Section 9. God's Truth, Romance, and the Grand Style of On a Chinese Screen. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Galen. On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Ma. Chapters 23-25 23. God's Truth Birch was the agent of the BAT, and he was stationed in a little town of the interior with street switch after it had rained where a foot deep in mud. Then you had to get right inside of your cart to prevent yourself from being splashed from head to foot. The roadway, worn to pieces, but the ceaseless traffic, was so full of holes that the breath was jolted out of your body as you jogged along at a foot pace. There were two or three streets of shops, but he knew by heart everything that was in them, and there were interminable winding alleys which presented a monotonous expanse of wall broken only by solid closed doors. These were the Chinese houses, and they were as impenetrable to one of his color as the life which surrounded him. He was very homesick. He had not spoken to a white man for three months. His day's work was over. Since he had nothing else to do, he went for the only walk there was. He went out of the city gate and strolled along the ragged road with its deep ruts into the country. The valley was bounded by wild barren mountains, and they seemed to shut him in. He felt immeasurably far from civilization. He knew he could not afford to surrender to that sense of utter loneliness which beset him, but it was more of an effort than usual to keep a stiff upper lip. He was very nearly at the end of his tether. Suddenly he saw a white man riding toward him on a pony. Behind came slowly a Chinese cart in which presumably were his belongings. Birch guessed at once that this was a missionary going down to one of the treaty ports from his station further up country, and his heart leaped with joy. At last he would have someone to talk to. He hurried his steps. His lassitude left him. He was all alert. He was almost running when he came up to the rider. Hello, he said. Where have you sprung from? The rider stopped and named a distant town. I am on my way down to take the train, he added. You'd better put up with me for the night. I haven't seen a white man for three months. There's lots of room at my place. B-A-T, you know. B-A-T, said the rider. His face changed in his eyes before friendly and smiling grew hard. I don't want to have anything to do with you. He gave his pony a kick and started on, but Birch seized the bridle. He could not believe his ears. What do you mean? I can't have anything to do with the man who trades in tobacco. Let go of that bridle. But I've not spoken to a white man for three months. That's no business of mine. Let go of that bridle. He gave his pony another kick. His lips were obstinately set, and he looked at Birch sternly. Then Birch lost his temper. He clung to the bridle as the pony moved on and began to curse the missionary. He hurled at him every term of abuse he could think of. He swore. He was horribly obscene. The missionary did not answer, but urged his pony on. Birch seized the missionary's leg and jerked it out of the stirrup. The missionary nearly fell off, and he clung in a somewhat undignified fashion to the pony's mane. Then he half slipped, half tumbled to the ground. The cart had come up to them by now and stopped. The two Chinese who were sitting in it looked at the white man with indolent curiosity. The missionary was livid with rage. You've assaulted me. I'll have you fired for that. You can go to hell, said Birch.  Do you call yourself a Christian? What is your name? Birch is my name and be damned to you. I shall report you to your chief. Now stand back and let me get on my journey. Birch clenched his hands. Get a move on, or I'll break every bone in your body. The missionary mounted, gave his pony a sharp cut with the whip, and cantered away. The Chinese cart lumbered slowly after. But when Birch was left alone, his anger left him, and a sob broke unwillingly from his lips. The barren mountains were less hard than the heart of man. He turned and walked slowly back to the little walled city. Chapter 24 Romance All day I had been dropping down the river. This was the river up which Cheng Chen, seeking its source, had sailed for many days till he came to a city where he saw a girl spinning and a youth leading an ox to the water. He asked what place this was, and in reply the girl gave him her shuttle, telling him he was to show it on his return to the astrologer, Yan Zhangping, who would thus know where he had been. He did so, and the astrologer at once recognized the shuttle as that of the spinning damsel, further declaring that on the day and at the hour when Zhang Qian received the shuttle, he had noticed a wandering star intrude itself between the spinning damsel. So Cheng Chen knew that he had sailed upon the bosom of the Milky Way. I, however, had not been so far. All day, as for seven days before, my five rowers standing up had rowed, and their rings still in my ears the monotonous sound of their oars against the wooden pan that served as rollock. Now and again the water became very shallow, and there was a jar and a jolt as we scraped along the stones of the riverbed. Then two or three of the rowers turned up their blue trousers to the hip and let themselves over the side. Shouting, they dragged the flat bottom boat over the shoal. Now and again we came to a rapid of no great consequence when compared with the turbulent rapids of the Yangtze, but sufficiently swift to call for trackers to pull the junks that were going upstream, and we, going down, passed through them with many shouts, shot the foaming breakers, and presently reached water as smooth as any lake. Now it was night, and my crew were asleep. Forward huddled together in such shelters they had been able to rig when we moored at dusk. I sat on my bed, bamboo matting spread over three wooden arches, made the sorry cabin which for a week had served me as parlor and bedroom. It was closed at one end by match boarding, so roughly put together that there were large chinks between each board. The bitter wind blew through them. It was on the other side of this that the crew, fine sturdy fellows, rode by day and slept by night, joined then by the steersmen who had stood from dawn to dusk in a tattered blue gown and a wadded coat of fitted grey, a black turban round his head at the long oar which was his helm. There was no furniture but my bed, a shallow dish like an enormous soup plate which burned charcoal for it was cold, a basket containing my clothes which I used as a table, and a hurricane lamp which hung from one of the arches and swayed slightly with the motion of the water. The cabin was so low that I, a person of no great height, I comforted myself with Bacon's observation that with tall men it is, as with tall houses, the top story is commonly the least furnished, could only just stand upright. One of the sleepers began to snore more loudly, and perhaps he awoke two of the others, for I heard the sound of speaking, but presently the ceased, the snore was quiet, and all about me once more was silence. Then suddenly I had a feeling that here, facing me, touching me almost, was the romance I sought. It was a feeling like no other, just as specific as the thrill of art, but it could not, for the life of me, tell what it was that had given me just then that rare emotion. In the course of my life I have often bed in situations which, had I read of them, would have seemed to me sufficiently romantic. But it is only in retrospect, comparing them with my ideas of what was romantic, that I have seen them as at all out of the ordinary. It is only by an effort of the imagination, making myself, as it were, a spectator of myself acting apart, that I have caught anything of the precious quality in circumstances which in others would have seemed to me instinct with its fine flower. When I have danced with an actress whose fascination and whose genius made her the idol of my country, or wandered through the halls of some great house in which was gathered all that was distinguished by lineage or intellect that London could show, I have only recognized afterwards that here perhaps, though in somewhat wood-esca fashion, was romance. In battle, when myself in no great danger, I was able to watch events with a thrill of interest, I had not the flam to assume the part of a spectator. I have sailed through the night, under the full moon, to a coral island in the Pacific, and in the beauty and the wonder of the scene gave me a conscious happiness, but only later the exhilarating sense that romance and I had touched fingers. I heard the flutter of its wings when once, in the bedroom of a hotel in New York, I sat around a table with half a dozen others and made plans to restore an ancient kingdom whose wrongs have for a century inspired the poet and the patriot. But my chief feeling was a surprised amusement that through the hazards of war I found myself engaged in business so foreign to my bent. The authentic thrill of romance has seized me under circumstances which one would have thought far less romantic, and I remember that I knew at first one evening when I was playing cards in a cottage on the coast of Brittany. In the next room an old fisherman lay dying and the women of the house said that he would go out with the tide. Without a storm was raging and it seemed fit for the last moments of that aged warrior of the seas that his going should be accompanied by the wild cries of the wind as it hurled itself against the shuttered windows. The waves thundered upon the tortured rocks. I felt a sudden exaltation for I knew that here was romance. And now the same exaltation seized me and once more romance like a bodily presence was before me. It had come so unexpectedly that I was intrigued. I could not tell whether it had crept in among the shadows that the lamp threw on the bamboo matting or whether it was wafted down the river that I saw through the opening of my cabin. Curious to know what were the elements that made up the ineffable delight of the moment I went out to the stern of the boat. Alongside were moored half a dozen junks going up river for the mast were erect and everything was silent in them. Their crews were long since asleep. The night was not dark for though it was cloudy the moon was full but the river in that veiled light was ghostly. A vague mist blurred the trees on the further bank. It was an enchanting sight but there was in it nothing unaccustomed and what I sought was not there. I turned away. But when I returned to my bamboo shelter the magic which had given it so extraordinary a character was gone. Alas I was like a man who should tear a butterfly to pieces in order to discover in what its beauty lay. And yet as Moses descending from Mount Sinai wore on his face a brightness from his converse with the God of Israel my little cabin, my dish of charcoal, my lamp, even my camp bed had still about them something of the thrill which for a moment was mine. I could not see them any more quite indifferently because for a moment I had seen them magically. 25. The Grand Style He was a very old man. It was 57 years since he came to China as a ship's doctor and took the place in one of the southern ports of a medical officer whose health had obliged him to go home. He could not then have been less than twenty-five so that now he must have been well over eighty. He was a tall man, very thin, and his skin hung on his bones like a suit of clothes much too large for him. Under his chin was a great sack like the waddle of an old turkey-cock. But his blue eyes, large and bright, had kept their color and his voice was strong and deep. In these seven and fifty years he had bought and sold three or four practices along the coast and now he was back once more within a few miles of the port in which he had first lived. It was an anchorage at the mouth of the river where the steamers, unable owing to their draft to reach the city, discharged and loaded their cargo. There were only seven white men's houses, a small hospital and a handful of Chinese, so that it would not have been worth a doctor's while to settle there. But he was vice consul as well, and that easy life at his great age just suited him. There was enough to do to prevent him from feeling idle but not enough to tire him. His spirit was still hail. I'm thinking of retiring, he said. It's about time I gave the youngsters a chance. He amused himself with plans for the future. All his life he had wanted to visit the West Indies, and upon his soul he meant to now. By George, sir. He couldn't afford to leave it much longer. England. Well, from all he heard, England was no place for a gentleman nowadays. He was last there thirty years ago. Besides, he wasn't English. He was born in Ireland. Yes, sir, he took his degree at Trinity College Dublin. But what with the priests on one side, and the sin-finers on the other, he could not believe there was much left of the Ireland he knew as a boy. A fine country to hunt in, he said, with a gleam in his open blue eyes. He had better manners than are usually found in the medical profession which, though blessed with many virtues, neglects somewhat the amenities of polite behaviour.  The example of his teachers, some of whom have still had a bad tradition of rudeness which certain eminent practitioners of the past cultivated as professional asset. Or his early training among the poor patients of a hospital whom he is apt to look upon as of a lower class than himself. But it is certain that nobody of men is on the whole so wanting in civility. He was very different from the men of my generation. But whether the difference lay in his voice and gesture, in the ease of his manner, or in the elaborateness of his antique courtesy, it was not easy to discover. I think he was more definitely a gentleman than people are nowadays when a man is a gentleman with deprecation. The word is in a bad odor and the qualities of the notes have come in for a deal of ridicule. Persons who by no stretch of the fancy could be so described have made a great stir in the world during the last thirty years, and they have used all the resources of their sarcasm to render odious a tide at which they are perhaps all too conscious of never deserving. Perhaps also the difference in him was due to a difference of education. In his youth he had been taught much useless learning, the classics of Greece and Rome, and they had given a foundation to his character which in the present is somewhat rare. He was young in age which did not know the weekly press, and when the monthly magazine was a state affair, reading was more solid. Perhaps men drank more than was good for them, but they read horrors with pleasure and they knew by heart the novels of Sir Walter Scott. He remembered reading the New Combs when it came out. I think the men of that time were, if not more adventurous than the men of ours, more adventurous in the grand manner. Now a man will risk his life with a joke from the comic cuts on his lips. Then it was with a Latin quotation. But how can I analyze the subtle quality which distinguished this old man? Read a page of Swift. The words are the same as those we use today and there is hardly a sentence in which they are not placed in the simplest order. And yet there is a dignity, a spaciousness, an aroma which all our modern efforts fails to attain. In short there is style. And so with him there was style. And there is no more to be said. End of Section 9, Recording by Galen, March 23, 2010, Seattle. Section 10, Rain, Sullivan, and the Dining Room, of On a Chinese Screen. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Rating by Bologna Times. On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Mom. Chapters 26 through 28. Chapter 26, Rain. Yes, but the sun does not shine every day. Sometimes a cold rain beats down on you and a northeast wind chills you to the bone. Your shoes and your coat are wet still from the day before and you have three hours to go before breakfast. You trap along in the cheerless light of that bitter dawn with thirty miles before you and nothing to look forward to at the end but the squalid discomfort of a Chinese inn. There you will find bare walls, a clammy floor of trodden earth, and you will draw yourself as best you can over a dish of burning charcoal. Then you think of your pleasant room in London. The rain driving in squalls against the windows only makes its warmth more grateful. You sit by the fire, your pipe in your mouth, and read the times from cover to cover, not the leading articles, of course, but the agony column and the advertisements of country houses you will never be able to afford. On the Chiltern Hills, standing in its own park of one hundred and fifty acres, with spacious garden, orchard, etc., a Georgian house in perfect condition with original woodwork and chimney pieces, six reception rooms, fourteen bedrooms, and usual offices, modern sanitation, stapling with rooms over and excellent garage, three miles from first rate golf course. I know then that messengers Night Frank and Rutley are my favorite authors, the matters that they treat of like the great common places which are the material of all fine poetry, never stale, and their manner like that of the best masters is characteristic, but at the same time various. Their style, as is that of Confucius, according to these synologues, is glitteringly compact, succinct, but suggestive. It combines an admirable exactness with a breadth of image which gives the imagination and agreeable freedom. Their mastery of words, such as rude and perch, of which I suppose I once knew the meaning, but which for many years have been a mystery to me, is amazing, and they will use them with ease and assurance. They can play with technical terms with the ingenuity of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and they can invest them with the Celtic glamour of Mr. W.B. Yates. They have combined their individualities so completely that I defy the most discerning critic to discover traces of a divided authorship. Literary history is acquainted with the collaboration of two writers and the names of Beaumont and Fletcher. Erkman, Chaitrin, Besant and Rice spring to the excited fancy, but now that the higher criticism has destroyed that belief in the triple authorship of the Bible, which I was taught in my youth, I conjecture that the case of Knight, Frank and Rutley is unique. Then Elizabeth, very smart in the white squirrel I brought her from China, comes in to say good-bye to me, for she, poor child, must go out whatever the weather, and I play trance with her while her pram is being got ready. Then of course I should do a little work, but the weather is so bad that I feel lazy, and I take up instead Professor Giles' book on Zhuang Zhu, the rigid Confucianists frown upon him because he is an individualist, and it is to the individualism of the age that they ascribe the lamentable decay of China. But he is very good reading. He has the advantage on a rainy day that he can be read without great application, and not seldom you come across a thought that sets your own wandering. But presently, ideas, insinuating themselves into your consciousness like the lapping waves of a rising tide, absorb you to the exclusion of those which old Zhuang Zhu suggested.  Only the deletante uses a desk. Your pen goes easily, and you write without effort. It is very good to be alive. Then two amusing people come to luncheon, and when they are gone you drop into Christie's. You see some men figures there, but they are not so good as those you brought from China yourself, and then you watch, being sold pictures, you are only too glad not to possess. You look at your watch. There is pretty sure to be a rubber going at the garak, and the shocking weather justifies you in wasting the rest of the afternoon. You cannot stay very late, for you have seats for a first night, and you must get home and dress for an early dinner. You will be just in time to tell Elizabeth a little story before she goes to sleep. She looks really very nice in her pajamas with her hair done up in two plates. There is something about a first night which only the satiety of the critic can fail to be moved by. It is pleasant to see your friends, and amusing to hear the pits applause when a favorite of the stage, acting better than she ever does behind the footlights. A delightful embarrassment at being recognized advances to take her seat. It may be a bad play that you are going to see, but it has at least the merit that no one has seen it before. And there is always the chance of a moment's emotion, or of a smile. Towards you, and their great straw hats, like the hat of a lovesick pyro, but with a huge brim, come a string of coolies, lolliping along, bent forward a little under the weight of the great bales of cotton that they carry, the rain plasters their blue clothes so thin and ragged against their bodies, the broken stones of the causeway are slippery, and with toil you pick your muddy way. Chapter 27 Sullivan He was an Irish sailor. He deserted his ship at Hong Kong and took it into his head to walk across China. He spent three years wandering about the country, and soon acquired a very good knowledge of Chinese. He learned it, as is common among men of his class, with greater ease than due the more highly educated. He lived on his wits. He made a point of avoiding the British Council, but went to the magistrate of each town he came to and represented himself as having been robbed on the way of all his money. His story was not improbable, and it was told with a wealth of convincing detail which would have excited the admiration of so great a master as Captain Costigan. The magistrate, after the Chinese fashion, was anxious to get rid of him, and was glad to do so at the cost of ten or fifteen dollars. If he could get no money, he could generally count on a place to sleep in and a good meal. He had a certain rough humor which appealed to the Chinese, so he continued very successfully till he hit by misfortune on a magistrate of a different stamp.  You must be beaten. He gave an order, and the fellow was promptly taken out, thrown on the ground, and soundly thrashed. He was not only very much hurt, but exceedingly surprised, and what is more strangely mortified, it ruined his nerve. There and then he gave up his vagrant life, and, making his way to one of the outposts, applied to the Commissioner of Customs for a place as Tidewaiter. It is not easy to find white men to take such posts, and few questions are asked of those who seek them. He was given a job, and you may see him now, a sunburned, clean-shaven man of forty-five, florid, and rather stout, in a neat blue uniform, boarding the steamers and the junks at a little riverside town where the deputy commissioner, the postmaster, a missionary, and he are the only Europeans. His knowledge of the Chinese, and their ways, makes him an invaluable servant. He has a little yellow wife and four children. He has no shame about his past, and over a good stiff whiskey he will tell you the whole story of his adventurous travels. But the beating is what he can never get over. It surprises him yet, and he cannot. He simply cannot understand it. He has no ill feeling towards the magistrate who ordered it. On the contrary, it appeals to his sense of humor. He was a great old sportsman, the old blackard. He says, Nerve, eh? Chapter 28 The Dining Room It was an immense room and an immense house. When it was built, building was cheap, and the merchant princes of that day built magnificently. Money was made easily then, and life was luxurious. It was not hard to make a fortune, and a man, almost before he had reached middle age, could return to England and live the rest of his days no less splendidly in a fine house, in Surrey. It is true that the population was hostile, and it was always possible that a riot might make it necessary for him to fly for his life, but this only added a spice to the comfort of his existence, and when danger threatened, it was fairly certain that a gunboat would arrive in time to offer protection or refuge. The foreign community, largely allied by marriage, was sociable, and its members entertained one another lavishly. They gave pompous dinner parties, they danced together, and they played wist. Work was not so pressing that it was impossible to spend now and again a few days in the interior shooting duck. It was certainly very hot in summer, and after a few years a man was apt to take things easily, but the rest of the year was only warm, with blue skies and a balmy air, and life was very pleasant. There was a certain liberty of behavior, and no one was thought the worse of, so long as the matter was not intruded on the notice of the ladies, if he had to live with him a little bright-eyed Chinese girl. When he married, he sent her away with the present, and if there were children they were provided for at a Eurasian school in Shanghai. But this agreeable life was a thing of the past. The port lived on its export of tea, and the change of taste from Chinese to Ceylon had ruined it. For thirty years the port had lain arduing. Before that the council had had two vice-councils to help him in his work, but now he was able to do it easily by himself. He generally managed to get a game of golf in the afternoon, and he was seldom too busy for a rubber of bridge. Nothing remained of the old splendor but the enormous hogs, and they were mostly empty. The tea merchants, such as were left of them, turned their hands to all manner of sidelines in the effort to make both ends meet. But the effort was listless. Everyone in the port seemed old. It was no place for a young man. And in the room in which I sat I seemed to read the history of the past and the history of the man I was awaiting. It was Sunday morning, and when I arrived after two days on a coasting steamer he was in church. I tried to construct a portrait of him from the room.  It had the magnificence of a past generation, but a magnificence run to seed, and its tidiness, I know not why, seemed to emphasize a shame-faced poverty. On the floor was a huge turkey carpet, which in the seventies must have cost a great deal of money, but now it was quite threadbare. The immense mahogany table, at which so many good dinners had been eaten, with such a luxury of wine, was so highly polished that you could see your face in it. It suggested port, old, and tawny, and prosperous red-faced gentlemen, with side whiskers, discussing the antics of the Mountabank, disrailing. The walls were of that sombre red, which was thought suitable for a dining-room, when dinner was a respectable function, and they were heavy with pictures. Here were the father and mother of my host, an elderly gentleman with grey whiskers, and a bald head, and a stern, dark old lady, with her hair dressed in the fashion of the Empress Eugenie, and there his grandfather, and a stalk, and his grandmother, and a mob cap. The mahogany sideboard, with a mirror at the back, was laden with plated solvers, and a tea-service, and much else, while in the middle of the dining-table, stood an immense Ebergin.  Here and there great palms and pots spread their stiff foliage. The chairs were of massive mahogany, stuffed and covered with faded red leather, and on each side of the fireplace was an arm-share. The room, large though it was, seemed crowded, but because everything was rather shabby, it gave you an impression of melancholy. All those things seemed to have a sad life of their own, but a life subdued, as though the force of circumstances had proved too much for them. They had no longer the strength to struggle against fate, but they clung together with a tremulous eagerness, as though they had a vague feeling that only so could they retain their significance. And I felt that it was only a little time before the end came when they would lie haphazard in an unlovely confusion, with little numbers pasted on them in the dreary coldness of an auction room. END OF SECTION X CHAPTERS 29-31 ARABESC There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solidarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountainside and slipped down to the depth of the valley. Menacingly, the grim watchtowers, stark and four-square, at due intervals stood at their posts. Ruthlessly, for it was built at the cost of a million lives and each one of those great grey stones has been stained with the bloody tears of the captive and the outcast, it forged its dark way through a sea of rugged mountains. Fearlessly, it went on its endless journey, league upon league, to the furthest regions of Asia, in utter solitude, mysterious like the great empire it guarded. There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. THE CONSUL Mr. Pete was in a state of the liveliest exasperation. He had been in the consular service for more than twenty years and he had had to deal with all manner of vexatious people. Officials who would not listen to reason, merchants who took the British government for a debt collecting agency, missionaries who resented as gross injustice and he attempted fair play, but he never recollected a case which had left him more completely at a loss. He was a mild-mannered man, but for no reason he flew into a passion with his writer and he very nearly sacked the Eurasian clerk because he had wrongly spelt two words in a letter placed before him for his official signature. He was a conscientious man and he could not persuade himself to leave his office before the clock struck four, but the moment it did he jumped up and called for his hat and stick. Because his boy did not bring them at once he abused him roundly. They say that the consuls all grow a little odd and the merchants who can live for thirty-five years in China without learning enough of the language to ask their way in the street say that it is because they have to study Chinese and there was no doubt that Mr. Pete was decidedly odd. He was a bachelor and on that account had been sent to a series of posts which by reason of their isolation were thought unsuited to married men. He had lived so much alone that his natural tendency to eccentricity had developed to an extravagant degree and he had habits which surprised the stranger. He was very absent-minded. He paid no attention to his house which was always in great disorder nor to his food.  He was untiring in his efforts to suppress the opium traffic, but he was the only person in the city who did not know that his servants kept opium in the consulate itself and a busy traffic in the drug was openly conducted at the back door of the compound. He was an ardent collector and the house provided for him by the government was filled with the various things which he had collected one after the other. Pewter, brass, carved wood, these were his more legitimate enterprises, but he also collected stamps, birds eggs, hotel labels and post-marks. He boasted that he had a collection of post-marks which was unequaled in the empire. During his long sojourning in lonely places he had read a great deal and though he was no synologue he had a greater knowledge of China, its history, literature and people than most of his colleagues, but from his wide reading he had acquired not toleration but vanity. He was a man of a singular appearance, his body was small and frail and when he walked he gave you the idea of a dead leaf dancing before the wind, and then there was something extraordinarily odd in the small Tyrolese hat with a cox feather in it, very old and shabby which he wore perched rakeishly on the side of his large head. He was exceedingly bald. You saw that his eyes, blue and pale, were weak behind the spectacles and a drooping, ragged, dingy mustache did not hide the peevishness of his mouth. And now, turning out of the street in which was the consulate, he made his way on to the city wall, for there only in the multitude in his city was it possible to walk with comfort. He was a man who took his work hardly, worrying himself to death over every trifle, but as a rule a walk on the wall soothed and rested him. The city stood in the midst of a great plain and often at sundown from the wall you could see in the distance the snow-capped mountains, the mountains of Tibet. But now he walked quickly, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and his fat spaniel frisked about him, unobserved. He talked to himself rapidly in a low monotone. The cause of his irritation was a visit that he had that day received from a lady who called herself Mrs. Yu, and whom he with a consular passion for precision insisted on calling Miss Lambert. This in itself suffice to deprive their intercourse of amenity. She was an English woman married to a Chinese. She had arrived two years before with her husband from England where he had been studying at the University of London. He had made her believe that he was a great personage in his own country, and she had imagined herself to be coming to a gorgeous palace in a position of consequence. It was a bitter surprise when she found herself brought to a shabby Chinese house crowded with people. There was not even a foreign bed in it, nor a knife and fork. Everything seemed to her very dirty and smelly. It was a shock to find that she had to live with her husband's father and mother, and he told her that she must do exactly what his mother bad her. But in her complete ignorance of Chinese it was not till she had been two or three days in the house that she realized that she was not her husband's only wife. He had been married as a boy before he left his native city to acquire the knowledge of the barbarians. When she bitterly upbraided him for deceiving her he shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing to prevent a Chinese from having two wives if he wanted them end, he added with some disregard to truth. No Chinese woman looked upon it as a hardship. It was upon making this discovery that she paid her first visit to the consul. He had already heard of her arrival. In China everyone knows everything about everyone, and he received her without surprise, nor had he much sympathy to show her. That a foreign woman should marry a Chinese at all filled him with indignation, but that she should do so without making proper inquiries vexed him like a personal affront. She was not at all the sort of woman whose appearance led you to imagine that she would be guilty of such a folly. She was a solid, thick-set young person, short, plain, and matter-of-fact. She was cheaply dressed in a tailor-made suit, and she wore a tamo-shanter. She had bad teeth and a muddy skin. Her hands were large and red and ill cared for. You could tell that she was not unused to hard work. She spoke English with a cockney wine. How did you meet Mr. Yu? asked the consul frigidly. Well, you see it's like this, she answered. Dad was in a very good position, and when he died mother said, Well, it seems a sinful waste to keep all these rooms empty. I'll put a card in the window. The consul interrupted her. He had lodgings with you? Well, they weren't exactly lodgings, she said. Shall we say apartments, then? replied the consul, with his thin, slightly vain smile. That was generally the explanation of these marriages. Then, because he thought her a very foolish vulgar woman, he explained bluntly that according to English law she was not married to you, and that the best thing she could do was to go back to England at once. She began to cry, and his heart softened a little to her. He promised to put her in charge of some missionary ladies who would look after her on the long journey, and indeed, if she liked, he would see if, meanwhile, she could not live in one of the missions. But while he talked, Miss Lambert dried her tears. What's the good of going back to England? she said at last. I haven't got nowhere to go to. You can go to your mother. She was all against my marrying, Mr. Yu. I should never hear the last of it if I was to go back now. The consul began to argue with her, but the more he argued the more determined she became, and at last he lost his temper. If you like to stay here with a man who isn't your husband, it's your own lookout, but I wash my hands of all responsibility. Her retort had often rankled. Then you've got no cause to worry, she said, and the look on her face returned to him whenever he thought of her. That was two years ago, and he had seen her once or twice since then. It appeared that she got on very badly both with her mother-in-law and with her husband's other wife, and she had come to the consul with preposterous questions about her rights according to Chinese law. He repeated his offer to get her away, but she remained steadfast in her refusal to go, and their interview always ended in the consuls flying into a passion. He was almost inclined to pity the rascally Yu who had to keep the peace between three warring women. According to his English wife's account he was not unkind to her. He tried to act fairly by both his wives. Miss Lambert did not improve. The consul knew that ordinarily she wore Chinese clothes, but when she came to see him she put on European dress. She was become extremely blousy. Her health suffered from the Chinese food she ate, and she was beginning to look wretchedly ill. But really he was shocked when she had been shown into his office that day. She wore no hat and her hair was disheveled. She was in a highly hysterical state. They're trying to poison me, she screamed, and she put before him a bowl of some foul-smelling food. It's poisoned, she said. I've been ill for the last ten days. It's only by a miracle I've escaped. She gave him a long story, circumstantial, and probable enough to convince him. After all, nothing was more likely than that the Chinese women should use familiar methods to get rid of an intruder who was hateful to them. Do they know you've come here? Of course they do. I told them I was going to show them up. Now at last was the moment for decisive action. The consul looked at her in his most official manner. Well, you must never go back there.  I insist on your leaving this man who isn't your husband. But he found himself helpless against the woman's insane obstinacy. He repeated all the arguments he had used so often, but she would not listen, and as usual he lost his temper. It was then, in answer to his final desperate question, that she had made the remark which had entirely robbed him of his calm. But what on earth makes you stay with the man, he cried. She hesitated for a moment, and a curious look came into her eyes. There's something in the way his hair grows on his forehead that I can't help liking, she answered. The consul had never heard anything so outrageous. It really was the last straw, and now while he strode along trying to walk off his anger, though he was not a man who often used bad language, he really could not restrain himself, and he said fiercely, Women are simply bloody! The Stripling He walked along the causeway with an easy confident stride. He was seventeen, tall and slim, with a smooth and yellow skin that had never known a razor. His eyes, but slightly a slant, were large and open, and his full red lips were tremulous with a smile. The happy audacity of youth was in his bearing. His little round cap was set jauntily on his head, his black gown was gird about his loins, and his trousers, as a rule gartered at the ankle, were turned up to the knees. He went barefoot, but for thin straw sandals, and his feet were small and shapely. He had walked since early morning along the paved causeway that wound its sinuous path up the hills and down into the valleys with their innumerable paddy fields, past burial grounds with their serried dead, busy villages where maybe his eyes rested approvingly for a moment on some pretty girl and her blue smock and her short blue trousers, sitting in an open doorway, but I think his glance claimed admiration rather than gave it. And now he was nearing the end of his journey and the city wither he was bound seeking his fortune. It stood in the midst of a fertile plain, surrounded by a crenellated wall, and when he saw it he stepped forward with resolution.  All his worldly goods were wrapped up in a parcel of blue cotton which he carried over his shoulder. Now Dick Whittington, setting out to win fame and fortune, had a cat for his companion, but the Chinese carried with him a round cage with red bars which he held with a peculiar grace between finger and thumb, and in the cage was a beautiful green parrot. End of Section XI. Recording by Nick Number. Section XII. The Fannings. The Song of the River. Mirage. Of Anna Chinese Screen. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nick Number. Anna Chinese Screen. By W. Somerset Mom. Chapters 32 through 34. The Fannings. They lived in a fine square house with a veranda all round it, on the top of a low hill that faced the river, and below them, a little to the right, was another fine square house which was the customs, and to this, for he was deputy commissioner, Fanning went every day. The city was five miles away, and on the river bank was nothing but a small village which had sprung up to provide the crews of junks with what gear or food they needed. In the city were a few missionaries, but these they saw seldom, and the only foreigners in the village besides themselves were the tide-waiters. One of these had been an able seaman, and the other was an Italian. They both had Chinese wives. The Fannings asked them to tiffen on Christmas Day and on the king's birthday, but otherwise their relations with them were purely official. The steamers stayed but half an hour, so they never saw the captains or the chief engineers who were the only white men on them, and for five months in the year the water was too low for steamers to pass. Oddly enough it was then they saw most foreigners, for it happened now and again that a traveler, a merchant or consular official perhaps, more often a missionary, going upstream by junk tied up for the night, and then the commissioner went down to the river and asked him to dine. They lived very much alone.  He was a martinet, aggressive, brusque with a bullying manner, and he never spoke to a Chinese without raising his voice to a tone of rasping command. Though he spoke fluent Chinese, when one of his boys did something to displease him, he abused him roundly in English.  It was a triumph of his will over his disposition. His gruffness was an almost absurd attempt to persuade those with whom he came in contact that he was not frightened of them. You felt that no one was more surprised than himself that he was taken seriously. He was like those little grotesque figures that children blow out like balloons and you had an idea that he went in lively fear of bursting and then everyone would see that he was but a hollow bladder. It was his wife who was constantly alert to persuade him that he was a man of iron and when the explosion was over she would say to him, You know, you frighten me when you get in those passions, or I think I'd better say something to the boy, he's quite shaken by what you said. Then Fanning would puff himself up and smile indulgently. When a visitor came she would say, The Chinese are terrified of my husband, but of course they respect him. They know it's no good trying any of their nonsense with him. Well, I ought to know how to treat them, he would answer with beatling brows. I've been over twenty years in the country. Mrs.  She was always very untidy, her hair going a little gray was continually on the point of falling down. Now and then in the midst of conversation she would abstractedly take out a pin or two, give it a shake and without troubling to look in the glass insecurely fix its few thin wisps. She had a love of brilliant color and she wore fantastic clothes which she and the sewing Emma ran up together from the fashion papers, but when she dressed she could never find anything that went with anything else and she looked like a woman who had been rescued from shipwreck and clothed in any oddments that could be found. She was a caricature and you could not help smiling when you looked at her. The only attractive thing she had was a soft and extremely musical voice and she spoke with a little drawl which came from I know not what part of England. The Fannings had two sons, one of nine and one of seven, and they completed the solitary household. They were attractive children, affectionate and demonstrative and it was pleasant to see how united the family was. They had little jokes together that amused them hugely and they played pranks with one another as though not one of them was more than ten. Though they had so much of one another society it really looked as though they could not bear to be out of one another's sight and each day when Fanning went to his office his boys would hardly let him go and each day when he returned they greeted him with extravagant delight. They had no fear of his gruff bluster.  It was not chance that kept the family united nor peculiarly agreeable dispositions but a passion of love in her. From the moment she got up in the morning till the time she went to bed her thoughts were occupied with the welfare of the three male persons who were in her charge. Her active mind was busy all the time with schemes for their happiness. I do not think a thought of self ever entered her untidy head. She was a miracle of unselfishness. It was really hardly human. She never had a hard word for anyone. She was very hospitable and it was she who caused her husband to go down to the houseboats and invite travelers to come up to dinner. But I do not think she wanted them for her own sake. She was quite happy in her solitude but she thought her husband enjoyed a talk with strangers. I don't want him to get in a rut, she said. My poor husband he misses his billiards and his bridge. It's very hard for a man to have no one to talk to but a woman. Every evening when the children had been put to bed they played piquet. She had no head for cards, poor dear, and she always made mistakes but when her husband uprated her she said, You can't expect everyone to be as clever as you are. And because she so obviously meant what she said he could not find it in his heart to be angry with her. Then when the commissioner was tired of beating her they would turn on the gramophone and sitting side by side listen in silence to the latest songs from the musical comedies of London. You may turn up your nose. They lived ten thousand miles away from England and it was their only tie with the home they loved. It made them feel not quite so utterly cut off from civilization and presently they would talk of what they would do with the children when they grew up. Soon it would be time to send them home to school and perhaps a pang passed through the little woman's gentle heart. It'll be hard for you, Bertie, when they go, she said. But perhaps we shall be moved then to some place where there's a club and you'll be able to go and play bridge in the evenings. The Song of the River You hear it all along the river. You hear it loud and strong from the rowers as they urge the junk with its high stern, the mast lashed alongside down the swift running stream. You hear it from the trackers, a more breathless chant as they pull desperately against the current, half a dozen of them perhaps if they are taking up a whoopan, a couple of hundred if they are hauling a splendid junk, its square sail set over a rapid. On the junk a man stands amid ships beating a drum incessantly to guide their efforts and they pull with all their strength like men possessed, bent double and sometimes in the extremity of their travail they crawl on the ground on all fours like the beasts of the field. They strain, strain fiercely against the pitiless might of the stream. The leader goes up and down the line and when he sees one who is not putting all his will into the task he brings down his split bamboo on the naked back. Each one must do his utmost or the labor of all is vain and still they sing a vehement eager chant, the chant of the turbulent waters. I do not know how words can describe what there is in it of effort. It serves to express the straining heart, the breaking muscles and at the same time the indomitable spirit of man which overcomes the pitiless force of nature. Though the rope may part and the great junk swing back, in the end the rapid will be passed and at the close of the weary day there is the hearty meal and perhaps the opium pipe with its dreams of ease but the most agonizing song is the song of the coolies who bring the great bales from the junk up the steep steps to the town wall. Up and down they go, endlessly, and endless as their toil rises their rhythmic cry. He, ah, ah, oh! They are barefoot and naked to the waist. The sweat pours down their faces and their song is a groan of pain. It is a sigh of despair. It is heart-rending. It is hardly human. It is the cry of souls in infinite distress, only just musical and that last note is the ultimate sob of humanity. Life is too hard, too cruel and this is the final despairing protest. That is the song of the river. Mirage. He is a tall man with bulging sky-blue eyes in an embarrassed manner. He looks as though he were a little too large for his skin and you feel that he would be more comfortable if it were a trifle looser. His hair, very smooth and crisp, fits so tightly on his head that it gives you the impression of a wig and you have an almost irresistible inclination to pull it. He has no small talk. He hunts for topics of conversation and, racking his brain to no purpose, in desperation offers you a whiskey and soda. He is in charge of the B.A.T. and the building in which he lives is office, go down and residence all in one. His parlor is furnished with a suite of dingy upholstered furniture placed neatly around the walls and in the middle is a round table. A hanging petroleum lamp gives a melancholy light and an oil stove heat. In appropriate places are richly framed oleographs from the Christmas numbers of American magazines, but he does not sit in this room. He spends his leisure in his bedroom. In America he has always lived in a boarding house where his bedroom was the only privacy he knew and he has gotten the habit of living in one. It seems unnatural to him to sit in a sitting room. He does not like to take his coat off and he only feels at home in shirt sleeves. He keeps his books and his private papers in his bedroom. He has a desk and a rocking chair there. He has lived in China for five years and knows no Chinese and takes no interest in the race among whom in all likelihood the best years of his life will be spent. His business is done through an interpreter and his house is managed by a boy. Now and then he takes a journey of several hundred miles into Mongolia, a wild and rugged country, either in Chinese carts or on ponies, and he sleeps at the wayside inns where congregate merchants, drovers, herdsmen, men-at-arms, ruffians and wild fellows. The people of the land are turbulent. When there is unrest he is exposed to not a little risk, but these are purely business undertakings. They bore him. He is always glad to get back to his familiar bedroom at the BAT, for he is a great reader. He reads nothing but American magazines and the number of those he has sent to him by every mail is amazing. He never throws them away and there are piles of them all over the house. The city in which he lives is the gateway into China from Mongolia. There dwell the teaming Chinese and through its gates pass constantly the Mongols with their caravans of camels, endless processions of carts drawn by oxen which have brought hides from the limitable distances of Asia rumble noisily through its crowded streets. He is bored. It has never occurred to him that he lives a life in which the possibility of adventure is at his doors. He can only recognize it through the printed page and it needs a story of daring dew in Texas or Nevada of hair-breath escape in the South Seas to stir his blood. End of Section 12. Section 13. The Stranger. Democracy. The Seventh Day Adventist. Of Anna Chinese Screen. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nick Number. Anna Chinese Screen. By W. Somerset Mom. Chapters 35 through 37. The Stranger. It was a comfort in that sweltering heat to get out of the city. The missionary stepped out of the launch in which he had dropped leisurely down the river and comfortably settled himself in the chair which was waiting for him at the water's edge. He was carried through the village by the riverside and began to ascend the hill. It was an hour's journey along a pathway of broad stone steps under fir trees and now and again you caught a delightful glimpse of the broad river shining in the sun amid the exultant green of the paddy fields. The bearers went along with the swinging stride. The sweat on their backs shone. It was a sacred mountain with a Buddhist monastery on the top of it and on the way up there were rest houses where the coolies set down the chair for a few minutes and a monk in his grey robe gave you a cup of flowered tea. The air was fresh and sweet. The pleasure of that lazy journey, the swing of the chair was very soothing, made a day in the city almost worthwhile and at the end of it was his trim little bungalow where he spent the summer and before him the sweet scented night. The mail had come in that day and he was bringing on letters and papers. There were four numbers of the Saturday evening post and four of the literary digest. He had nothing but pleasant things to look forward to and the usual peace, a peace as he often said which passeth all understanding which filled him whenever he was among these green trees away from the teeming city should long since have descended upon him. But he was harassed. He had had that day an unfortunate encounter and he was unable, trivial as it was to put it out of his mind. It was on this account that his face bore a somewhat peevish expression. It was a thin and sensitive face, almost ascetic, with regular features and intelligent eyes. He was very long and thin with the spindly legs of a grasshopper and as he sat in his chair swaying a little with the motion of his bearers he reminded you somewhat grotesquely a gentle creature. He could never have heard a fly. He had run across Dr. Saunders in one of the streets of the city. Dr. Saunders was a little grey-haired man with a high color and a snub nose which gave him a strangely impudent expression. He had a large sensual mouth and when he laughed, which he did very often he showed decayed and discolored teeth. When he laughed his little blue eyes wrinkled in a curious fashion and then he looked the very picture of malice. There was something fawn-like in him. His movements were quick and unexpected. He walked with a rapid trip as though he were always in a hurry. He was a doctor who lived in the heart of the city among the Chinese. He was not on the register but someone had made it his business to find out that he had been duly qualified. He had been struck off but for what crime, whether social or purely professional, none know nor how he had happened to come to the east and eventually settle on the China coast but it was evident that he was a very clever doctor and the Chinese had great faith in him. He avoided the foreigners and rather disagreeable stories were circulated about him. Everyone knew him to say how do you do to but no one asked him to his house nor visited him in his own. When they had met that afternoon Dr. Saunders had exclaimed What on earth has brought you to the city at this time of year? I have some business that I couldn't leave any longer answered the missionary and then I wanted to get the mail. There was a stranger here the other day asking for you, said the doctor. For me? cried the other with surprise. Well, not for you particularly explained the doctor. He wanted to know the way to the American mission. I told him but I said he wouldn't find anyone there. He seemed rather surprised at that so I told him that you all went up to the hills in May and didn't come back till September. A foreigner asked the missionary still wondering who the stranger could be. Oh yes, certainly. The doctor's eyes twinkled. Then he asked me about the other missions. I told him the London mission had a settlement here but it wasn't the least use going there as all the missionaries were away in the hills. After all, it's devilish hot in the city. Then I'd like to go to one of the mission schools, said the stranger. Oh, they're all closed, I said. Well, then I'll go to the hospital. That's well worth a visit, I said. The American hospital is equipped with all the latest contrivances. Their operating theater is perfect. What is the name of the doctor in charge? Oh, he's up in the hills. But what about the sick? There are no sick between May and September, I said, and if there are they have to put up with the native dispensers. Dr. Saunders paused for a moment. The missionary looked ever so slightly vexed. Well, he said. The stranger looked at me irresolutely for a moment or two. I wanted to see something in the missions before I left, he said. You might try the Roman Catholics, I said. They're here all the year round. When do they take their holidays then? He asked. They don't, I said. He left me at that. I think he went to the Spanish convent. The missionary fell into the trap and it irritated him to think how ingenuously he had done so. He ought to have seen what was coming. Who was this anyway, he asked innocently. I asked him his name, said the doctor. Oh, I'm Christ, he said. The missionary shrugged his shoulders and abruptly told his rickshaw boy to go on. It had put him thoroughly out of temper. It was so unjust. Of course they went away from May to September. The heat made any useful activity quite out of the question. And it had been found by experience that the missionaries preserved their health and strength much better if they spent the hot months in the hills.  It was a matter of practical politics and it had been found that the Lord's work was done more efficiently if a certain part of the year was set aside for rest and recreation. And then the reference to the Roman Catholics was grossly unfair. They were unmarried. They had no families to think of. The mortality among them was terrifying. Why in that very city of fourteen nuns who had come out to China ten years ago all but three were dead. It was perfectly easy for them because it was more convenient for their work to live in the middle of the city and to stay there all the year round. They had no ties. They had no duties to those who were near and dear to them. Oh, it was grossly unjust to drag in the Roman Catholics. But suddenly an idea flashed through his mind. What rankled most was that he had left the rascally doctor. He only had to look at his face all puckered with malicious amusement to know he was a rogue without a word. There certainly was an answer, but he had not had the presence of mind to make it. And now the perfect repartee occurred to him. A glow of satisfaction filled him and he almost fancied that he had made it. It was a crushing rejoinder and he rubbed his very long thin hands with satisfaction. My dear sir, he ought to have said, our Lord never in the whole course of history claimed to be the Christ. It was an unanswerable snub and thinking of it the missionary forgot his ill-humour. Democracy. It was a cold night. I had finished my dinner and my boy was making up my bed while I sat over a brazier of burning charcoal. Most of the Coolies had already settled themselves for the night in a room next to mine and through the thin matchboarding of the wall that separated us I heard a couple of them talk. Another party of travelers had arrived an hour before and the small inn was full. Suddenly there was a commotion and going to the door of my room to look out I saw three sedan-chairs enter the courtyard. They were set down in front of me and from the first stepped out a stout Chinese of imposing aspect. He wore a long black robe of figured silk lined with squirrel and on his head a square fur cap. He seemed taken aback when he saw me at the door of the principal guest chamber and turning to the landlord addressed him in authoritative tones. After that he was an official and he was much annoyed to find that the best apartment in the inn was already taken. He was told that but one room was available. It was small with pallets covered with tumbled straw lining the walls and was used as a rule only by Coolies. He flung into a violent passion and on a sudden arose a scene of the greatest animation. The official, his two companions and his bearers exclaimed against the indignity which it was sought to thrust upon him while the landlord and the servants of the inn expostulated and entreated. The official stormed and threatened. For a few minutes the courtyard so silent before rang with the angry shouts. Then, subsiding as quickly as it began the hubbub ceased and the official went into the vacant room. Hot water was brought by a bedraggled servant and presently the landlord followed with great bowls of steaming rice all was once more quiet. An hour later I went into the yard to stretch my legs for five minutes before going to bed and somewhat to my surprise I came upon the stout official a little while ago so pompous and self-important seated at a table in the front of the inn with the most ragged of my Coolies. They were chatting amicably and the official quietly smoked a water pipe. He had made all that to do to give himself face but having achieved his object was satisfied and feeling the need of conversation had accepted the company of any Coolie without a thought of social distinction. His manner was perfectly cordial and there was in it no trace of condescension. The Coolie talked with him on an equal footing. It seemed to me that this was true democracy. In the East man is man's equal in a sense you find neither in Europe nor in America. Position and wealth put a man in a relation of superiority to another that is purely adventitious and they are no barred associability. When I lay in my bed I ask myself why in the despotic East there should be between men in equality so much greater than in the free and democratic west and was forced to the conclusion that the explanation must be sought in the cesspool for in the west we are divided from our fellows by our sense of smell. The working man is our master inclined to rule us with an iron hand but it cannot be denied that he stinks. None can wonder at it for a bath in the dawn when you have to hurry to your work before the factory bell rings is no pleasant thing nor does heavy labor tend to sweetness and you do not change your linen more than you can help when the weeks washing must be done by a sharp-tongued wife. I do not blame the working man because he stinks, but stink he does. It makes social intercourse difficult to persons of a sensitive nostril. The matutinal tub divides the classes more effectually than birth, wealth or education. It is very significant that those novelists who have risen from the ranks of labor are apt to make it a symbol of class prejudice and one of the most distinguished writers of our day always marks the rascals of his entertaining stories by the fact that they take a bath every morning. Now the Chinese live all their lives in the proximity of very nasty smells. They do not notice them. Their nostrils are blunted to the odors that assail the Europeans and so they can move on in equal footing with the tiller of the soil, the coulis and the artisan. I venture to think that the cess pool is more necessary to democracy than parliamentary institutions. The invention of the sanitary convenience has destroyed the sense of equality in men. It is responsible for class hatred much more than the monopoly of capital in the hands of the few. It is a tragic thought that the first man who pulled the plug of a water closet with that negligent gesture rang the knell of democracy. The Seventh Day Adventist He was a big man and his bones were well covered. He gave you the impression that he had put on flesh since he bought his clothes for they seemed somewhat tight for him. He always wore the same things, a blue suit evidently bought ready-made in a department store, the lapel decorated with a small American flag, a high starched collar and a white tie on which was a pattern of forget-me-nots. His short nose and pugnacious chin gave his clean-shaven face a determined look. His eyes behind large gold-rimmed spectacles were large and blue, and his hair receding on the temples, lank and dull, was plastered down on his head, but on the crown protruded a rebellious cox feather. He was traveling up the Yangtze for the first time, but he took no interest in his surroundings. He had no eye for the waves of turbulent waters that was spread before him, nor for the colors, tragic or tender, which sunrise and sunset lend the scene. The great junks with their square-white sails proceeded stately down the stream. The moon rose, flooding the noble river with silver and giving a strange magic to the temples on the bank among a grove of trees. He was frankly bored. During a certain part of the day he studied Chinese, but for the rest of the time he read nothing but in New York Times three months old in the dates of July 1915, which Heaven knows why happened to be on board. He took no interest in the religions which flourished in the land he had come to evangelize. He classed them all contemptuously as devil worship. I do not think he had ever read the Anilects of Confucius. He was ignorant of the history, art, and literature of China. I could not make out what had brought him to the country. He spoke of his work as a profession which he had entered as a man might enter the civil service, and which, though it was delayed, he complained that he earned less than an artisan, he wanted not withstanding to make a good job of. He wanted to increase his church membership. He wanted to make his school self supporting. If ever he had had a serious call to convert the heathen there was in him no trace of it now. He looked upon the whole matter as a business proposition. The secret of success lay in the precious word organization. He was upright, honest, and virtuous, but there was neither passion in him nor enthusiasm. He seemed to be the impression that the Chinese were very simple people, and because they did not know the same things that he did he thought them ignorant. He could not help showing that he looked upon himself as superior to them. The laws they made were not applicable to the white man, and he resented the fact that they expected him to conform to their customs. But he was not a bad fellow. Indeed he was a good humored one and so long as you did not attempt to question his authority there is no doubt that he would have done everything in his power to serve you. Recording by Nick Number Section 14 The Philosopher, the Missionary Lady, a Game of Billiards of Anna Chinese Screen This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Nick Number Anna Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Mom, chapters 38-40 The Philosopher It was surprising to find so vast a city in a spot that seemed to me so remote. From its battle-mented gate toward sunset you could see the snowy mountains of Tibet. It was so populous that you could walk at ease only on the walls and it took a rapid walker three hours to complete their circuit. There was no railway within a thousand miles and the river on which it stood was so shallow that only junks of light burden could safely navigate it. Five days in a campaign were needed to reach the Upper Yangtze. For an uneasy moment you asked yourself whether trains and steamships were as necessary to the conduct of life as we who use them every day consider. For here a million persons throve, married, begat their kind and died. Here a million persons were busily occupied with commerce, art, and thought. And here lived a philosopher of repute that desired to see whom had been to me one of the incentives of a somewhat arduous journey. He was the greatest body in China on the Confucian learning. He was said to speak English and German with facility. He had been for many years secretary to one of the Empress Dowager's greatest viceroys but he lived now in retirement. On certain days in the week however all through the year he opened his doors to such as sought after knowledge and discoursed on the teaching of Confucius. He had a body of disciples but it was small since the students for the most part preferred to his modest dwelling and his severe exhortations to the buildings of the foreign university and the useful science of the barbarians. With him this was mentioned only to be scornfully dismissed. From all I heard of him I concluded that he was a man of character. When I announced my wish to meet this distinguished person my host immediately offered to arrange a meeting but the days passed and nothing happened. I made enquiries and my host shrugged his shoulders. I sent him a chit and told him to come along, he said. I don't know why he hasn't turned up. I did not think it was proper to approach a philosopher in so cavalier a fashion and I was hardly surprised that he had ignored a summons such as this. I caused a letter to be sent asking in the politest terms I could devise whether he would allow me to call upon him and within two hours received an answer making an appointment for the following morning at ten o'clock. I was carried in a chair. The way seemed interminable. I went through crowded streets and through streets deserted till I came at last to one silent and empty at a small door in a long white wall my bearers set down my chair. One of them knocked and after a considerable time a Judas was opened. Dark eyes looked through, there was a brief colloquy and finally I was admitted. A youth, pallid of face, wizened and poorly dressed, motioned me to follow him. I did not know if he was a servant or a pupil of the great man. I passed through a shabby yard and was led into a long low room sparsely furnished with an American bear's and two little Chinese tables. Against the walls were shelves on which were a great number of books. Most of them of course were Chinese but there were many philosophical and scientific works in English, French and German and there were hundreds of unbound copies of learned reviews. Where books did not take up the wall space hung scrolls on which in various calligraphies were written I suppose Confucian quotations. There was no carpet on the floor. It was a cold, bare and comfortless chamber. Its somberness was relieved only by a yellow chrysanthemum which stood by itself on the desk in a long vase. I waited for some time and the youth who had shown me in brought a pot of tea, two cups and a tin of Virginia cigarettes. As he went out the philosopher entered. I hastened to express my sense of the honor he did me in allowing me to visit him. He waved me to a chair and poured out the tea. I am flattered that you wish to see me he returned. Your countrymen deal only with coolies and with compradors. They think every Chinese must be one or the other. I ventured to protest, but I had not caught his point. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me with an expression of mockery. They think they have but to beckon and we must come. I saw then that my friend's unfortunate communication still rankled. I did not quite know how to reply. I murmured something complimentary. He was an old man, tall with a thin gray cue and bright large eyes under which were heavy bags. His teeth were broken and discolored. He was exceedingly thin and his hands, fine and small, were withered and claw-like. I had been told that he was an opium smoker. He was very shabbily dressed in a black gown, a little black cap both much the worse for wear and dark gray trousers gartered at the ankle. He was watching. He did not quite know what attitude to take up and he had the manner of a man who was on his guard. Of course the philosopher occupies a royal place among those who concern themselves with the things of the spirit and we have the authority of Benjamin Disraeli that royalty must be treated with abundant flattery. I seized my trowel. Presently I was conscious of a certain relaxation in his demeanor. He was like a man who was all set and rigid to have his photograph taken, but hearing the shutter-click lets himself go and eases into his natural self. He showed me his books. I took the PhD in Berlin, you know, he said, and afterwards I studied some time in Oxford, but the English, if you will allow me to say so, have no great aptitude for philosophy. Though he put the remark apologetically, it was evident that he was not displeased to say a slightly disagreeable thing. We have had philosophers who have not been without influence in the world of thought, I suggested. Hume and Barkley? The philosophers who taught at Oxford when I was there were anxious not to offend their theological colleagues. They would not follow their thought to its purposes in case they should jeopardize their position in university society. Have you studied the modern developments of philosophy in America, I asked? Are you speaking of pragmatism? It is the last refuge of those who want to believe the incredible. I have more use for American petroleum than for American philosophy. His judgments were tart. We sat down once more and drank another cup of tea. He began to talk with fluency. He spoke a somewhat formal but now and then he helped himself out with a German phrase, so far as it was possible for a man of that stubborn character to be influenced, he had been influenced by Germany. The method and the industry of the Germans had deeply impressed him and their philosophical acumen was patented to him when a laborious professor published in a learned magazine an essay on one of his own writings. I have written twenty books, he said, and that is the only notice that has ever been taken of me in a European publication. But his study of western philosophy had only served in the end to satisfy him that wisdom after all was to be found within the limits of the Confucian canon. He accepted its philosophy with conviction. It answered the needs of his spirit with a completeness which made all foreign learning seem vain. I was interested in this because it bore out an opinion of mine that philosophy is an affair of character rather than of logic. The philosopher believes not according to evidence but according to his own temperament and his thinking merely serves to make reasonable what his instinct regards as true. If Confucianism gains so firm a hold on the Chinese it is because it explained and expressed them as no other system of thought could do. My host lit a cigarette. His voice at first had been thin and tired but as he grew interested in what he said it gained volume. He talked vehemently. There was in him none of the repose of the sage. He was a polemist and a fighter. He loathed the modern cry for individualism. For him society was the unit and the family the foundation of society. He upheld the old China and the old school monarchy and the rigid canon of Confucius. He grew violent and bitter as he spoke of the students fresh from foreign universities who with sacrilegious hands tore down the oldest civilization in the world. But you, do you know what you are doing? He exclaimed. What is the reason for which you deem yourselves are betters? Have you excelled us in arts or letters? Have our thinkers been less profound than yours? Has our civilization been less elaborate, less complicated, less refined than yours? Why, when you lived in caves and clothed yourself with skins we were a cultured people. Do you know that we tried an experiment which is unique in the history of the world? We sought to rule this great country not by force but by wisdom and for centuries we succeeded. Then why does the white man despise the yellow? Shall I tell you? Because he has invented the machine gun. That is your superiority.  You have shattered the dream of our philosophers that the world could be governed by the power of law and order and now you are teaching our young men your secret. You have thrust your hideous inventions upon us. Do you not know that we have a genius for mechanics? Do you not know that there are in this country 400 millions of the most practical and industrious people in the world? Do you think it will take us long to learn? And what will become of your superiority when the yellow man can make as good guns as the white and fire them as straight? You have appealed to the machine gun and by the machine gun shall you be judged. But at that moment we were interrupted. A little girl came softly in and nestled close up to the old gentleman. She stared at me with curious eyes. He told me that she was his youngest child. He put his arms around her and with a murmur of caressing words kissed her fondly. She wore a black coat and trousers that barely reached her ankles and she had a long pigtail hanging down her back. She was born on the day the revolution was a successful issue by the abdication of the emperor. I thought she heralded the spring of a new era, he said. She was but the last flower of this great nation's fall. From a drawer in his roll-top desk he took a few cash and handing them to her sent her away. You see that I wear a cue, he said, taking it in his hands. It is a symbol. I am the last representative of the old China. He talked to me more gently now of how philosophers in long past days wandered from state to state with their disciples teaching all who were worthy to learn. Kings called them to their councils and made them rulers of cities. His erudition was great and his eloquent phrases gave a multicolored vitality to the incidents he related to me of the history of his country. I could not help thinking him a somewhat pathetic figure. He felt in himself the capacity to administer the state but there was no king to entrust him with office. He had vast stores of learning which he was eager to impart to the great band of students that his soul hankered after and there came to listen but a few wretched half-starved and obtused provincials. Once or twice discretion had made me suggest that I should take my leave, but he had been unwilling to let me go. Now at last I was obliged to. I rose. He held my hand. I should like to give you something as a recollection of your visit to the last philosopher in China but I am a poor man and I do not know what I can give you that would be worthy of your acceptance. I protested that the recollection of my visit was in itself a priceless gift. He smiled. Men have short memories in these degenerate days and I should like to give you something more substantial. I would give you one of my books but you cannot read Chinese. He looked at me with an amicable perplexity. I had an inspiration. Give me a sample of your calligraphy, I said. Would you like that? He smiled. In my youth I was considered to wield a brush in a manner that was not entirely despicable. He sat down at his desk, took a fair sheet of paper and placed it before him. He poured a few drops of water on a stone, rubbed the ink stick in it and took his brush. With a free movement of the arm he began to write and as I watched him I remembered with not a little amusement something else which had been told me of him. It appeared that the old gentleman, whenever he could scrape a little money together, spent it wantonly in the streets inhabited by ladies to describe whom a euphemism is generally used. His eldest son, a person of standing in the city, was vexed and humiliated by the scandal of this behavior and only his strong sense of filial duty prevented him from reproaching the libertine with severity. I dare say that to a son such looseness would be disconcerting, but the student of human nature could look upon it with equanimity. Philosophers are apt to elaborate their theories in the study, forming conclusions upon life which they know only at second hand and it is seemed to me often that their works would have a more definite significance when they had exposed themselves to the vicissitudes which befall the common run of men. I was prepared to regard the old gentleman's dalliance in hidden places with leniency. Perhaps he sought but to elucidate the most inscrutable of human illusions. He finished. To dry the ink he scattered a little ash on the paper and rising handed it to me. What have you written? I asked. I thought there was a slightly malicious gleam in his eyes. I have ventured to offer you two little poems of my own. I did not know you were a poet. When China was still an uncivilized country, he retorted with sarcasm, all educated men could write verse at least with elegance. I took the paper and looked at the Chinese characters. They made an agreeable pattern upon it. Won't you give me a translation? Tradutore tradutore he answered. You cannot expect me to betray myself. Ask one of your English friends, those who know most about China know nothing, but you will at least find one who is competent to give you a rendering of a few rough and simple lines. I bad him farewell and with great politeness he showed me to my chair. When I had the opportunity I gave the poems to a synologue of my acquaintance and here is the version he made. Footnote. I owe it to the kindness of my friend, Mr. P. W. Davidson. I confess that doubtless unreasonably I was somewhat taken aback when I read it.  I craved the years would quickly pass that you might lose the brightness of your eyes, the peach bloom of your skin, and all the cruel splendor of your youth, then I alone would love you here. The envious years have passed full soon and you have lost the brightness of your eyes, the peach bloom of your skin, and all the charming splendor of your youth. Alas, I do not love you, and I care not if you care. The Missionary Lady. She was certainly fifty but a life of convictions harassed by never a doubt had left her face unwrinkled. The hesitations of thought had never lined the smoothness of her brow.  They were blue, confident and unperturbed. They summed you up through large round spectacles. You felt that here was a woman to whom command came easily. Her charity was above all things competent and you were certain that she ran the obvious goodness of her heart on thoroughly business lines. It was possible to suppose that she was not devoid of human vanity, and this is to be counted to her grace, since she wore a dress of violet silk heavily embroidered and a toque of immense pansies which on a less respectable head would have been almost saucy. But my uncle Henry, for twenty-seven years vicar of Whitstable, who had decided views on the proper manner of dress for a clergyman's wife, never objected to my aunt Sophie wearing violet, and he would have found nothing to criticize in the Missionary Lady's gown. She spoke fluently with the even flow of water turned on at a tap. Her conversation had the admirable volubility of a politician at the end of an electioneering campaign. You felt that she knew what she meant with most of us so rare in accomplishment and meant what she said. I always think, she remarked pleasantly, that if you know both sides of a question you'll judge differently from what you will if you only know one side, but the fact remains that two and two make four and you can argue all night and you won't make them five. Am I right or am I wrong? I hastened to assure her that she was right, though with these new theories of relativity and parallel lines behaving at infinity in such a surprising manner I was in my heart of hearts none too sure. No one can eat their cake and have it, she continued, exemplifying Benedetto Croce's theory that grammar has little to do with expression, and one has to take the rough with the smooth, but as I always say to the children, you can't expect to have everything your own way. No one is perfect in this world and I always think that if you expect the best from me, I confess that I was staggered, but I determined to do my part, it was only civil. Most men live long enough to discover that every cloud has a silver lining, I began earnestly. With perseverance you can do most things that are not beyond your powers, and after all it's better to want what you have than to have what you want. I thought her eyes were glazed with a sudden perplexity when I made this confident statement, but I dare say it was only my fancy, for she nodded at her ear point, she said, we can't do more than we can. But my blood was up now and I waved beside the interruption, I went on. Few people realize a profound truth that there are twenty shillings in every pound and twelve pence in every shilling, I'm sure it's better to see clearly to the end of your nose than indistinctly through a brick wall, if there's one thing we can be certain about it is that the hole is greater than the part. When, with a hearty shake of the hand, well, we've had a most interesting chat, it does one good in a place like this so far away from civilization to exchange ideas with one's intellectual equals, especially other peoples, I murmured. I always think that one should profit by the great thoughts of the past, she retorted, it shows that the mighty dead have not lived in vain. Her conversation was devastating. A game of billiards. I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel reading a number of several days old of the South China Times when the door of the bar was somewhat brusquely thrown open and a very long, thin man appeared. Do you care for a game of billiards, he said? By all means. I got up and went with him into the bar. It was a small hotel of stone, somewhat pretentious in appearance, and it was kept by a half-cast Portuguese who smoked opium. There were not half a dozen people staying there, a Portuguese official and his wife waiting for a ship to take him to a distant colony, a Lancashire engineer who was sullenly drunk all day long, a mysterious lady no longer young but a voluptuous appearance who came to the dining room for meals and went back to her room immediately afterwards and I had not seen the stranger before. I supposed he had come in that evening on a Chinese boat. He was a man of over fifty I should think, shriveled as though the sap had been dried out of him by tropical suns with a face that was almost brick red. I could not place him. He had been a skipper out of a job or the agent of some foreign firm in Hong Kong. He was very silent and he made no answer to the casual remarks that I made in the course of the game. He played billiards well enough, though not excellently, but he was a very pleasant fellow to play with and when he pocketed my ball instead of leaving me a double balk gave me a reasonable shot. But when the game was over I should never have thought of him again if suddenly breaking his silence for the first time he had not put me a very odd question. I believe in fate, he asked. At billiards I retorted not a little astonished at his remark. No, in life. I did not want to answer him seriously. I hardly know, I said. He took his shot. He made a little break. At the end of it, chalking his cue, he said, I do. I believe if things are coming to you you can't escape them. That was all. He said nothing more. When we had finished the game he went up to bed and I never saw him again. I shall never know what strange emotion impelled him to put that sudden question to a stranger. End of section 14 Recording by Nick Number Section Number 15 The Skipper, the sights of the town Nightfall of On a Chinese Screen This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 41 The Skipper I knew he was drunk. He was the skipper of the new school. A neat little man, clean-shaven who might easily have passed for the commander of a submarine. In his cabin there hung a beautiful U-coat with gold braid on it. The uniform, which, for its good service in the war, has been granted to him. In his cabin there hung a beautiful U-coat with gold braid on it. The uniform, which for its good service in the war has been granted to the mercantile marine, but he was shy of using it. It seemed absurd when he was no more than the captain of a small boat on the Yangtze. And he stood on his bridge in a neat brown suit and a Hamburg hat. You could almost see yourself in his admirably polished shoes. His eyes were clear and bright and his skin was fresh. Though he had been at sea for twenty years and could not have been much less than forty he could not look more than twenty-eight. You might be sure that he was a clean living fellow as healthy in mind as he was in body and the depravity of the east of which they talked had left him untouched. He had a pleasant taste in light literature and the works of E. V. Lucas adorned his bookcase. In his cabin you saw a photograph of a football team in which he figured and two of a young woman with neatly waved hair was unable enough he was engaged to. I knew he was drunk but I did not think he was very drunk till he asked me suddenly what is democracy? I returned an evasive perhaps a flippant answer and for some minutes the conversation turned on less unseasonable topics to the occasion. Then breaking the silence he said I hope you don't think I'm a socialist because I said what is democracy? Not at all I answered but I don't see why you shouldn't be a socialist.  What is socialism I asked?  He was silent for quite a long time and I thought his mind had wanted to other things but I was wrong he was thinking my statement over in all its bearings for at last he said look here I'm not a working man hang it all I was at Harrow Chapter 42 The Sights of the Town I am not an industrious sightseer and when guides professional or friendly urge me to visit a famous monument I have a stubborn inclination to send them about their business too many eyes before mine have looked with awe upon Mont Blanc too many hearts before mine have throbbed with deep emotion in the presence of the Sistine Madonna Sights like these are like women of two generous sympathies you feel that so many persons have found solace in their commiseration that you are embarrassed when they bid you with what practice tacked to whisper in their discreet ears the whole tale of your distress supposing you were the last straw that broke the camel's back no madam, I will take my sorrows if I cannot bear them alone which is better to someone who is not quite so certain of saying so exactly the right thing to comfort me when I am in a foreign town I prefer to wander at random and if maybe I lose the rapture of a Gothic cathedral I may happen upon a little Romanesque chapel or a renaissance doorway which I shall be able to flatter myself no one else has troubled about but of course this was a very extraordinary sight indeed and it would have been absurd to miss it I came across it by pure chance I was sauntering along a dusty road outside the city wall and by the side of it I saw a number of memorial arches they were small and undecorated standing not across the way but along it, close to one another and sometimes one in front of the other as though they had been erected by no impulse of gratitude to the departed or of admiration for the virtuous but informal complement as nighthoods on the king's birthday are conferred on prominent citizens of provincial towns behind this row of arches the land rose sharply and since in this part of the country the Chinese bury their dead footprints on the side of a hill it was thickly covered with graves a trodden path led to a little tower and I followed it it was a stumpy little tower ten feet high perhaps made of rough hewn blocks of stone it was cone shaped and the roof was like a piero's hat it stood on a hillock quaint and rather picturesque against the blue sky amid the graves and its foot were a number of rough things thrown about in disorder I walked round and on one side saw an oblong hole eighteen inches by eight perhaps from which hung a stout string from the hole there came a very strange nauseating odor suddenly I understood what the queer little building was it was a baby tower the baskets were the baskets in which the babies had been brought two or three of them were quite new they could not have been there for more than a few hours and the string why if the person who brought the baby parent or grandmother midwife or a bludging friend were of a humane disposition and did not care to let the newborn child drop to the bottom for underneath the tower was a deep pit it could be let down gently by means of the string the odor was the odor of putrefaction a lively little boy came up to me while I stood there and made me understand that four babes had been brought to the tower that morning there were philosophers who look upon evil with a certain complacency since without it they opine there would be no possibility of good without want there would be no occasion for charity without distress of sympathy without danger of courage and without unhappiness of resignation they would find in the Chinese practice that aside an apt illustration of their views except for the baby tower they would not be in this city an orphanage the traveler would miss an interesting and curious sight and a few poor women would have no opportunity to exercise a beautiful and touching virtue the orphanage is shabby and bedraggled it is situated in a poor and crowded part of the city for the Spanish nuns who conducted there are but five of them think it more convenient to live where they may be the most useful and besides they have not the money to build commodious premises in a salubrious quarter the institution is supported by the work, lace and fine embroidery which they teach the girls to do and the alms of the faithful two nuns the mother superior and another showed me what there was to see it was very strange to go through the whitewashed rooms work rooms, play rooms dormitories and refectory low, cool and bare for you might have been in Spain and when you passed a window you half expected to catch a glimpse of the Giralda and it was charming to see the tenderness with which the nun has used the children there were two hundred of them and they were of course orphans only in the sense that their parents had abandoned them there was one room in which a number were playing all of the same age perhaps four and all of the same size with their black eyes and black hair their yellow skins they all looked so much alike that they might have been the children of a Chinese old woman who lived in a shoe they crowded round the nuns and began to romp with them the mother superior had the gentlest voice I ever heard but it became gentler still when she joked with the tiny mites they nestled about her she looked a very picture of charity some were deformed some were diseased some were puny and hideous some were blind it gave me a little shudder I marveled when I saw the love that filled her kind eyes and the affectionate sweetness of her smile then I was taken into a parlor where I was made to eat little sweet Spanish cakes and given a glass of Manzanilla to drink and when I told them that I had lived in Seville I went for so that she might talk for a few minutes with someone who had seen the city she was born in with pride they showed me their poor little chapel with its tawdry statue of the blessed virgin its paper flowers and its gaudy shoddy decoration for those dear faithful hearts alas were possessed of singularly bad taste I did not care to me there was something positively touching in that dreadful vulgarity and when I was on the point of leaving the mother superior asked me whether I would care to see the babies who would come in that day in order to persuade people to bring them they gave twenty cents for every one twenty cents you see she explained they have often a long walk to come here and unless we give them something they won't take the trouble she took me into a little anti-room near the entrance and there lying on a table under a counter-pane were four newborn babes they had just been washed and put into long clothes the counter-pane was lifted off they lay side by side on their backs four tiny wriggling mites very red in the face rather cross perhaps because they had been bathed and very hungry their eyes seemed preternaturally large they were so small so helpless you could not smile when you looked at them and at the same time you felt a lump in your throat Chapter 43 Nightfall towards evening perhaps tired of walking you get into your chair and on the crest of a hill you pass through a stone gateway you cannot tell why there should be a gateway in that deserted spot far from a village but a fragment of massive wall suggests the ruin of fortifications against the foes of a forgotten dynasty and when you come through the gateway you see below you the shining water and the rice fields diopered like the chess board in some Chinese Alice in Wonderland and then the rounded tree-clad hills but making your way down the stone steps of the narrow causeway which is the high road from city to city in the gathering darkness you pass a corpus from it waft towards you chill woodland odors of the night then you hear no longer the measured tread of your bearers your ears are on a sudden deaf to their sharp cries as they change the pole from shoulder to shoulder and to the ceaseless chatter or the occasional snatch of song with which they enliven the monotonous way for the woodland odors are the same as those which steal up from the fat kentish soil when you pass through the woods of Blean a nostalgia seizes you your thoughts travel through time and space far from the here and now and you remember your vanished youth with its high hopes its passionate love and its ambition then if you are a cynic as they say and therefore a sentimentalist tears come to your unwilling eyes and when you have regained your self-control the night has fallen End of section 15