiterated, "to keep them warm, not the heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes,
teeth of the little animals to bedizen their persons."
_March 9th, 1----_
The result of all the pinching, puckering, fitting, which I underwent at
the establishment of the Parisienne modiste is that I am walking around
arrayed in taffeta silk, and squeezed out of all my natural shape by the
steel waist. My sleeves are made so that my shoulders appear very much
nearer my ears than nature intended them to be. My hair is done up in a
quarter hundred--more or less--little puffs, and a quarter hundred
hairpins are scratching my scalp. I have had to lay aside my nice soft
shoes, and pretty Chinese slippers, and am gyrating around in tight
shoes, with a French heel somewhere about the middle of the sole. I
almost fell downstairs the first day I wore them; and when I wanted to
take them off my Aunt Gwendolin was indignant.
"You'll learn to walk in them soon," she said; "you are in a civilised
country now, and must do as the people do here. You cannot pad around
without heels any more."
I look ugly, and I feel cross. I have reached the land of bondage! Oh,
for my beautiful China silks, thick, soft, lustrous, and loose enough to
be comfortable--which have been bundled up and put in a large cedar
chest in the attic. Oh, for my own country, my heathen China, with its
dress thousands of years old in fashion! What frights some of the women
in this stuck-up country look--in their tight waists, showing their
figures! That may be pretty enough--if really modest, which my country
denies--when they are young, slender, lithe; but fancy a great stout
woman in a "shirt waist," as they call it, with a belt defining her
girth, and perhaps a tight skirt making her look positively vulgar. Ugh!
Grandmother has had me in her room; indeed, she took me in a couple of
days after my arrival, and locking the door to keep out all intruders,
she talked long and solemnly to me. She was shocked when she learned
that I had scarcely heard of Christ, and that I had never read the
Bible.
"My dear child," she cried, "what was your father thinking about? Why
did he so neglect your religious education?"
"He always said that he was going to bring me over to you, grandmother,
to teach me religion," I replied. "I know all about Confucius and
Buddha, my nurses used to talk about them; but they never mentioned
Christ."
The result of this conversation is, that grandmother has me go into her
room for a half-hour every day to study the Bible. We began at the first
chapter of Genesis, and already we have got as far as Abraham.
Between times I am reading the Chinese books in my own room upstairs,
and I learn from one of them that more than a century before the birth
of Abraham, China had two great and good men; fully as good as Abraham I
should think,--Yao and Shun--who framed laws that govern the nation
to-day. Why did not Yao and Shun get a "_call_" as Abraham did? I think
they deserved one fully as well.
After we get through our study of Genesis and Abraham, grandmother
usually has a little talk about that great and beautiful man, Christ;
telling me how kind and gentle he was, and how he always considered the
good of others rather than his own good.
"The Princely Man!" I cried the first time she mentioned him.
She wanted to know what I meant, and I told her that my nurses had told
me about China's ideal and model, the "Princely Man," and I thought the
Christ must be _he_.
"More, much more than Confucius, the Princely Man," returned my
grandmother. "It is my sincere hope, my dear granddaughter, that your
mind may become illumined as you proceed with your study, until you
understand the vast difference between the Princely Man and Christ."
"There is a pretty legend about Christ," she added, "which says that as
He walked the earth sweet flowers grew in the path behind Him. The
legend is true in a spiritual sense--wherever His steps have pressed the
earth all these centuries, flowers have sprung up, flowers of love,
kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness." Then grandmother began to sing
softly, in the sweetest old trembly soprano voice one ever heard, asking
me to join her:
"Let every kindred, every tribe
On this terrestrial ball,
To Him all majesty ascribe,
And crown Him Lord of all."
_March 10th, 1----_
We went to church this morning, it being Sunday--Aunt Gwendolin, Uncle
Theodore, and I. Grandmother was indisposed and did not go. It was my
first attendance at church, for Aunt Gwendolin said I had nothing fit to
wear until she dressed me up.
"Are _you_ going, Theodore?" I heard my aunt, through the opening in the
floor, say in a surprised tone, as if she were not accustomed to seeing
him go.
"I think I'll go this morning," returned my uncle, continuing to brush
his coat, which act had prompted my aunt's question. "I want to see how
our fashionable way of worshipping God will impress the little
Celestial. It will be her first attendance at church."
Aunt Gwendolin came up to my room and selected the gown I was to wear,
in fact my whole outfit. She took from the wardrobe a white French
cloth costume (it was very much in harmony with my feelings that I
should appear in America's church for the first time in the colour which
China uses for mourning), and one of the beehive hats with several birds
on it.
"Oh, I can't wear that if anybody is going to see me," I cried when she
brought out the hat.
"Well, if you are going to make a scene," said my aunt curtly, "wear
_this_," and she brought from its bandbox a "sailor" covered with white
drooping ostrich feathers. "You'll look sweet in that," she added; "and
when you get more used to civilised head-gear you can wear the others."
"Do we go to church to look sweet?" I inquired.
"Oh, dear, no," she answered impatiently, "but there is nothing gained
in being a fright--were there no Christians in your country to hold
meetings?"
Without waiting for my reply, she dived into the closet and brought out
my fur tippet, but I begged so hard not to wear it, that she said as the
day was mild I need not.
I'll have to see grandmother and have it disposed of before another
churchgoing time.
Aunt Gwendolin herself was beautifully dressed in a light blue-gray; at
a glance she looked like a passing cloud dropped down from the sky, but
a closer inspection revealed a mystery of shirrings, tuckings,
smockings, frillings never seen in a cloud. In reply to my questions she
had told me the name of all the strange puckerings. I'd like the
cloud-gown better without the puckerings.
"What do we go to church for?" I asked as we were being whirled along
in the automobile, which was controlled by a very good-looking young man
whom they called "Chauffeur."
"Why--Why--What a heathen you are! To worship God, of course," said my
aunt shortly.
"Does God require us to wear such fashionable clothes to worship Him?" I
asked, feeling wearied with the effort of dressing--collars, belts,
buckles, pins, gloves, corsets, shoes, hats, buttonings, and lacings.
Uncle Theodore laughed, and Aunt Gwendolin frowned, and looked carefully
round to see whether her white taffeta petticoat was touching the
ground--we were by this time at the church and walking from the
automobile to the church door.
Following Aunt Gwendolin's lead, we were soon in a front seat.
We were there but a few moments when a number of young men and women,
dressed in black robes, with white ties under their chins, came in
through some back door behind the gallery where they afterwards stood,
and began to sing.
"Lead me to the Li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight," sang one young woman, all in a
tremble.
"Lead me to the Li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight," sang a man in a heavy voice.
Then the woman screeched in as high notes as her voice could reach, I am
sure, and the man ran away down to a growl.
After the whole company had repeated "Lead me to the Light," they began
to sing against each other, all in a jumble; they seemed to finish the
song in some foreign language. I did not know a word of it. I suppose
as it was for the worship of God it did not matter whether any one else
understood it or not.
After the singing was done, a man--the minister they call him--Uncle
Theodore has since told me--stood up before the people and read a verse
from the Bible--one of the verses I have not got to yet in my reading
with grandmother. Then he began to talk about the hardships of poor
missionaries out in what he called "the unchristianised West of our own
country," and the _awful_ need of the natives. It was "missionary
Sunday;" a bulletin lying in the seat acquainted us with the fact, and
the music and the sermon were to be of a missionary character.
The minister told a story about a young man who had gone out as a
missionary to the Indians, who was living in a shack, twelve by
fourteen, cooking his own meals, and eating and sleeping in the one
room. He had not salary enough to pay his board.
When the minister had talked half an hour, and had us all wrought up
about the woes of the missionary, and the needs of the heathen, he
closed his sermon. And we leaned back in our seats and were lulled into
forgetfulness of the grievous story, by low-toned, dreamy, soothing
music, from the echo organ. Aunt Gwendolin has told me since that the
organ cost seventy thousand dollars.
Christians are most extraordinary people; they rouse one all up to the
pitch of being willing to do most anything by a heart-rending address,
and then scatter all the impression by their music. When the organist
had finished, I wasn't the least worried about the ills of the
missionary or the Indians. Indeed all the people looked relieved, as if
a burden had been lifted from them.
When we were again in the automobile Aunt Gwendolin said: "Didn't the
church look well this morning? It has been undergoing some repairs, and
three thousand dollars' worth of cathedral oak has been added to the
wainscoting."
"That would pay the board of the young missionary among the Indians for
a long time," I said.
"Hush!" said Aunt Gwendolin impatiently, "do not talk foolishness!"
Perhaps Uncle Theodore thought she shut me up too peremptorily, for he
said: "Paying that young man's board out in the West would never be
noticed or talked about, my dear; other denominations would pay no
attention to it, while this cathedral oak wainscoting--Oh my! Oh my!
will excite the admiration and jealousy of the whole city."
"I _love_ beautiful churches," returned my Aunt Gwendolin poutingly. "I
shall take Pearl around to see St. George's, where the altar cost five
thousand dollars. It will be an education to the girl. A man gave it in
memory of his wife, which was a very beautiful thing to do."
"Pooh!" exclaimed my uncle, "why didn't he do something for some poor
wretches who need it, in memory of his wife?"
While they had been talking I was looking at the curious, high-crowned,
black, shiny hats (a stove-pipe, Uncle Theodore has since told me they
ought to be called) which the men all were wearing. They seem to be as
essential in America as the queue is in China.
In the afternoon grandmother invited me into her private room to have a
quiet talk with her, she said.
"Everything is very new to you, my dear Margaret--Pearl I believe your
father called you--in this country, and you must come to me with all
your troubling problems. I feel for you, my dear grandchild, and do not
fear to say anything, _anything_ at all you feel like saying to me."
She took my small yellow hands in hers, and looked at me lovingly,
saying as she gently chafed them that they were very pretty and plump.
There _were_ things puzzling me, had puzzled me that very day, and I
felt inclined to place them before my kind granny.
"What are Christians, grandmother?" I asked.
"My dear child," said my grandmother, "the word simply means the
followers of Christ."
"Oh, it cannot mean _that_!" I cried, then stopped, abashed.
Grandmother raised her glasses from her eyes, placed them on her
forehead, and stared at me in a puzzled way for a few seconds, then she
said:
"My dear Pearl, why do you say that?"
She was looking at me and I must answer, although fearing that I had
hurt her feelings in some way by my abrupt contradiction.
"You said that the man, Christ, was very kind and gentle, and that He
always thought of the good of others before His own," I continued.
"Would _He_ pay thousands upon thousands for a grand church, in which to
sit and be happy, and feel rich; and thousands upon thousands for a
great organ to play sweet music and make Him forget the world's sorrows,
while His brothers were too poor to pay for their board----?"
"No, he would _not_!" said grandmother, tears welling into her blue
eyes.
Jumping from my seat I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her
wrinkled, quivering face, saying, "_You_ are a follower of the Princely
Man--of the good man, Christ, _you_ are, grandmother----"
A peremptory rap at the door stopped further conversation, and when I
opened it, a lady was ushered in to see grandmother.
I was introduced to Mrs. Paton, of whom I had before heard my
grandmother speak as "a great Christian worker," and whom I heard my
Aunt Gwendolin denounce as a "tiresome crank, spoiling every one's
comfort." I looked very earnestly at the lady, trying to fit her into
the two definitions.
Mrs. Paton began almost at once to talk about the "temperance movement,"
and the "evils of intoxicating liquors," and "the selfishness of the
onlooking world, who were not the real sufferers."
She left after the expiration of half an hour, and grandmother said to
me: "You would not understand Mrs. Paton's remarks, my dear. You will
have to be longer in the country before you know what is meant by the
'evils of intoxicating liquors.' Did you ever really see a drunken man?"
"No, grandmother," I said, "I never even _heard_ of one. _Drunk!_--what
does it mean?"
"Oh," said grandmother, "something that as a country we have reason to
be terribly ashamed of--men drinking intoxicating liquors until they
lose their senses----"
Another rap interrupted grandmother, and we were called out to tea. The
only really delightful thing they do in this America is to drink tea,
just the same as we do in China.
I see how it is; they have a new Confucius in this America, but they do
not live the new Confucius--none but my dear grandmother.
_March 12th, 1----_
It is settled--but not without a fight--I do not have to wear the furs
with heads and tails, and all the rest. To please my grandmother, who
was so afraid I might catch cold, I submitted to accepting a plain set,
a set which dear grandmother had selected herself. Aunt Gwendolin was
furious, and fought hard that I should be compelled to wear the first
set, but grandmother overruled. I see the mother can be the head of the
house in America when she chooses.
It was the kittens that decided grandmother. One day she and I were out
for a short walk, and we met a girl with two little kittens around her
hat--not real live kittens, but the skins of two little gray and white
kittens stuffed with cotton batting, and with glass eyes, arranged as if
meeting and sparring around the crown of that girl's hat. "It is
barbaric," said grandmother. "There are two kinds of heathen. There are
the heathen who are born such, and there are the heathen by choice. And
if we look about us we must acknowledge we have a great multitude of
them at home." It almost made grandmother sick, and she decided at once
that I could get the furs changed. "I never seem to have awakened to the
enormity of it before," said poor grandmother with a sigh. How glad I am
that the mother can be the head of the house in America when she
chooses!
A young man whom we all call Cousin Ned, because he is a distant
relative of the family, comes here to grandmother's house very often. He
talks incessantly about "first base," "second base," and "third base,"
"innings," and "runs," "pitchers," and "short-stop," "outfield," and
"infield," "right-fielder," "centre-fielder," and "left-fielder,"
"scores," and "catchers." It is all Greek to grandmother and me, but we
can get him to talk about nothing else. I asked Uncle Theodore the
first time I saw this cousin of ours, what he was doing--his home is
many miles away, and he is boarding in the city.
"He is here ostensibly to attend the University," said Uncle Theodore,
"but Ned is a great sport."
As Uncle Theodore was walking away he sang lightly:
"If fame you're on the lookout for and seek it over all
The words you must engrave upon your mind are these: Play Ball!"
This was rather unusual, for Uncle Theodore rarely sings, and I am sure
I do not know what he meant by it.
By reason of the relationship, Cousin Ned feels free to come to the
house without ceremony at all hours of the day. Most of the time he is
wearing a "sweater," with a large letter on the breast.
_March 30th, 1----_
Aunt Gwendolin decided, soon after I came, that I must begin at once to
take lessons in Spanish. The teachers are now visiting the house daily,
one to teach me the Spanish language, and the other to instruct me how
to sing Spanish songs. Señor de Bobadilla has just been here, and I have
been screeching away for half an hour in a small room where my aunt has
had a piano placed specially for my use. She says she is not going to
"bring me out"--that means introduce me to society, grandmother says;
that was one of the puzzling questions I carried to her--until I can
sing Spanish songs. I see through it all, because of the conversation I
heard through the floor opening; she thinks by that means to convince
her society friends that I am Spanish instead of Chinese. How very
funny!
There was a small dinner-party at this house the other evening, but of
course I could not be at the table. I have not "come out." Grandmother
argued for my appearing, but Aunt Gwendolin was firm to the contrary,
and she won. Ancestors are not much regarded in America.
My aunt gave me permission, however, to look in on the guests when they
were seated at the table. She had a large mirror fastened to the door,
and by leaving it open at a particular angle I could watch--myself
unseen behind a curtain--the ceremony of dining as practised in America.
Mercy! those women with bare arms and bare shoulders sitting there
before the men! How could they help blushing for themselves! I just gave
one glance at them, then ran away and hid my face!
Having the evening to myself, I went up to my room and enjoyed myself
reading my Chinese books. My aunt said that I was to stay at the
curtained door, and learn the ways of society by watching the manners of
the guests at dinner; but I saw all I wanted to see in one glance. I'd
like to carry all those women little shawls to put around their bare
shoulders. Mrs. Delancy's was the barest of them all, but I have heard
my aunt talk since about how "elegantly gowned Mrs. Delancy was."
A strange thing happened up in my room; I opened one of my books just at
the page where it tells about the Chinese ambassadors, on the occasion
of their visits to Christian countries, noticing with grave disapproval
the décollete costumes of the women at the state functions. What
wonder!--if they looked anything like the women at my aunt's dinner
party!
Señor de Bobadilla says that I am making remarkable progress with my
Spanish songs; he tells grandmother in a half-whisper, as if fearing to
let me hear him, that I am very bright and intelligent; he congratulated
her on having such a prodigy for a grandchild. Oh, cunning Señor de
Bobadilla, you want to continue my lessons indefinitely. I am learning
to quiver and shake, and trill, run up the scale, and down the scale,
jump from a note away down low to a note away up high. I'll soon be able
to sing "Lead me to the Light," as well as the church choir.
The professor looks very Spanish in brown velvet coat, red necktie,
shoes shining like a looking-glass, a moustache waxed into long points
on each side of his top lip, and hair hanging in a curling brown mat
down to his shoulders. Seated at the piano, his thin yellow fingers
sprawl over the white and black ivory keys, while in response to my
efforts he keeps ejaculating, "Goot! Goot! _Excellent! Superb!_"
I, dressed in muslin, cream-coloured ground dashed over with wild roses,
or blue ground with white chrysanthemums (the latter is not very
becoming to my yellow skin) stand at his left hand stretching my mouth
to the utmost, trying to give utterance to the tones he is striking on
the piano, and trying to look Spanish, too.
Señor de la Prisa is teaching me the Spanish language--a lesson every
day, and I am beginning to jabber the strange gibberish like a parrot:
"_Es un dia bonita. El viento es frio. Se esta haciendo tarde. Es
temprano._" I'll soon believe myself that I am _really_ Spanish, and
have never come from "the country of yellow gods and green dragons," as
Uncle Theodore calls my dear native land.
I have been watching people, reading the daily newspapers and my Chinese
books, and asking grandmother questions until I feel very wise. I am
almost as wise as a real American now.
Some weeks following Mrs. Paton's Sunday visit to my grandmother, I was
out for a short walk of pleasure when I overtook her. She was pleased to
meet me again, she said, and we walked along together, chatting, at
least she talked and I listened, sometimes asking questions.
"Just think of it, my dear," she said, "this is the day on which men are
applying for licenses to sell poison to kill their fellow-men."
Then she told me story after story of the terrible misery caused by
intoxicating drinks, and the sin and crime they caused people to commit,
until I was almost in tears.
A noise of voices and tramping feet interrupted her, and there came
around a corner, marching toward us, a long procession of men.
"Who are they?" I inquired, slipping my arm into hers. I had never
before seen so many men together.
"Strikers," she returned sadly.
"Strikers?" I exclaimed.
"Yes," she added, "men who will not work until their employers pay them
the amount they think they ought to be paid."
Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! the great crowd passed us in long file, dusty,
worn, hard-worked men. My heart swelled as I looked at their strained
faces; I could not go any farther on my walk; I had to rush home to ask
grandmother questions.
"Grandmother!" I cried, panting into her room, "strikes in a country
that follows Christ!--And men asking for a license to sell poison to
their fellow-men!"
I fell on my knees in front of her chair and sobbed, I could not have
told why.
She took my face in her soft old withered hands, and holding it was
about to speak, when my Aunt Gwendolin, who had overheard me, came into
the room and cried indignantly:
"That crank of a Mrs. Paton has been talking to the girl; I know her
very words. That woman should be forcibly restrained!"
Grandmother did not answer her, but continued to stroke my face until I
grew quieter, and until my aunt had left the room. Then in reply to my
many pointed questions she told me in brief, that the reason men got
licenses to sell liquor was that they paid money for them, and the
country granted them for the sake of the great revenue they brought into
its treasury.
"Oh, grandmother!" I cried, raising my head from her lap, "when Britain
tried to induce the Chinese Emperor to legalise the opium traffic
because of the import duty, he said, 'Nothing shall induce me to derive
a revenue from the vice and misery of my people'!"--I had read all this
in my books on China.
Grandmother was wiping away tears, and I said no more.
I went up to my own room, and half an hour later I heard my Uncle
Theodore, to whom my grandmother had repeated my words, say:
"She is preternaturally sharp. No girl of this country thinks of the
things she does. I suppose they develop younger in those Eastern
climes."
"It is all new to her," said my grandmother; "she has just come in upon
it and sees it with fresh eyes. The girls here have grown up with it and
become used to it by degrees."
"Oh, it's that Oriental blood--half witch, half demon--that's at the
bottom of all her tantrums. The Orientals are all a subtle lot, and we
as a country are wise to make them stay at home," said my Aunt
Gwendolin.
_April 10, 1----_
Aunt Gwendolin has discovered my Chinese books that I had intended to
keep hidden in my room. She came in suddenly one day and found me seated
in the midst of them.
"What's this? What's this?" she cried in great agitation. "How are we
ever going to get you into the ways of Christianised, civilised folk if
you keep feeding your mind on literature about uncivilised people?" And
she gathered my books up into her arms and carried them away.
I have them all read, however, and she cannot carry away the thoughts
they have left in my mind. What great creatures we human beings are!
What a world with which no one else can meddle we can carry around in
our little brains and hearts! It is all the same whether they are
American or Chinese brains or hearts.
"I see now where she has gotten all her smart sayings about the
Chinese," my aunt said to my grandmother and Uncle Theodore. "How can we
ever hope to do anything with her when she is being poisoned by such
stuff as is in those books? 'For ways that are dark and tricks that are
vain' commend me to the Chinese!"
"I'll sicken her of the Chinese," she added: "I'll bring one into the
kitchen to cook; then perhaps she'll feel more compunction about
acknowledging that she is part Celestial. She actually seems as if she
were proud of the fact now."
Grandmother remonstrated, but my aunt replied: "I have always been
wanting to try a Chinese cook; they are really the world's cooks and so
careful and clean, it is said. Then I would like to give Pearl enough of
it. She will not be so fond of claiming kinship with the cook."
The result of all this was that inside of twenty-four hours a Chinaman
was installed in the kitchen--and the biscuits are perfect.
His name is Yee Yick; of course he has three names, all Chinamen have;
but trying to become Americanised they use only two in this country.
My aunt has decided that it is sufficient to call him Yick. "The English
call their servants by their surnames," was all the explanation she
made.
Yick is a dude; he has a suit for almost every day in the week, and is
very vain of his appearance. His queue is rolled up around his head,
which is a sign that he has not yet abandoned his home gods. He is very
anxious to learn English, and Betty tells me that he has a slate hanging
up in the kitchen on which he is writing English words every spare
moment.
I had watched Yick a good deal, but I never exchanged a word with him,
until the event occurred about which I am going to write; and I know he
never dreamed that I could speak his language. Poor Yick! if he is
"chief cook and bottle-washer," as my aunt says, he is my countryman,
and I cannot help taking an interest in him.
One day I walked to the end of the veranda which runs the whole length
of the house, and glancing in through the kitchen window as I passed, I
saw Yick making his tea-biscuits. He had the flour and shortening all
mixed, and raising the bowl of milk which was on the table, he took a
great mouthful, and then began to force it out in a heavy spray through
his teeth into the dish of prepared flour, in the same manner as the
Chinese laundryman sprinkles clothes.
I wrung my hands, and cried within myself, "Oh, Yick, you terrible man!
You horrible little pigtail!"
But I slipped back to the front of the veranda without making an audible
sound. How could I tell on poor Yick, and bring down such an awful storm
on his head as would result? He was a stranger in a strange land, and it
was my duty to protect him. Was it such a very wicked thing he had done?
He never killed little birds, anyway, and wore them on his head; nor
trapped cunning little animals, and strung their heads and tails around
his neck! I decided I would not tell on him.
But that evening at dinner I passed the plate of white, flaky biscuits
without taking any. I sat at grandmother's left hand, and when she was
not looking, I slipped the biscuit which she had taken away from her
bread-and-butter plate, and let it slide from my hand down onto the
floor. Dear, absent-minded grandmother never missed it. Aunt Gwendolin
and Uncle Theodore ate three biscuits each.
"It seems to me that Yick keeps constantly improving in his biscuits,"
said my aunt, as she reached for her third.
"They ought to be better than other people at most everything,"
returned my Uncle Theodore, "they have been a long while practising.
They may have been making biscuits before Moses was born. The Chinaman
possesses a history which dwarfs the little day of modern nations. It is
a saying of theirs that from the time heaven was spread and earth was
brought into existence China can boast a continuous line of great men."
I looked pleased and smiled. My aunt seeing it said, with a toss of her
head:
"A continuous line of great cooks and laundrymen."
That evening when my aunt and uncle were out, and grandmother had gone
to bed, I slipped down to the kitchen and stood face to face with Yick.
He almost kotowed to me, but commanding him to stand up, I told him in
plain Chinese that I had seen him mixing the biscuits, and disapproved
of his plan.
His hair almost seemed to stand on end when he heard me speaking his
native tongue. He started to tremble, and his knees bent under him.
"Yee Yick," I continued, in the language he thoroughly understood, "if
you ever put the milk in your mouth again, and sift it out through your
teeth into the flour, I shall inform the mistress of the house, and you
shall be dismissed!"
Trembling all over Yick began rapidly in Chinese to promise that he
would never, _never_ be guilty of the act again. Then, as if scarcely
able to believe that I could understand his native tongue, he repeated
his promise in English.
"No, missee, Yee Yick not putee milk in mouthee! No, missee, Yee Yick
not putee milk in mouthee!"
I assured him in Chinese that I would keep the secret of what I had
seen on condition that he would keep his promise, and went out of the
kitchen, leaving the poor fellow almost in tears. I believe he scarcely
knows whether to regard me as a spirit or a being of flesh and blood, it
is so hard for him to understand how I can speak Chinese.
The plumbers have closed up the hole in the floor, so I shall hear no
more about the "wily Celestial."
_April 20th, 1----_
While I have been waiting to be prepared to "come out," I determined to
walk around the streets and see some more of the doings of Americans.
Grandmother gave her consent, with a warning to keep off certain
streets.
"It is quite safe for a young girl to walk alone in most places in our
country, thank God," said dear grandmother devoutly, "and I am very
willing that you should look about you. I remember when I was a girl I
liked to walk and see things, too."
But Aunt Gwendolin knocked the whole thing in the head--apparently.
"It is so plebeian for her to go tramping through the streets," she said
to my grandmother. "Cannot she be satisfied to go out every day with us
in the automobile? The grounds are spacious around this place, and she
can have all the exercise she wants right here."
So the question was settled--to all appearance.
A week after my aunt's fiat I read in the daily newspaper that in the
"House of Jacob," a certain Jewish synagogue downtown, there was
conducted on a certain afternoon every week sewing classes for young
Jewish girls. Instantly I decided that I wished to visit it, and see
those "Children of Abraham," about whom grandmother had been teaching me
in the Bible, those people who were God's favourites, and I set about
laying plans to accomplish my desire.
Happily, when that afternoon came around, Aunt Gwendolin went out to a
Bridge Party--I have not yet found out what that means, but I hoped that
afternoon that she would have a good many bridges to cross, so it would
keep her a long time away--and it was Betty's day out.
Previous to this I had found in a closet a black skirt and shawl
formerly worn by grandmother, and a bonnet which she had laid aside.
As soon as my aunt had safely departed (I had seen Betty go an hour
before), I hastily threw the heavy black satin skirt over mine, draped
the black embroidered silk shawl around my shoulders, and tied on the
bonnet. With a black chiffon veil, which was not very transparent, tied
over my face, I felt very comfortable. It was quite proper for an
_elderly_ lady to go anywhere she wished.
Grandmother was taking her customary afternoon nap, as I slipped down
the backstairs into the kitchen. Yick, preparing the flour for his
biscuits, saw me and started. I could not keep my secret from him; I
decided to take him into my confidence and trust him.
So lifting my veil, I looked at him markedly, and told him rapidly in
Chinese that he was not to tell any one he had seen me.
He smiled, winked, and nodded knowingly, assuring me in voluble Chinese
that he would keep my secret.
"You no tellee onee me," he said significantly, with grimaces and
gesticulations.
Going out through the back door, and down through a lane at the back of
the house, I was soon on the street.
Taking the street-cars--in which Aunt Gwendolin thinks it is very
plebeian to ride--I was soon whirled down in front of the "House of
Jacob."
What a mercy it is, in this curious America, that so many people are
plebeian and ride in street-cars that they do not pay any attention to
one another. Nobody noticed my grandmotherly garb.
A woman reporter entered the front door of the synagogue along with me,
and I imagined that I was regarded with some deference--grandmother's
old skirt and shawl are made of rich material.
I followed the reporter around the room in which the classes were held,
a few yards in the rear.
There they were, a hundred or more little Jewish children, red-headed,
black-headed, blonde-headed, and Jewish women had them arranged in
groups, and were teaching them to sew.
"These little red-heads are typical Russian Jews," I heard the director
of the ceremonies say to the reporter, "only in this country a few
months. _There's_ one that has the marked Jewish features," she added,
pointing to another type of child. "They are all fond of jewellery--an
Oriental trait."
Dear, dear, I only stayed a short time looking at them. They are not
much different from others, those people who struck rocks and water
gushed out, had manna and quails rained down on them, and walked through
a wilderness led by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by
night. I have seen hundreds of Chinese who looked just as remarkable. I
cannot understand why God showed partiality to Abraham's children.
I went out onto the street again, and wandered on till I came to what I
recognized as Chinese quarters. There were the laundries of Hoy Jan, Lem
Tong, Lee Ling, and the shops and warehouses of Moy Yen, Man Hing, and
Cheng Key. The dear names; it did me almost as much good to look at them
as it could to make a visit to my own country.
As I walked down the quiet street, a wistful oval face looked down on
me from a window. A Chinese woman's face, and the first I had seen
since coming to America. Stepping into a little shop near by, a shop
containing preserved ginger, curious embroidered screens, little ivory
elephants and jade ornaments, I asked who lived in the house where I saw
the face at the window, and was informed that it was the home of Mr. and
Mrs. Lee Yet.
It was drawing near dinner time in my grandmother's house; already I had
stayed out longer than I had intended: I had no time to investigate
further regarding Mrs. Yet.
When I got back to the house I found that my aunt had returned before
me, but fortunately had not noticed my absence.
When Yick walked into the dining room with the steaming plum-pudding for
our dinner, Aunt Gwendolin said:
"Yick, who was that little old woman I saw coming up our back lane half
an hour ago?"
"Me nevee see no little old womee," returned Yick, with a child-like
smile.
"How stupid those Chinese are," said my aunt, when Yick had left the
room. "I certainly saw an old woman, and there that creature never saw
her!"
The _Creature_ had helped a _young_ woman take off her black bonnet and
shawl, and escape up the backstairs half an hour before.
I suppose it's "that Oriental blood--half witch, and half demon" that's
at the bottom of my tantrum of this afternoon.
_April 25th, 1----_
Mrs. Paton has been in to make another Sunday visit to grandmother; she
is an old friend and privileged to come when she chooses--and as before
I had the privilege of hearing her talk.
"We are calling ourselves a Christian country," she said to grandmother,
"and yet we care more for pleasure than for anything else. An actress is
paid more money in one month than a preacher of the Gospel is paid in a
year. Does not that show what the people of our country care most for?
Going over to Christianise the heathen forsooth! We are not following
Christ ourselves! What an example we set them! How can we expect them to
think much of our religion when they see it has done so little for _us_?
"Christianity is despised, and rightly so. It is called cant, and so it
is; going around with the Bible under its arm, and never obeying its
precepts. We want more men overturning the tables of the
money-changers, and upsetting the commercialism that is grinding other
men down to starvation!"
Dear grandmother was not argumentative, and gently assented to all her
visitor was saying.
"When this country is really following Christ itself," continued the
visitor, "we shall see our wealthy men, instead of using their wealth to
build palaces, and to minister to the pride of themselves in a thousand
forms, choosing to lead the simple life, with personal expenditure cut
down to a minimum, and their ability to minister to others increased to
a maximum; in short we will find them following in the footsteps of
their Lord. Man is really the richer as he decreases his wants, and
increases his capacity to help."
When she rose to leave, at the end of an hour's chat, she said very
solemnly to me as she held my hand in a farewell clasp:
"My dear, each man and woman is born with an aptitude to do something
impossible to any other. _You_ have an aptitude that the world has no
match for. It is your aptitude for your own peculiar and immediate
duty."
Oh, how solemn the words look as I write them down. What can my duty be?
I wonder when I am going to find out. Aunt Gwendolin thinks it is to
sing Spanish songs, I know; she firmly believes that to be my own
_peculiar and immediate duty_. Grandmother thinks it is to study the
Bible. And Uncle Theodore thinks it is to look artistically dressed. I
have not come to a conclusion yet as to what I think myself.
When I get so terribly lonesome in this America that I cannot stand it
any longer, I get Betty to steal down my yellow silk out of the box in
the attic, the one trimmed with green dragons, and I dress up in it, and
put on my head the pretty embroidered band that the Chinese women wear
instead of the hideous hats of America, and sweep up and down the room
like a peacock with a spreading tail, Betty going into raptures over my
appearance, sometimes laughing hysterically, and sometimes almost in
tears, because they have "no such grand clothes in America." If Aunt
Gwendolin hears a noise and comes trailing along the hall, I jump into
bed and cover myself up, yellow silk and all, and Betty proceeds to
bathe my head for a headache--I really have one by that time.
How many foreigners they have in this great country, Shanghai roosters,
Turkey hens, Persian cats, Arabian horses. I wonder do all those foreign
creatures feel something calling them back, back to their own country?
Cousin Ned spends most all his time at grandmother's at present. He had
his arm broken at a baseball game, and is carrying it in a sling.
_April 30th, 1----_
We had the pleasure of Professor Ballington's company at lunch
to-day--Uncle Theodore had him down in his office on some business, and
insisted on his coming home and lunching with him.
When he and my uncle walked in unannounced they found grandmother, Aunt
Gwendolin, and me in the sitting-room.
The professor shook hands with me in a very friendly manner; he really
seemed pleased to see me. Oh, it is awfully nice for a girl in a strange
land, feeling alone and lonesome, to have some one glad to see her. He
had not spoken to me since that morning my uncle introduced me to him,
but he has seen me a number of times when I have been out in the
carriage with my grandmother and aunt.
He seated himself beside me, and we were just beginning to chat
pleasantly when my Aunt Gwendolin said:
"You have not heard our little Dependency sing, Professor Ballington?"
Grandmother's cheeks flushed, and Uncle Theodore looked embarrassed.
"Pearl, dear," she added sweetly, addressing me, "give us one of your
stirring Spanish songs before we go to lunch. You can sing better
before lunch than after."
In obedience to the request--which I felt to be a command--I went to the
piano and sang lightly the only Spanish song _I could_ sing.
All the hearers seemed pleased with my effort. Professor Ballington
looked calmly at me, but a smile lay behind his blue eyes. What did that
smile mean?
We immediately sat down to lunch, and I was saved the embarrassment of
having to tell that I could only sing _one_ Spanish song. I guess Aunt
Gwendolin made sure that no such a dilemma should occur.
By some stray remark of Uncle Theodore's, the conversation at the table
turned on what he calls the "Asiatic Problem."
"Those dreadful Asiatics," interposed Aunt Gwendolin, "so sly and
subtle, they certainly should be shut out. They are a menace to any
country."
"Above all nations is humanity," smilingly returned Professor
Ballington.
"Especially those inferior people, the Chinese," added my aunt.
"We can scarcely call the Chinese inferior, Miss Morgan," returned
Professor Ballington. (How I wanted to give him a hug!) "The Chinaman
despises our day of small things. Like the Jew he possesses a great
national history which dwarfs that of all other nations. The golden era
of Confucius lies back five hundred years before the coming of Christ,
and the palmy days of the Chan dynasty antedate the period of David and
Solomon."
"Oh, yes," said my aunt curtly, "but what has he accomplished in all
that time? We regard them as a nation of laundrymen."
"And they regard us as a nation of shopkeepers, and express lofty
contempt for our greed of gain," said the professor.
"The idea!" said my aunt scornfully; "the fact is I always feel inclined
to relegate the yellow-skinned denizens of China to the brute kingdom.
Think of the _dreadful_ things that happen there! Life itself is of
small account to them!"
"One of our own writers," returned the professor, "says, 'Life is safer
in Pekin than in New York.' Another writer adds, 'Chicago beats China
for official dishonesty!'"
"It is a nation which for thousands of years has set more store by
education than any other nation under the sun," said Uncle Theodore, "I
have been reading up about them lately" (that's because of me) "and it
is perfectly astonishing, their high ideals. There are clearly marked
gradations in society, and the highest rank is open only to highly
educated men. First, the scholar; because mind is superior to wealth.
Second, the farmer; because the mind cannot act without the body, and
the body cannot exist without food and raiment. Third, the mechanic;
because next to food and raiment shelter is necessary. Fourth, the
tradesman; men to carry on exchange and barter become a necessity. And
last of all the soldier; because his business is to destroy, and not to
build up society. How does that compare with our country which makes
more of the destroyer than of any other citizen? No man in China can
rise to any position of responsibility except by education; money in
_this_ country will carry a man into the legislature if he cannot write
his own name."
"Chinese ethics are grand," added the professor. "Listen to the teaching
of Lao Teh. 'I would meet good with good, but I would also meet evil
with good, confidence with confidence--distrust with confidence. Virtue
is both good and trustful.'"
"There isn't a doubt that they are a wonderful people," returned Uncle
Theodore. "When our ancestors were wandering about in sheep-skins and
goat-skins--if in any other skins but their own--China had a
civilisation. Wrong seems to be not a question of right with us, but of
might. We do not attempt to stop people taking chances on the stock
exchange; taking such chances is perfectly legal, but taking chances in
a lottery is a serious offence. If a Chinaman takes chances in a little
game which he understands, the morals of the community are endangered,
and the poor Celestial must be hurried off to jail. We civilised people
allow betting at a horse-race, and disallow it in other places. It is
only the uninfluential people we send to jail for violation of the law."
They talked back and forth in an animated way for some time. I was dying
to speak, but did not dare; but I am sure that once in the heat of the
argument, Professor Ballington shot a glance across the table at me
which spoke volumes. The same smile was in his eyes that was there when
I sang for him my _one_ Spanish song. What did he mean? Can he guess?
Does he know that I am not Spanish?--that I am the Yellow Pearl?
_May 5th, 1----_
A very important item has appeared in the newspaper to-day--poor Lee Yet
has fallen into trouble; rather, other people are trying to get him into
trouble, and his wife, the little oval-faced Mrs. Yet, has been
subpoenaed to appear as a witness in his behalf.
That dear little sad woman to have to go to court before all those
Americans! "She shall _not_ be studied and laughed at as a curiosity.
She _shall_ be dressed up like an American woman!" I declared as soon as
I read the item.
In pursuance of my idea this afternoon, I a second time donned
grandmother's garments--lucky that grandmother and I are the same
height--and a second time left the house unnoticed by any one except
Yick.
How very much at home I feel in the garments of an elderly gentlewoman!
Perhaps I am walking around the world the eighteen-year-old
reincarnation of some dear, silken-clad old granny who inhabited this
sphere hundreds of years ago.
I quickly found my way down to the home of Mrs. Yet, and rapped at the
door.
It was opened by the little woman herself, who looked even sadder than
when I first saw her. I addressed her in Chinese and lifting my veil,
told her that I had come to make her a visit. She smiled in a pleased
way, opened wide the door, and invited me into the house. She had never
noticed the discrepancy between my antiquated dress and young face, and
was blissfully unconscious that my garments were fifty years (more or
less) out of date.
On my entrance something small and pink moved behind a wire screen in
the corner of the room, and Mrs. Yet clipclapped across the floor in her
Chinese sandals, and picked up a little bundle of Chinese life, saying:
"This my baby. He eighteen month. He sick--get tooth--got one tooth."
We talked about the baby, she sometimes speaking in Chinese, and
sometimes in broken English, until we felt acquainted. Then I said:
"Mrs. Yet, I see by the newspaper that you will have to appear in court
to give evidence in behalf of your husband. You do not want to go there
in Chinese dress to be the subject of curiosity, and newspaper remark?"
The trouble which had left her face while she was talking about the
baby, reappeared, and tears gathered in her almond eyes.
It was more than I could stand, and I cried, "Don't! Don't! Mrs. Yet--I
have come to make things all right--I, your country-woman--speaking your
own language. I am going to give myself the pleasure of dressing you
like an American woman."
She remonstrated politely but I urged so strongly that at last she
yielded; and it seemed when she did so as if a great burden had rolled
from off her pale little face.
Immediately I went out to one of the great stores and ordered several
costumes for her to "fit on"--I wasn't a child any longer. Grandmother's
rich old skirt and shawl carried weight a second time (they could not
see my face distinctly through the veil), for without hesitation a woman
was despatched with the costumes.
This woman expert worked over the little Mrs. Yet, pinching, and
pulling, and puckering, after the manner of American dressmakers, until
she had her resplendent in a rich maroon-coloured wool costume, which
exactly suited her olive skin, and made her almost a beauty.
At last the costume was satisfactorily settled and paid for. Oh, it is
nice to have plenty of money to pay for all one wants. Father left me
plenty (and although I do not control it until I come of a certain age,
I get a liberal monthly instalment). I then went to a milliner's and
bought a hat of a shade to harmonise with the costume. It was trimmed
with ribbon, and deep, rich, maroon roses, and just looked _too sweet
for anything_. "Youthful and stylish," as the milliner said. Why not?
Mrs. Yet is young, and she has just as good a right to look stylish as
any American woman!
Happy? I should say I am! I never was happier in my life than I am
to-night; even if I did steal out in grandmother's old clothes, and am a
"sly, subtle Oriental."
_May 10th, 1----_
The Court met to-day, and there has appeared in the evening papers this
notice:
"A novelty in the shape of a Chinese woman witness appeared in the
Sessions yesterday. Mrs. Lee Yet went into the box in behalf of her
husband. Her trim little figure was becomingly attired in a dark-red,
tailored costume, and a reddish trimmed hat set off to perfection her
rich Oriental complexion and features, beautiful in their national type.
She gave her evidence without an interpreter, and did much toward
clearing her husband of the accusations falsely laid against him."
Oh, isn't it delightful to think that I have been instrumental in
bringing all this to a happy issue! I shall carry this newspaper down to
Mrs. Yet's home, and read to her this pleasing paragraph.
_May 11th, 1----_
A "Windfall," as Uncle Theodore calls it, has come to the family;
grandmother was quite a "well-to-do" woman before, now she is a _rich_
woman. Some investments in mines that grandfather made years ago have
turned out to be of marvellous value, and the result is that my
grandmother, my Uncle Theodore, my Aunt Gwendolin have greatly increased
in wealth.
Aunt Gwendolin wanted to change the form of our living at once; she
would introduce a page and a butler to our household staff. But
grandmother said she was accustomed to a quiet life and preferred it.
She insists, in spite of my aunt's protests, that a Chinese cook, a
house-maid, a laundress, a gardener, and that lovely chauffeur ought to
be enough to attend to the wants of four people.
Aunt Gwendolin stormed, and said it was so _common_ to live as we did,
that the English always kept a butler; but grandmother was firm. Another
example that mothers in America can rule in the house if they wish.
Grandmother seemed a good deal concerned about this sudden acquisition
of wealth. "An addition of silver to bell-metal does not add to the
sweetness of the tone," she said. "I fear an undue proportion of silver
impairs more than bells."
_May 13th, 1----_
"BULLS AND BEARS IN A HARD STRUGGLE OVER WHEAT." Uncle Theodore read the
great headline from his evening paper.
"Wild scenes prevailed to-day at the Board of Trade," he continued,
"when John Smith began taking in his profits on wheat. It is estimated
that he made a profit of over three hundred thousand in less than half
an hour. Altogether he has cleared more than five millions on his wheat
deal, and that within six months."
"Dear me! Dear me!" cried grandmother, "and people dying for want of
bread!"
"Well," returned Uncle Theodore, "Smith is only a highly sensitive
product of our so-called civilisation; the civilisation we are rushing
and straining to carry to the quiet, unassuming people whom _we_ call
heathen. They have no millionaires, made so at the expense of their
brothers. When we teach them all the graft, lynching, homicide,
enormities of trusts, railroads, new religions, and quack remedies, we
shall have them civilised."
"Christianity has to blush for Christendom," sighed grandmother.
I have been asking grandmother since how bulls and bears could struggle
over wheat; and she tells me that the strugglers are not four-footed
beasts at all, but _men_. I see how it is, bulls and bears are both
cantankerous animals, which, if they come in conflict about anything,
are sure to have a fight; and men who have given evidence of like
natures have been called after those fierce animals. It must be that
way. I have asked grandmother whether that is not the way they came by
their names, and she said she supposed it must be.
_May 21st, 1----_
My poor despised people have fallen upon hard lines. Lee Yet met with an
accident on the street and had to be taken to the hospital where he must
remain for weeks, and the day following Mrs. Yet was stricken down with
diphtheria.
I was out in the automobile with grandmother and Aunt Gwendolin and
chancing to pass the house of Lee Yet, I saw the awful word
"Diphtheria." in black letters on a scarlet ground, tacked to the door.
That night when all his day's work was done I gave Yick a coin and
asked him to go down and learn who was stricken with the disease.
He came back with the intelligence that it was poor little Mrs. Yet, and
that there was no one waiting on her.
Fortunately the next afternoon Aunt Gwendolin went to "bridge," and
again donning grandmother's garments, I slipped out of the house and
down to the home of Mrs. Yet.
Meeting the doctor at the door, just as he was coming out, I ordered him
to engage a nurse.
He looked at me in surprise, but I paid in advance for a week's service,
so he could do nothing but obey me.
Opening the door I went into the front room of the little home and found
the Celestial baby fretting away in its cradle just as any other baby
would fret if left to itself. I began to call it all sorts of pet names
in Chinese, and the little slant-eye cooed and smiled back at me as if
he really liked it.
A Chinese neighbour woman came in and told me that the baby was to be
kept in the front room, while its mother was quarantined in a room
upstairs. She further informed me that she came in twice a day to feed
the baby, and the rest of the time he was alone.
"I have it! I have it!" I cried exultingly to my own interior self, "I
know now my _aptitude_! I know now what I can do that is impossible to
any other; it surely is _impossible_ to any other--in this nation of an
hour--to jabber the Chinese I can jabber to this eighteen months' old
baby! I shall come here and take care of him, while the trained nurse
is taking care of the mother upstairs. I'll come for awhile every day
anyway, and will pay the Chinese woman, who cannot leave her
laundry-minding in the daytime, to take care of him at night! He's just
as much a dear human baby as any purple-and-fine-linen American baby!"
How fortune favoured me that evening! Aunt Gwendolin announced that she
was going in the morning on a month's visit to another city.
She was not much more than out the door the following day when I asked
grandmother's permission to go where I liked every afternoon of the
week.
Dear grandmother remonstrated a little--for fear I might tire myself too
much--or might go where it was not wise to go, etc., etc. But I coaxed,
and I won the day.
A strange event happened the very first afternoon. Just as I had passed
through the lane at the rear of the house, who should be standing there
at the back gate but the chauffeur, beside the automobile. He knew me
despite my grandmotherly garb (as I had commenced going to the house of
Mrs. Yet in grandmother's black shawl, bonnet, and skirt, I thought it
better to continue doing so), politely touched his cap, and said if I
had far to go it would take him but a few minutes to whirl me there in
the automobile.
He is very good looking, and a gentleman. Uncle Theodore says he is a
student who is taking this means to earn money further to pursue his
medical studies. Sometimes Uncle Theodore familiarly calls him
"Sawbones."
Nodding my assent, I entered the car, gave my directions, and soon was
down in front of Mrs. Yet's small house.
I lifted the fretting little baby out of his cradle as soon as I
entered, washed and dressed him, he kicking and squirming just as I
suppose any other baby kicks and squirms. All the fear I had was that he
would roll out of my hands, he was such a slippery little eel when his
body was wet.
Where did I learn how to wash and dress a baby? I must have known how by
instinct, for I never did it, or saw it done before. The Chinese woman
who keeps the little Oriental at night told me the articles that went
next the skin, and I had no trouble guessing about where to put the
others. After one or two attempts I did it as well as a mother of twenty
babies.
Every day I am being conveyed down to my duties in the automobile. The
chauffeur seemed to divine that I would go out every afternoon (perhaps
because Aunt Gwendolin was away) without my telling him, and is always
waiting at the little rear gate in the back street to obey my commands.
What a delightful time we are having! "When the cat's away the mice can
play!"
Dear grandmother has never seen me either leave or return to the house,
but necessarily Yick and Betty are both into the secret.
"'For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,' commend me to the
Chinese."
_May 22d, 1----_
A most impressive occurrence has transpired, as Mrs. Paton would say.
Just as I was coming out of Mrs. Yet's house this afternoon who should
be passing but Professor Ballington!
I had not yet dropped my black chiffon veil, and glancing down from his
great height of six feet, he looked me full in the face.
At the same instant he saw the word, "Diphtheria," in the great black
letters on a scarlet ground, and stopping he exclaimed:
"Why, Miss Pearl! This is a surprise! Do you know where you are--what
risk you are running? Diphtheria is contagious--_very_!"
"I know," I replied, "but some one has to mind a little Chinese baby in
there. Its father is in the hospital, and its mother is shut in a room
upstairs with diphtheria, and there is no one to stay all afternoon
with the baby if I do not. He's a Chinese baby, and of no account in
America," I added. (I came within one of telling him that I was the only
one who could call him pet names in the language he could understand;
wouldn't Aunt Gwendolin have taken a fit?) "I just _had_ to come," I
pleaded, seeing his look of disapproval. "Each man and woman is born
with an aptitude to do something impossible to any other, an aptitude
that the world has no match for, Mrs. Paton says; and I have just found
out that my aptitude, impossible to any other, is to mind this Chinese
baby; no one else can _match_ me in this!"
He looked less severe, almost kind, and half as if he could scarcely
keep from laughing. Then he said, "Have you disinfectants? They are very
necessary."
I shook my head, and he said:
"Come with me to a drug store and I will supply you with a stock."
And I, decked in my grandmother's cast-off clothes, walked along the
street, and into the "Palace Drug Store" with the elegantly dressed and
caned professor.
He didn't seem the least ashamed of me; indeed, he was so polite that I
forgot for the moment that my dress was anything odd--forgot it until I
saw a young man clerk looking at me in an amused way; then I dropped my
thick veil.
The professor insisted on my taking a certain kind of lozenge to hold in
my mouth while I was in the infected house, and ordered quantities and
quantities of disinfectants carried there, giving me instruction as to
how they should be used.
When we were walking back to the house of Mrs. Yet, the professor
remarked that the Chinese were a people worth studying.
"Have you heard any of their poetry, Miss Pearl?" he questioned. And
before I had time to reply--perhaps he thought he had no right to make
me give an answer to that question, he is a "great philologist"--he
continued: "Could anything be more exquisite than those lines to a plum
blossom?
"'One flower hath in itself the charms of two;
Draw nearer! and she breaks to wonders new;
And you would call her beauty of the rose--
She, too, is folded in a fleece of snows;
And you might call her pale--she doth display
The blush of dawn beneath the eye of day,
The lips of her the wine cup hath caressed,
The form of her that from some vision blest
Starts with the rose of sleep still glowing bright
Through limbs that ranged the dreamlands of the night;
The pencil falters and the song is naught,
Her beauty, like the sun, dispels my thought.'
"A certain collection of Chinese lyrics," he continued, "'A Lute of
Jade,' moved a London journal to observe that, the more we look into
Chinese nature as revealed by this book of songs, the more we are
convinced that our fathers were right in speaking of man's brotherhood.
Here's another to a calycanthus flower:
"'Robed in pale yellow gown, she leans apart,
Guarding her secret trust inviolate;
With mouth that, scarce unclosed, but faintly breathes.
Its fragrance, like a tender grief, remains
Half-told, half-treasured still. See how she drops
From delicate stem; while her close petals keep
Their shy demeanour. Think not that the fear
Of great cold winds can hinder her from bloom,
Who hides the rarest wonders of the spring
To vie with all the flowers of Kiang Nan.'
"This is Wang Seng-Ju's tiny poem," he added, "I presume a great many
people in this greatly enlightened America never ascribe any sentiment
to the Chinaman:
"'High o'er the hill the moon barque steers,
The lantern lights depart,
Dead springs are stirring in my heart,
And there are tears;
But that which makes my grief more deep
Is that you know not that I weep.'"
The moon had appeared in all her full-orbed glory, although it was
early twilight, and the professor looked at me so earnestly while
quoting those words that I actually believe I blushed.
"'There yet is man--
Man, the divinest of all things, whose heart
Hath known the shipwreck of a thousand hopes,
Who bears a hundred wrinkled tragedies
Upon the parchment of his brow.'
"Ou-Yang Hein penned those lines," he added, raising his hat in adieu.
But before we parted I made him promise to write out for me the Chinese
verses he had quoted; and it is his beautifully written lines I have
copied. I am going to learn them off by heart. How I would love to
recite them at one of Aunt Gwendolin's "Drawing-rooms!"
The professor had gone but a few paces when he returned to inquire what
hospital poor Lee Yet was in, saying that he would go around and see
how he was faring.
"This is such a very selfish world," he added, as if half to himself, "I
sometimes fear those poor foreigners that come to our shores get
woefully treated."
That was lovely of him! After all, men are brothers under their skin.
That was what their great man, Christ, taught--that all men are
brothers; he did not except the Chinese, as some Americans want to do.
_June 7th, 1----_
Almost as soon as Mrs. Yet was pronounced well, and was allowed to go
among people again and before Mr. Yet had left the hospital, Baby Yet
fell seriously ill--his teeth.
He grew worse, and worse. Yick told me about it one day in a few
concise Chinese words, which he snatched an opportunity to drop to me
in passing through the dining room. The wily Celestial seems to
understand, without being told, that no one is to know that he and I can
exchange thoughts in our native tongue.
That afternoon I stole out again, and went down to the little Yet home.
It was just as Yick had said, the baby was very ill.
He lay on his little pallet, white and still, almost unconscious, and
his mother stood over him wringing her hands, and shedding bitter tears.
"Oh, my baby! My baby! He die and leave me! My heart break!" she cried
in Chinese when she saw me. "Precious treasure! Precious treasure!" she
continued, bending toward the almost inanimate form on the pallet.
The latter is the almost universal term of endearment in China, and no
American mother ever agonised more bitterly than did that Chinese mother
over that atom of herself lying before her.
I had to do something to comfort her, so I began to tell her about
heaven. _I_, who was not sure that I could get to that blessed place
myself (stealing out on the sly in a grandmother's clothes is not a very
heavenly trick), said that whoever missed it, babies would be there.
"Will Chinese babies be there? They do not want them in America," she
asked rapidly and tremblingly in Chinese.
"Certainly," I replied; and at that moment I seemed to have a vision of
all the babies of this wide world that had died--black babies, brown
babies, yellow babies, red babies (probably the colour of their skin
was only the earth garb); I saw the whole throng, for grandmother had
read to me from the Bible that of such was the kingdom of heaven.
"His tooth not bother him there?" she added.
"No," I returned, "there shall be no more pain there."
"He like it," she continued, almost smiling through her tears.
Then she grew very, very still, and a glow stole over her yellow face
which made it beautiful.
I stepped nearer, put my arm around her, and kissed her on the cheek.
She looked at me in a startled way, then drawing a tiny handkerchief
from her bosom, she carefully wiped the spot on her cheek where my lips
had touched. The practice of kissing is unknown in China.
On the way home, when but a few yards from the house of Mrs. Yet, I met
Professor Ballington again, and told him the story about the sick baby.
He asked me to go back with him, and take him in to see it, which I did.
He looked scrutinisingly at the little hard pallet on which the baby
lay; and what did that dear man do but go out to one of the great stores
not far away, and buy the prettiest little cot, and the softest and best
mattress that could be found in the market, and order them sent home
without delay to that little yellow baby.
Was it the soft mattress that did it? I do not know; but almost
immediately the baby seemed to rest easier, and by degrees came back to
life and strength.
Oh, this would be a glorious country to live in!--if the people were
all like Professor Ballington.
_June 10th, 1----_
I made my first visit to the theatre. Aunt Gwendolin said I should not
go until I came _out_, but Uncle Theodore said he would take me himself,
and defy all fashions and formalities.
"I enjoy seeing the little girl absorbing our civilisation," he said to
grandmother; "sometimes I fancy it seems rather uncivilised to her."
Grandmother demurred a good deal; she said she did not know but I would
be quite as well, or better, if I never went near a theatre. But Uncle
Theodore said that was an old-fashioned idea that grandmother held to
because of her Puritan ancestry; that it was generally conceded now
that the theatre is a great educator, the greatest educator of the
people extant to-day.
"There is going to be a world-renowned actress to-night, a star of first
magnitude in the theatrical world," he added, "and I want my niece to
have the advantage of hearing her."
I dressed my very prettiest for the occasion. Uncle Theodore always has
an eye for the artistic in dress. I donned soft silks, soft ribbons, and
soft feathers. It is one of my uncle's ideas that women should be softly
clad; he absolutely hates anything hard, stiff, or masculine-looking on
a woman.
When we entered the theatre the orchestra was playing most ravishing
music. I could have stayed there all night and listened to it without
tiring, I believe. It must be the American half of me that is the
music-lover, for the Chinese are not very musical.
The boxes were full of wonderfully well-dressed men and women. How
beautiful women can look in this great country, dressed in every colour
of the rainbow! Men are of less account in America; but they looked well
enough, too, in black coats and white shirt-bosoms.
After awhile the heavenly music stopped, the curtain on the stage rolled
up, and the play began.
At first it was entrancing, magnificent--the stage-furnishings,
gorgeously dressed women, clever-looking men, all acting a part--a
lovely world without anything to mar it, right there in that small space
of the stage before our eyes.
Then a woman, the star actress, came in wearing a very décolleté gown
(I am getting hardened to them now), and began to talk in a manner I
never had imagined people in good society would talk--right before those
hundreds of men and women. I'll not write it down; I do not wish to
remember it. But the party of women on the stage, instead of being
shocked or ashamed, all laughed little, rippling, merry laughs. My
cheeks burned, and I did not dare to look at anybody, not even Uncle
Theodore.
After that I could not like the theatre any more and drawing away within
myself, I looked and listened as if the actors had been hundreds of
miles from me.
When the play was over and we were on the way home Uncle Theodore said:
"If I had known the nature of the play, I would not have taken you
to-night, Pearl."
"But _I_," I cried, "_I_ am only _one_! There were hundreds of people
being _educated_ as well as _I_!"
Uncle Theodore turned and looked at me quickly; then he said coldly:
"My dear, you have a great deal yet to learn."
When we reached home I went at once upstairs to my room, and Uncle
Theodore retired to his den.
Neither of us has ever mentioned the subject since.
Cousin Ned is around morning, noon, and night now. He is walking with a
crutch, having had his shin kicked at a foot-ball match.
_June 20th, 1----_
I went with grandmother to-day on her weekly visit to the "Home for
Incurable Children." Grandmother goes to carry her presents, and "to
cheer up the little folk," she says; I went prompted by curiosity.
We were ushered in by a cheery, wholesome-looking maid who knew
grandmother, and gave her the freedom of the house.
We first entered the ward where the older children were kept, and there
grandmother distributed her books and pictures.
While she sat to rest I wandered from one cot to another, where white
little faces looked up at me, pleasantly answering my questions, or
volunteering information.
"I am a _new_ patient," one midget said, with a placid air of
importance.
"I'm goin' to have an _operation_ to-morrow," said another exultingly.
"That's one blessed fact about children," said the attending nurse,
"they never fret in anticipation. They look forward with positive pride
to a new experience--even if it is an operation."
In one bright room three boys were playing a game of number-cards, one a
hunchback, another with crippled lower limbs, and a third, seated on a
long high bench, handling the cards with his toes, his arms and hands
being useless.
The top part of the foot of the socks belonging to this last lad had
been cut off, and he was picking the cards off the table with his bare
toes; passing them from foot to foot, and replacing a certain card on
the table, quite as expertly as another boy might do it with his
fingers.
I walked into another room to see the little babies; blind,
crooked-limbed, distorted, never going to be able to use their bodies
properly.
"Why does God leave them here?" I demanded of grandmother as soon as we
had reached the open air again.
"Perhaps," said grandmother quietly, "to give us the blessed privilege
of acting the God toward them."
"Christianity means brotherhood, Pearl, dear," she added, after we had
walked several yards in silence.
What a great country this America is! Caring for its ailing and crippled
in such a beautiful way!
"Oh, China!" I cried, when I was all alone in my own room, "_you_ would
drown your blind, crooked-limbed, distorted babies, or throw them out on
the hillsides to die! Oh, China! China! would you could come over here
and see how America treats her 'weak and wounded, sick and sore?' These
are the words of a church hymn."
I said something to this effect the same evening to grandmother, and she
replied:
"Perhaps, my dear, it may be the duty of some of us to carry America to
China."
SEASIDE, _July 31st, 1----_
We are at the seaside. It is the fashion in America for whole families
to shut up their houses in hot weather and go off to some summer
resort--the women of them--whether to be cool, or to be in the fashion I
do not yet know. Grandmother wanted to go one place, Aunt Gwendolin to
another, and Uncle Theodore, who said he might run over for a few
Sundays, to yet another. At last a charming spot upon the Atlantic coast
was decided upon. Uncle Theodore settled the question emphatically,
because dear grandmother needed the revivifying influence of the sea
air.
Aunt Gwendolin fretted a little at first for fear it might be humdrum,
and commonplace, and for fear none of "our set" would be there; but she
recovered from her depression when she heard that Mrs. Delancy, Mrs.
Deforest, Mrs. Austin, and others of the same clique had also chosen
that particular part of the coast as their recuperating place.
Mrs. Delancy dropped in one day to tell her that the whole fashionable
tide had turned toward that coast this summer, and she knew we should
have a "simply _grand_ season."
Aunt Gwendolin's spirits rose after that, and she immediately went about
ordering a most elaborate summer wardrobe--morning gowns, evening
gowns, walking suits, yachting suits, bathing suits.
Uncle Theodore went ahead of the rest of the party and engaged a suite
of rooms in the most fashionable hotel on the Beach, from the broad
balconies of which the view of the sea is grand, and the air delicious.
Grandmother and I spend much time together. As I am not "out" Aunt
Gwendolin says that I cannot attend any of the functions to which she is
going daily--and nightly. I do not know what I miss by being obliged to
stay away from the parties and balls, but I know it is very delightful
wandering on the beach with grandmother, watching the lights, shades,
and colours on the water, the dipping and skimming of the water birds,
the movements of the lobster fishers, the going out and coming in of
the tide, and all the many, many objects of interest around the great
sea world; never caring whether I am fashionable or not fashionable,
whether anybody is noticing me or not noticing me.
The only objects that I do not like to look at on this sea beach are the
human bathers. The sea-gulls taking their bath are graceful, but, oh!
those grown-up women in skirts up to their knees, and bare arms,
wandering over the beach like great ostriches! They mar the picture of
beauty which the earth and sky and sea unite to make, and I would shut
them up if I had the power--or add more length to their bathing suits.
Perhaps the sea-gulls would not look graceful either if they had half
their feathers off.
We were here a week when Professor Ballington came. We were all a
little surprised to see him because he is not a "society man," as Aunt
Gwendolin says. He does not appear to care much for "functions," and
spends much time wandering on the beach. Grandmother and I meet him
frequently.
One time when I went out for a little run before breakfast I found him
staring at the great green sea that kept restlessly licking the sand at
his feet. He looked lonesome, and I tried to say something to cheer him
up. Then he asked permission to join me in my stroll, and we had a most
delightful time, finding shells, and stones, the formations of various
periods of time, Professor Ballington said. He seems to know everything.
I do not wonder he cares so little for society, or the company of women
in general. Strange how much more the men, the cultured men, the society
men, of America know than the women! I suppose it is because the women
have to spend so much time talking about the change of sleeves.
There was a dance one night in the ballroom, which is around at the
opposite side of the house from our apartments, and leaving grandmother
absorbed in her book, I slipped around on the balcony and peeped through
the slats of the closed shutters on the dancers within.
All was in a whirl, and there I saw, with my own two eyes, men with
their arms around the waists of women, whirling those same women around
the great room in time to music played by an orchestra. It made me dizzy
to look at them.
"Wouldn't that shock China!" I cried. "Shall _I_ have to submit to that
when I come _out_? Oh, why cannot I always stay _in_?"
I was so excited I did not know I was talking aloud, until the voice of
Professor Ballington over my head said:
"You do not like the thought of coming out into society? You would like
always to stay in domestic retirement?"
"Yes, yes," I said; "what can save me from coming _out_?"
"Marry some good man," he said, "and spend your energies making a quiet,
happy home for _him_."
He was looking at me in a very peculiar way, and I felt frightened, I
don't know why, and skipped along the balcony back to grandmother's
sitting-room.
When I entered who should be there talking to grandmother but Mrs.
Paton. She said she had felt lonesome without grandmother in the city,
and had made up her mind to spend a week at the seaside.
"Oh, grandmother!" I cried, as soon as I had greeted Mrs. Paton, "shall
I _have_ to come _out_? Cannot I always stay _in_?"
Grandmother clasped my hand in hers, in the old way she had of quieting
me, and explained to Mrs. Paton that I did not incline to the ways of
society people, and had a dread of entering the world which Aunt
Gwendolin loved so well.
"Give your life to some noble cause, my dear," said Mrs. Paton
earnestly, turning her eyes upon me. "The world is in sore need of
consecrated women. You could be a foreign missionary, or a home
missionary. Oh, don't waste your life on the frivolity called Society!"
This is not Professor Ballington's advice. Which is right? How glad I
am that in this "land of the free," I am not compelled to follow any
will but my own!
_August_ SEASIDE.
Well, I did get a surprise last evening while out strolling on the
beach, for whom should I meet but "Sawbones," otherwise Chauffeur
Graham. He is having summer holidays now, and before settling down to
some work to make money for his autumn college expenses, he snatched a
day to get a whiff of sea air, he said.
He seemed very pleased to see me, and I was _delighted_ to see him, and
extended my hand to him in cordial greeting.
I know Aunt Gwendolin would object to her niece shaking hands with the
chauffeur--it was the medical man I shook hands with.
I stayed out there as long as I dared, and we had a lovely stroll along
the beach in the moonlight, the waves whispering at our feet as we
walked and talked. Chauffeur Graham said that it always seemed to him
that the waves were coming from the many far-off lands with their
incessant pleadings that we carry our enlightenment and advantages to
the suffering places of the earth.
That was the medical man speaking in him. He must be noble or he would
never hear those voices in the waves.
How I wish it were proper for me to give him some of the money I do not
know what to do with, so that he could go on with his studies and not
need to work between times to earn a pittance.
Grandmother says she is going to engage him again in the autumn, when we
all return to the city; she knows him now, and feels safe in his hands,
he is so careful.
"It is such a nuisance to have a man that you cannot command at any hour
of the day--or night," said Aunt Gwendolin. "Make him understand, if you
engage him again, that all his time belongs to _us_. These gentlemen
chauffeurs who are straining after a university education are
unendurable!"
"He shall have whatever time he wants for his studies or examinations.
It is the least I can do to show my sympathy with his life work,"
returned my grandmother.
_Another Stroll_.
I had another stroll this evening on the beach with Chauffeur
Graham--while Aunt Gwendolin was getting ready for the dance--and he
told me something.
"When I am through with my medical course," he said, "I intend to go to
China to practise what I have learned."
I stopped suddenly in my walk and faced him. "Why are you going to
China?" I demanded.
It makes me indignant to have this nation, an infant in years,
patronising my hoary-headed Empire!
"If a man is going to do his duty by the world," he returned, "he will
go where his work is most needed. They have no native medical school in
China.
"They are a great people," he added after a short pause, "likely to be
in the van of the world's march in the ages to come; and I want to have
a hand in getting them ready. Napoleon said, 'When China moves she will
move the world.' All the broken legs will be set in this country whether
I am here to set them or not; I want to go where they will not be set
unless I do it."
"Go where the vineyard demandeth
Vinedresser's nurture and care."
I repeated the lines which I had heard them sing in the church.
"That's about the way it is," he returned, looking at me in pleased
surprise.
He left this morning on an early train, to go back to the peg and grind,
and now the place is slow and lonesome. After all I think it is better
to have to peg and grind; it surely must be the spice of life which rich
people miss. I do not care how quickly the hot months pass, and we can
go back to the city again.
_Sept. 30th, 1----_
We are all back in the city again, and settled into the old routine; but
there is a new excitement in the air. Aunt Gwendolin insists that I
require to go to some fashionable "Young Ladies' Boarding School," to be
"_finished_." She says (but not in grandmother's hearing) that I do not
talk as I should, that my voice is quite ordinary, and I must learn the
tone of society ladies before I can be brought _out_.
"You mean the _artificial_ tone?" said Uncle Theodore, who was present
when I was getting my lecture.
"Call it what you like, Theodore," snapped Aunt Gwendolin, "it is the
tone used by an American society woman; the girl talks yet in the
natural voice of a child."
"Would that she could always keep it," returned Uncle Theodore.
After much talking my aunt persuaded my grandmother that I should go to
some such school.
"My dear," said grandmother timidly, "your aunt seems to think you may
gain much by a period spent in some good school. She may be right. It
certainly cannot hurt you, and if it can be of any benefit there is
nothing to prevent your having it."
To comfort dear grandmother I raised no objection, and it is settled
that I go in the fall term. The choice of a school was left entirely to
Aunt Gwendolin, and she has decided upon the most expensive and most
fashionable one in the country. She has been corresponding with the
lady principal; my rooms have been ordered; and everything is complete.
One day my aunt placed in my hand one of her monogrammed sheets of
writing-paper, pointing to the following paragraph:
"It is the family's wish that much attention be given to preparing the
young girl whom I am sending to you, for Society; heavy or arduous work
in any other line is of secondary consideration. The prestige of your
school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of a Spanish girl
of good family."
"I am not a Spanish girl, Aunt Gwendolin!" I said.
"I did not say you were," returned my aunt, "I simply said the prestige
of her school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of one."
Have I got to live up to _that_?
BOARDING SCHOOL, _October 10th, 1----_
I am here at last, accompanied by two large leather trunks, which Aunt
Gwendolin has filled with all sorts of costumes, for all sorts of
occasions.
A page opened the door in response to the hackman's ring, when after
some hours' journey by rail, I arrived at the fashionable "Boarding
School," and a maid conducted me up a flight of softly carpeted steps to
my appointed rooms.
I had not more than taken off my wraps, when Madam Demill (she has
declared that her name should be spelled De Mille, but it has become
corrupted in this democratic America) the head of the establishment,
called upon me. She was cold, hard, stately; a creature of whalebone and
steel as to body, and of pompadours and artificial braids as to head.
She announced after her first greeting that there was going to be a
party that evening, and she wished me to be dressed in evening costume,
and appear in the drawing-room at half past eight o'clock.
"If you would wear some of your distinctly Spanish costumes it would be
very _apropos_," she added. "I see you have the decided Spanish
complexion. I am glad you are pronounced in your nationality; it is so
much more interesting. As you did not arrive in time for dinner, a tray
shall be brought to your room with sufficient refreshment to keep you in
good feature until you partake of the refreshment offered at the party,"
she added as she swept from the room.
How helpless I felt! I was to dress in evening costume for the "party."
What was I to put on? For the first time in my life I wished that Aunt
Gwendolin were near me. How I longed for my yellow silk gown that my
governess in China had designed with flowing sleeves trimmed with
"sprawling dragons!" I knew I looked better in that than in anything
else, and I knew how to put it on; no infinitesimal hooks and eyes, pins
and buttons, to be found, and put in exact places; which if one fails to
do in the American gown the whole thing goes awry.
My worry was dispelled by the arrival of the maid with the promised
tray. It was not too heavily laden to prevent me from completely
emptying it, with the exception of the dishes.
While I was eating the maid unpacked my trunks,--you have not got to do
much for yourself in a fashionable boarding school--hanging the articles
in an adjoining clothes closet. During the same period of time a happy
thought occurred to me.
"I will call Aunt Gwendolin over the long distance telephone and ask her
what I shall wear at the party to-night!" was the happy inspiration.
In response to my request the maid conducted me to the telephone, and
when the connection was made, I called:
"Hello, Aunt Gwendolin! This is the Yellow Pearl speaking!"
"How does that little minx know that she is the yellow peril?" I heard
my aunt say, probably to Uncle Theodore in the room beside her. Then she
turned to me and replied:
"Well."
"What gown shall I wear to-night at the party?"
Back over the two hundred miles of field, forest, lake, came Aunt
Gwendolin's thin, squeaky voice:
"Wear your cream-coloured Oriental lace."
"Does it fasten in the front or back? If in the back I cannot put it on
myself!" I returned, over the fields and trees and waters.
"Yes, you _can_, get some of the girls to fasten it for you," cried the
voice through the phone. "Be sure and wear _that_; it so emphasises your
Spanish style of beau----"
I hung up the receiver.
At my request the maid helped me to get into the cream Oriental lace;
and at half past eight I made my appearance in the drawing-room, as to
dress, looking like a Spanish grande dame, and as to face, looking as
yellow, and lonesome, and sour as the fiercest Spanish brigand.
I was introduced to Mr. This-One, and Mr. That-One and Mr.
The-Other-One. They all looked alike to me, with high collars, and
patent-leather shoes. After awhile there was a little dance, but as I
did not know how I had to sit against the wall, and Madam Demill said I
must be put under a dancing master at once.
The day following, in the afternoon (all the so-called lessons are gone
through in the forenoon, and we have nothing to do but amuse ourselves
the rest of the day) a number of the girls came to call on me in my
apartments. There were a dozen or more of them present when an
arrogant-looking one, with her hair arranged in an immense pompadour
over her forehead, from ear to ear, drawled through her nose.
"I suppose you do not love Americans since we beat your country at the
battle of Manila?"
"No," I said truthfully, "I do not love Americans." (Of course I
mentally excepted grandmother, Professor Ballington, Chauffeur
Graham--and Uncle Theodore when he acts nice.)
The girls threw their chins into the air, their eyes shot fire, and I
heard several faint sniffs.
Then a slim, golden-haired, blue-eyed girl stepped out from the group,
and coming quickly to my side, she put her arm around me and said:
"We'll _make_ her love us!" and she actually touched her rosebud lips to
my yellow cheek.
Since that I have not hated Americans quite so savagely.
The act seemed to have a softening effect on the others, too, for from
that time they all have treated me very decently, even the girl with
the pompadour.
Golden Hair seems to have a great deal of influence in the school. There
are _some_ nice girls in America.
_Oct. 15th, 1----_
Life in this "Fashionable Boarding School" is just about a repetition,
daily, of what transpired the evening of my arrival. It is not worth
recording, so I am closing up my diary until I return to grandmother's.
It takes Yick, and Mrs. Yet, and Chauffeur Graham, and Professor
Ballington, and even a pinch of Aunt Gwendolin to give a little spice to
life.
_Thanksgiving_
I took a run back to grandmother's for what those Americans call
Thanksgiving--It is most amusing to foreigners like me--and Yick.
On grandmother's table there was what they tell me is the regulation
dinner for the day--roast turkey and pumpkin pie.
When Yick, in his best costume, had walked proudly into the dining room
with the immense turkey on a platter, and deposited it on the table, he
returned to the kitchen convulsed with laughter, Betty has told me
since.
"Christians queer people! Christians queer people!" he sputtered
merrily. "Thank God eat turkey, thank God eat turkey!"
I knew what Yick meant, the Oriental idea of thanking God would have
been some act of self-denial. It was hard for the poor "heathen Chinee"
to construe the American self-indulgence into an act of thanksgiving.
Poor Yick, and poor Yellow Pearl! How far both of you are from
comprehending civilisation.
_Holidays, Dec. 20th, 1----_
I am back again at grandmother's for the holidays. Grandmother and Uncle
Theodore seemed so glad to see me that I am beginning to feel quite as
if this were home. Yick and Betty are still here, Chauffeur Graham still
manipulates the automobile.
Mrs. Delancy gave a "little Christmas dance," as she calls it, last
night, and the description has come out in the morning paper:
"The home of Mrs. Delancy was transformed into a bower of flowers, ferns
and softly shaded lights, on the night of her Christmas dance. The hall
and staircase were decorated with Southern smilax entwined with white
flowers, and the dressing-rooms with mauve orchids; while in the
drawing-room the mantelpiece was banked with Richmond roses and
maidenhair ferns, and that in the dining room with lily-of-the-valley
and single daffodils. Passing through the dining room, where an
orchestra was stationed behind a screen of bamboo, twined with flowers,
the guests entered the Japanese tea pavilion, which had been erected for
the occasion. The entrance was formed of bamboo trellis work covered
with Southern smilax, flowers, and innumerable tiny electric lights. The
walls were covered with fluted yellow silk, and from the ceiling
depended dozens of baskets filled with flowers interspersed with
Japanese lanterns and parasols. Huge bouquets of chrysanthemums were
fastened against the wall. The table was exquisitely decorated with
enormous baskets of flowers; in the centre was one with large mauve
orchids over which was tilted a large pink Japanese umbrella, trimmed
with violets, while from each basket sprang bamboo wands suspended from
which were Japanese lanterns filled with lily-of-the-valley and violets,
the whole forming the most beautiful scheme of decoration seen this
season."
How tired I am writing it all! I wonder if any one felt tired looking at
it.
Then followed a description of the ladies' gowns:
"The ladies were simply stunning in their smartest gowns, Mrs. Delancy
queening it in an exquisite apple-green satin, with pearls and diamonds;
Miss Morgan (which means my respected aunt), whose sparkling blonde
beauty always charms her friends, in maize chiffon, through which
sparkled a gold-sequined bodice and underskirt, and Mrs. Deforest, dark
and graceful, in a rich white satin gown. Mrs. Austin looked extremely
handsome in a most becoming orchid gown, with ribbon of the same shade
twisted in her dark hair."
There was a lot more of the same, but my hand refuses to write it. One
would think it was a number of half-grown children the newspaper
reporter was trying to please by saying nice things about them. Strange
that in this America nothing is ever said about what the women _say_ or
_do_ at those social functions; nothing seems worth noticing about them
but the kind of clothes they have on. The men do not count for anything
at all.
I wonder was Professor Ballington there. I wonder did he look at any
one with that smile away back in his eyes which was there when he looked
at me the time I sang my _one_ Spanish song.
_December 21st, 1----_
Yick has given us a new diversion. Aunt Gwendolin gave him orders to
make a _particularly_ nice layer-cake for an afternoon "tea."
Yick is quite proud of his cakes, and this day he wished to outdo
anything he had previously done, so he made a layer cake, icing it with
red and white trimmings. He delights to get a new recipe, or find some
new way of decoration. The daily paper, which always in the end finds
its way into the kitchen, had evidently attracted his attention. He saw
in the advertisement pages a round box with an inscription on top.
Taking the box for a cake, he decorated his culinary effort in imitation
of the picture. Aunt Gwendolin never saw it until it was carried in to
the table, before all the finest ladies of the city, and this was what
they all read, in three rows of red letters across the white icing:
Dodd's
Kidney
Pills
Who says my people are not clever and original?
_Dec. 23d, 1----_
It is drawing near the festive season in this remarkable land, and there
is a great bustle everywhere. Some people are concerned about providing
luxuries for themselves, and some are concerned about providing for
those poorer than themselves.
Mrs. Delancy came in all fagged out from her arduous work of shopping.
"I have just been treating myself to a few little Christmas presents,"
she gasped, as she carried a great, fat, pug dog and deposited him on
grandmother's best white satin sofa pillow. She called the dog many
endearing names, such as "darling," "little baby boy," "sweet one," and
"tootsy-wootsy."
Dogs are thought as much of as babies in America; those are the very
same terms of endearment that the women address to their babies.
"I had to leave this little darling in a restaurant to be fed and cared
for while I did my shopping," she explained. "He _would_ come with me,
the pet."
She then informed Aunt Gwendolin that she had been to the milliner's
and ordered five hats, and had just completed the purchase of a three
thousand dollar jacket at the furrier's.
The dog on the pillow whined in the midst of her recital, and she
stopped long enough to go over and give him a kiss.
She was still enlarging on the beauty of the fur coat, when the
housemaid tapped on the door, and ushered Mrs. Paton into the
sitting-room.
"I heard that you ladies were here," she said, "and I thought you might
like to have the privilege of helping a little in those charities," and
she began to unfold some papers which she held in her hand.
"Oh, my dear Mrs. Paton, do not ask me to-day, _really_," exclaimed Mrs.
Delancy, holding up her hands. "I am among the poor myself to-day, and
you know charity begins at home. I really haven't a cent to give to any
one else. I'm stony broke, as the boys say. I have laid out so much
money to-day for necessities!"
Mrs. Paton then turned to my aunt and said, "Gwendolin, _do_ give
something out of the thousands you are expending on self-indulgence to
help those who have not the necessities of life!"
Taking the paper into her hand with an ungracious air, my aunt wrote
down a certain amount, and then passed it back.
"Dear me!" sighed Mrs. Delancy, as soon as Mrs. Paton had left the
place, "how tired I get of those people with their solicitations for
some Y. M. C. A., or Y. W. C. A., or something else _eternally_. They'd
keep a person poor if one paid any heed to them, _really_! Some one
starving or unclothed every time! It does annoy me so to hear harrowing
tales!"
_January 1st, 1----_
Last night there was a sound of revelry in this great land. At the
solemn hour of midnight, when the old year was dying, and the new year
was just being born, one class of people in this American city rushed
out into the open streets, cheering, blowing horns, ringing bells, and
making all possible noises on all sorts of musical instruments. Another
class celebrated the birth of the new year by eating an elaborate meal.
This is what appeared in the morning paper regarding the latter:
"One million dollars was spent last night in this city celebrating
the birth of another year. More than twenty-five thousand persons
engaged tables at from three to ten dollars a plate in the leading
hotels and cafés."
How fond of eating Americans are!
This is the first time I have seen the birth of a new year in any but my
native land, and my mind goes back to the celebration on a similar
occasion in China. It is a solemn event there. For weeks the people are
preparing for it; houses are cleaned, and debts are paid, for a
Chinaman, if he has any self-respect, will be sure to pay his debts
before the new year.
I told this to Uncle Theodore a few days ago, and he said, "I wish that
Americans would rise to that state of grace."
Nobody goes to bed that night, but all sit up waiting for the first hour
of the new year, when the father of the home, his wife and children all
worship before the spirit tablets of their ancestors, and then at the
shrine of the household gods.
Then the door is opened, and the whole family with the servants go
outside and bow down to a certain part of the heavens, and so worship
heaven and earth, and receive the spirit of gladness and good fortune,
which they say comes from that quarter.
At the same hour, when the old year is dying, China's Emperor, as High
Priest of his people, goes in state to worship. Kneeling alone under the
silent stars he renders homage to the Superior Powers. He on his
imperial throne makes the third in the great Trinity, Heaven, Earth, and
Man. Should there come a famine or pestilence, upon him rests the blame,
and he must by sacrifice and prayer atone for the imperfections of
which heaven has seen him guilty.
Oh, China! I would prefer kneeling with you under the silent stars on
New Year's eve, to feasting at the groaning tables, or ringing the bells
and blowing the horns of this great, civilised, noisy America!
_January 7th, 1----_
Oh, glorious! Grandmother says I need not go back to boarding school for
the winter term; she says the family always go South during the cold
weather, and she wants me to go with them. Wants me, think of it,
_wants_ me. Isn't it nice to have somebody want one along with her! I
believe grandmother really loves me. Aunt Gwendolin doesn't; she wanted
me sent back to school. She said I would never be fit to be brought
_out_ with that kind of carrying on. I love those that love me, but as
for loving those that _hate_ me, as grandmother had been teaching me
from the Bible, I haven't come to that yet.
That reminds me, I wish Aunt Gwendolin would stop snapping at Yick; I am
afraid some day he will kill himself on the doorstep, so his ghost may
haunt her the rest of her life. But I think he likes grandmother and the
other members of the family sufficiently well to cause him to refrain
from that act of Chinese revenge.
MEXICO, _February 1st, 1----_
A great migratory movement has taken place in our family--we are now in
the warm, sunny country called Mexico.
Aunt Gwendolin was the cause of it. She said she was tired of going to
Florida, that it was so _common_ to go there now, everybody was going
there, that the latest thing was to winter in Mexico, and she thought we
all ought to follow suit. She talked and argued so much about it that
she persuaded grandmother and Uncle Theodore to her way of thinking, and
after travelling hundreds of miles in Pullman and sleeper cars, here we
are in this land of cactus fences, tortillas, great snakes, and parrots;
this land where roses and strawberries grow all the year round; where in
some parts are luscious tropical fruits, flowers, and palms.
Mrs. Delancy has come along with us, and Professor Ballington says he
may join our party later. There are many Americans around us in the
various towns--it is so fashionable at present to winter in Mexico.
Uncle Theodore takes me out for long walks with him in this land of
perpetual summer, and we see many strange and interesting sights. The
rich are so _very_ rich, and the poor are so _very_ poor. There is one
drawback--we had to leave behind us our automobile. Of course we can
hire one here, but we can not have our own lovely chauffeur, and
grandmother says she is afraid to trust any of those Mexicans. I suppose
our poor chauffeur is pegging away hard over his medical lore now, while
I am lounging around doing nothing. The granddaughter of a
millionairess, with money to get anything I want, and yet I am beginning
to think there is nothing worth getting. It is lovely to be poor like
the chauffeur and have to work hard for something. My life is so small
and worthless that I am oppressed with it.
One of the sights that interest us the most when we are out in the
country are the cactus hedges. There are great palisades of the
organ-cactus lining the railways, and there are ragged, loose-jointed
varieties used for corralling cattle. Great plantations of a species of
cactus called maguey with stiff, prickly leaves a dull, bluish-green,
are seen in abundance. From this plant the Mexicans get not only thread,
pins, and needles, but pulque, the juice or sap of the plant, which they
ferment and make into a national beverage. Pulque is used by the
Mexicans as whisky is used by Americans, and opium by Chinamen.
Great fields of maize are cultivated, of which there are two or three
crops a year. The food of the people is tortillas, made out of this
maize mashed into a paste and baked into flat cakes.
I ate those tortillas when I first came, as a curiosity, a native
production, but I am not going to eat any more. While Uncle Theodore and
I were watching a woman making them, great drops of perspiration fell
from her brow into the paste. She pounded away, poor tired creature, and
paid no heed to the drops. Poor women of Mexico, they have to work so
hard, preparing the paste, and making those little cakes to be eaten hot
at every meal! But no more tortillas for me.
We visited the old churches which are beautifully decorated with veined
marble and alabaster. Precious stones seem to grow in this remarkable
land.
"Keep your eyes open, Pearl," said my uncle, "and you may pick up some
opals, or amethysts. They grow in this country, and I have heard they
can be had for the picking."
MEXICO, _February 12th, 1----_
I have made a discovery--I have found out America's Princely Man! It is
Abraham Lincoln, and this is his Birthday!
Magazines have been coming down from the North telling us all about this
Princely Man, and I have asked grandmother and Uncle Theodore hundreds
of questions, it seems to me, about him. And I can see that they never
get tired answering those questions, but seem as if they could talk
about him forever.
Scarcely a political debate occurs, either in Congress or in the Press
of the country, but the possible views or actual example of Abraham
Lincoln are quoted as the strongest argument, Uncle Theodore says.
The magazines find it impossible to publish too much about him. Mention
of his name in an incidental fashion from a stage or forum draws a burst
of cheering; or if the reference is of a humorous nature the laughter is
close to tears.
"With love and reverence his memory is cherished by the American people
as is the memory of no other man," said dear grandmother. "Quoting a
'Decoration Day' orator," she added, "'He was called to go by the
sorrowful way, bearing the awful burden of his people's woe, the cry of
the uncomforted in his ears, the bitterness of their passion on his
heart. Misunderstood, misjudged, he was the most solitary of men. He had
to tread the wine-press alone, and of the people none went with him.
But he turned not back. He never faltered. As one upheld, sustained by
the Unseen Hand, he set his face steadfastly, undaunted, unafraid, until
in Death's black minute he paid glad life's arrears: the slaves free!
Himself immortal!'"
Yes, it is quite certain that Abraham Lincoln is America's Princely Man!
_I_ would like to make something happen in the world that would be
talked about after I am dead. Grandmother says that it is only something
that one does for the _good_ of the world that is remembered after he is
dead. "If a man has money, people will lionize him as long as he is
living for the sake of it," she says, "but money counts for nothing when
a man is dead."
"Money!" said Uncle Theodore, who had been listening to our talk. "I
doubt whether Abe ever owned enough to buy a farm."
_February 15th, 1----_
One comfort, I am not bothered much with Aunt Gwendolin--she has become
acquainted with a French nobleman, Count de Pensier, and he is
attracting all her attention, thanks be to goodness! Mrs. Delancy is
delighted, and is doing all she can to further the acquaintance. "It is
not every day that one has the privilege of associating daily and hourly
with one of the _titled aristocracy_ of the old world," she has said
several times in my hearing.
When we first arrived Aunt Gwendolin saw some of the Spanish ladies
wearing mantillas on their heads, and she immediately bought one for me.
"There!" she said when I put it on, "isn't that simply perfect? Doesn't
that make her Spanish through and through?" She says that when I become
a thorough Spanish-American she is going to give a "coming out party"
for me.
The scarf is really quite becoming. Uncle Theodore admired it, or
admired me with it on, so I wear it wound around my head when I go on my
rambles through the country with him. I really much prefer it to the
bristling hats of the American women, and it is quite pleasant to be
called "señorita," and to be thought Spanish.
These long head scarfs are also worn by the poor women, but theirs are
made of cotton. On the street they carry their babies strapped to their
backs with it, the little heads and legs bobbing up and down until one
would think they might snap off. Sometimes the scarf ties the baby to
the mother's bosom, thus leaving her hands free for other work.
"Our American sensibilities" (quoting Aunt Gwendolin) "are sometimes
shocked by Mexican doings."
One day we saw a procession headed by the father carrying a tiny coffin
on his head. Behind him walked the mother dragging by the hand a little
bare-foot girl, of two or three; and behind them again trotted a dog.
The father was drunk, and staggered as he walked.
As we watched the little procession on the way to the graveyard they
passed in front of a saloon where they sold pulque. The father wanted
another drink, so he started to enter the saloon taking the little
coffin under his arm. He stumbled on the threshold, and the little pine
box fell out of his hands down onto the flag-stones, the cover coming
off. And we saw a little dead baby within the coffin, with a crown of
gilt paper on its head, and a cross of gilt paper on its brow. In its
little hands were a bunch of flowers. The man laughed awkwardly, put the
lid on the coffin and placed it on his head again, proceeding toward the
graveyard without his drink, followed by the mother, the girl, and the
dog.
"Why do not the American missionaries who are crossing oceans to find
heathen, look for them at their own doorstep?" said Uncle Theodore
afterwards, when he was telling the story to grandmother.
"Sure enough," returned grandmother, "it does look as if the
unenlightened of its own continent is America's first duty."
Aunt Gwendolin is having moonlight walks and talks innumerable with
Count de Pensier--and--oh, I am having LIBERTY!
_February 21st, 1----_
We have had some unusual excitement lately--a bull and tiger fight. The
day following, the description came out in a morning paper:
"A fight between a Tiagua bull and a Bengal tiger in the bull ring
this afternoon was most ferocious, and will result in the death of
both animals. The sickening spectacle was witnessed by 5,500
people, largely Americans, and many of them tourists, who stopped
over here especially to witness the barbaric spectacle. After three
bulls had been despatched in the regulation manner, the star
performance was pulled off. The two animals, enclosed in an iron
cage, about thirty feet square, were brought together, and the
battle between the enraged brutes commenced. The bull was first
taken into the enclosure and given the usual bull fight tortures to
arouse his ire, and then the iron cage containing the tiger was
wheeled up to the entrance; but the tiger refused to get out and
open the battle, and the bull attempted to get into the small cage
and get at his adversary. The bull was badly scratched about the
face. Finally the tiger came from his cage, and the bull gored the
cat with a long, sharp horn as he emerged. With a screech of pain,
the cat, with a powerful lunge, broke the bull's right leg, and
then the two animals went into the fight for their lives. The tiger
was able to spring out of the way of the bull in a number of
instances, but when the big, heavy animal caught his adversary it
went hard with the tiger. The bull stepped upon the tiger in one
instance and there was a crunching of ribs audible in the seats of
the amphitheatre.
"The bull disabled the tiger in the back, and after that the
fighting was tame, and the Americans cried for pity, while the
Mexicans cheered and wanted the performance to continue."
Mrs. Delancy, and Aunt Gwendolin, along with Uncle Theodore and Count de
Pensier, attended the fight. Grandmother would not go, and I stayed with
her.
"A _Christian lady_ going to a bull fight," I said to grandmother under
my breath.
"Yes, my dear," returned grandmother looking really pale, "it shocks me
quite as much as _you_. It was not so when I was young. American women
of the present day must see everything. It is deplorable!"
When the scene was the most harrowing, and the Americans were calling
for the fight to be stopped, Aunt Gwendolin, and I believe several other
American women, fainted, and had to be carried out.
"Dear me, dear me," said grandmother again, when she heard the harrowing
details. "That is just the way with Americans of the present day; they
must see everything. It was not so when I was young."
Who should walk into our presence at that very moment but Professor
Ballington. He had heard grandmother's remark, without knowing the
cause for her words, and as he was shaking hands with us he said:
"You believe the poet Watson diagnosed Uncle Sam's case when he said:
"'But when Fate
Was at thy making, and endowed thy soul
With many gifts and costly, she forgot
To mix with those a genius for repose;
And therefore a sting is ever in thy blood,
And in thy marrow a sublime unrest.'"
"It was not so when I was young," said grandmother. "How can we lay the
shortcoming at the door of Fate?"
"Chinese women would never attend a bull and tiger fight, grandmother,"
I whispered into her ear when the professor was looking the other way,
"nor Chinese gentlemen."
"I hope not, my dear," is all the reply dear grandmother made.
Professor Ballington only stayed with us a day or two; he was just on a
tour, he said, and had to cover a certain amount of space within a
certain period of time. Grandmother and I were very desirous that he
should remain longer; but I really believe Aunt Gwendolin felt relieved
when he was gone. She did not appear to feel comfortable with his
comprehending eyes upon her when she was entertaining Count de Pensier.
_February 28th, 1----_
The Count has proposed to my Aunt Gwendolin, and she has accepted him.
Grandmother is in tears ever since, and Uncle Theodore is furious. I
heard the latter talking to my grandmother--in his excitement he seemed
to forget my presence--and he said:
"That Frenchman is just a fortune-hunter, one of those penniless,
titled gentry that swarm in Europe. He wants Gwendolin's money to regild
a tarnished title, and Gwendolin wants the title! He has found out from
Arabella Delancy the size of Gwendolin's fortune, in possession and in
prospective, and he has offered his title in exchange for it! That's the
size of the whole affair!"
"That's what grieves me most," said grandmother, with quivering lips;
"it is not holy matrimony."
"I look for a divorce within five years!" continued my uncle.
"I had always hoped that Gwendolin and Professor Ballington would make
up some time," added grandmother.
"Oh, Gwendolin would never suit Ballington," returned Uncle Theodore.
"Your granddaughter--the little Celestial--is the making of a woman much
more to his taste--" He looked up suddenly, and seemed to remember for
the first time that I was in the room.
I, sly, subtle Oriental that I am, worked away on my shadow embroidery
and never by the wink of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle showed
that I heard a word.
_April 5th, 1----_
We are home again, and all is bustle and confusion--Aunt Gwendolin is
going to be married. She pays no attention to me now at all; and you
know, dear diary, how that grieves me. Dressmakers, milliners, caterers,
florists, decorators, throng the house. Count de Pensier is staying in a
hotel downtown. He calls every forenoon, and every afternoon; and
declares, with his hand on his heart, that he cannot return to his own
country without his bride.
Cousin Ned has asked me to marry him. He is down in his luck, and
blue--missed in his examinations--and he says he believes he might
settle down and do something if he were only married. He says the
relationship is so far out that there is nothing to hinder him and me
from being married.
Get married, indeed! There's nothing farther from my thoughts.
_May 25th, 1----_
Well the fuss and flurry are all over--they are married, Aunt Gwendolin
and Count de Pensier. I cannot do better than copy a paragraph out of
the newspaper to describe the doings:
"The church was beautifully decorated with azaleas, palms, orchids;
tall white wands supporting sheaves of palms stood at each aisle. The
walls of the church were festooned with green wreathing. The bride was
given away by her brother, Theodore Morgan, Esq. She looked exceedingly
handsome in an exquisite gown of heavy, ivory-white satin, with panel of
filet lace, seeded with pearls. The long train was trimmed with lace and
pearl seeding. With this was worn a costly lace veil, caught to her
Titian hair with a chaplet of orange blossoms, and she carried a shower
bouquet of Bridal roses.
"The six bridesmaids were gowned in ivory taffeta silk, wearing picture
hats; and each carried an immense bouquet of Bride's-maid's roses."
As is usual at American functions, the men did not seem to be of enough
importance to mention anything more than their bare names.
It all took place in _Christ's_ Church. Was He there? Grandmother says
He is back in this world now in spirit. What did He think of it all?
"Grandmother," I said when it was all over--the church display, the
reception, the eating and drinking, the dressing--"if I am ever married
let it be in China."
"My dear child," said grandmother in alarm, "why do you make such a wild
request as that?"
"Seated at a table the bride is offered a tiny cup of wine," I replied,
"of which she takes a sip, while the bridegroom in a seat opposite her
also sips from a similar cup of wine. The cups are then exchanged, and
again tasted, and the marriage service is completed. They have time to
think about each other, instead of thinking of what a grand show they
are making for the world."
Grandmother looked at me in silence a few moments, then she said:
"Your grandfather and I were married quietly in our own little home
parlour. I was dressed in white muslin, and your grandfather in
corduroy. We were thinking more about each other than anything else, my
dear."
The bride and groom, Count and Countess de Pensier, started at once for
the ancestral home in sunny France, I suppose to begin regilding the
tarnished title Uncle Theodore spoke about.
Oh, be joyful! I shall not have to go to the "Fashionable Boarding
School" any more! I shall not have to appear at a "coming out party!" I
shall never come _out_ now; I shall always stay _in_! Grandmother says I
may stay in if I want to, and I _do_ want to. I shall never have to
steal out the back door in grandmother's clothes any more, sing any more
foreign songs, or pretend I am Spanish! It is lovely to be able to act
the truth! "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good." (This last is one
of grandmother's familiar sayings.)
Cousin Ned has lost one of his eyes! Got it knocked out at the last
"Play."
_May 30th, 1----_
I have made a most astounding discovery. Walking down the street
yesterday I saw a great placard on a wall announcing a lecture; subject,
"_The Yellow Peril_." What did it mean? I thought _I_ was the Yellow
Pearl, and that nobody outside of the family knew it. But this was
spelled p-e-r-i-l instead of P-e-a-r-l. What could it mean? I could go
no farther, but returned at once to question grandmother.
"Grandmother!" I cried, entering her room, "what is the yellow peril?"
Dear grandmother's cheeks flushed, and she said, "My dear child, why
bother yourself about that?"
"Why, grandmother, I thought when I overheard Aunt Gwendolin talk, that
_I_ was the Yellow Pearl; she called me such the first day I came," I
said. "But on the placard it is spelled p-e-r-i-l. What does it mean?"
"I am sorry you saw it," said grandmother hesitatingly. "There is too
much being said on that subject by a certain class of people--It is the
_world_ God loves," she added as if talking to herself, "not the United
States, Great Britain, Germany; the yellow people are just as dear to
God as we are. The gentle Christ looked widely over the world, shed
tears for it, shed blood for it."
"What does the yellow peril mean, grandmother?" I repeated anxiously.
"The Mongolian races are more yellow than the Caucasian races," said
grandmother, when forced to answer. "They are also more numerous, and
some people fear that if we allow them in the country they may get the
upper hand, and become a menace to our people. Do not think any more
about it, Pearl. Our dear late Phillips Brooks," she added after a short
pause, "said, 'No nation, as no man, has a right to take possession of a
choice bit of God's earth, to exclude the foreigner from its territory,
that it may live more comfortably and be a little more at peace. But if
this particular nation has been given the development of a certain part
of God's earth for universal purposes, if the world in the great march
of centuries is going to be richer for the development of a certain
national character, built up by a larger type of manhood here, then for
the world's sake, for the sake of every nation that would pour in upon
it that which would disturb that development, we have a right to stand
guard over it.'"
This was a long speech for dear grandmother, who is not given to
speechifying, and I know the subject must have given her serious
thought, or she would never have remembered it.
"Is America being built up by a larger type of manhood, grandmother?" I
asked.
"Oh, my dear, I do not know, I do not know," returned grandmother.
I stopped talking to grandmother, because she looked worried, but I
could not stop _thinking_, I am both the Yellow Pearl, and the yellow
peril! Why am I here? What were four hundred millions of us born into
the world for? Is yellow badness any worse than white badness?
_June 20th, 1----_
What a heavenly time we are having, grandmother, Uncle Theodore, and
myself, living our nice, quiet lives without distraction! Sometimes we
have Professor Ballington in to dinner, then he drops in evenings quite
often when he is not formally invited. Other old friends come too,
enough to break the monotony.
Chauffeur Graham was obliged to leave grandmother's employ some time
ago; indeed he has never come back since we returned from Mexico. He
says it is his last term in the Medical College, and he has to give all
the time to his studies. It would be nicer if he were around. I do not
seem to care about going out in the automobile now at all.--How is one
to know whether this new chauffeur may not run the automobile into a
telegraph pole, or something, and kill us all?
_June 13th, 1----_
Chauffeur Graham has graduated. He is now Doctor Graham. Isn't that
lovely! Just like a story book! Uncle Theodore and I went up to see him
take his degree. My! wasn't he fine looking! Tall, beautiful figure,
and, as I said before, a handsome face. Uncle Theodore is quite
interested in him, as well as grandmother.
On the evening of the day on which he received his degree, he overtook
me as I was walking through the park, and told me that he had noticed me
in the audience.
He says he is going to put in a year's practice in the hospital before
going to China. I was glad to hear that; it would seem rather lonesome
in this big America without him, I really believe.
Poor Cousin Ned is standing behind a counter downtown, selling tacks and
shingle nails. He had to give up his studies on account of his eyes--the
one eye could not stand the strain. Unluckily about that time his father
lost his money in some speculation, and there was nothing for it but
poor Ned must go to work.
_Another June._
I have been so happy, and life has been so satisfactory that I have not
written in my diary for many months. I believe it is only when one's
heart is so sorrowful and distracted that it must overflow somewhere,
that one pours it into a diary. I have so much to say now that I
scarcely know where to begin.
Well, to begin at the beginning, one night Uncle Theodore asked Doctor
Graham to dinner, along with Professor Ballington, and another
gentleman. After that Doctor Graham began to call quite frequently
evenings--he seemed to enjoy grandmother's company so much, and I am
sure she enjoyed his.
Well--Oh, I never can tell how it all came about, but I have promised
to go to China with Dr. Graham, to help him learn the Chinese language.
It is an _awful_ language for a foreigner to learn, and I just could not
bear the thought of the poor fellow having to wrestle with it alone.
It was one evening we were alone in the drawing-room, grandmother having
been unable to appear owing to a headache, that we came to the final
arrangement.
But suddenly I thought of something that was going to upset it all, I
believed,--he didn't know who I was!
"Oh!" I cried, "I cannot go with you--you will not want me--you do not
know--that--I--am the Yellow Peril!"
He smiled down at me, and raised my chin in the palm of his left
hand--for he had not let me go from his right, although I had tried to
get away--and said, "I expect to be very proud of my Yellow Pearl."
Now I am receiving congratulations which are making me feel very happy
and proud, with the exception of Professor Ballington's. I cannot help
feeling sorry for that poor old bachelor. He came up to me and said:
"My dear Miss Pearl, I had been vain enough to hope once that I might
sometime call this pearl mine, but if I cannot do so, I do not know of
any one that I would sooner see claim it than Doctor Graham. And so I
say, God bless you! God bless you! You shall always have the love of an
old bachelor. And in this world, obsessed with fever and noise, with the
sham and superficial, may you always remain the genuine pearl you are."
There were tears in his voice. Why must every rose have a thorn?
We are going to China, Doctor Graham and I, my native land; the land of
flashing poppy-blossoms, red azaleas, purple wistarias, blue larkspur,
yellow jasmine, oleanders, begonias, and flowering bamboos--the Flowery
Kingdom. Dr. Graham is going to establish a hospital, to set broken legs
and bind up broken heads; and I am going to try and prevent any more of
those little Chinese babies from being thrown out on the hillsides to
die.
Grandmother says if we go to China it ought to be to tell the
Confucionists and Buddhists about the great Christ. But I believe if He
went there Himself He would be mending broken legs, binding up broken
heads and hearts, and saving the little babies from being thrown out on
the hillsides to die. Dear grandmother is a standing proof to me that
the Christ means much more to the world than China's Confucius or
Buddha. One day when she was seated in her rocking-chair I threw my arm
around her and told her so. The dear old lady never seemed to accept my
words as a personal compliment at all, but began, as once before, to
sing in a low, quavering voice:
"Let every kindred every tribe
On this terrestrial ball,
To Him all majesty ascribe,
And crown Him Lord of all."
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