The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Yellow Pearl, by Adeline M. (Adeline Margaret) Teskey

Here I am in this strange country about which I have learned in the geography and history, and about which I heard my father talk. The daughter of an American man and a Chinese woman, I suppose I am what is called a mongrel. My father was a Commissioner of Customs in China, and living for years in that country he fell in love with my mother and married her—as was natural. Who could help falling in love with my dear, yellow, winsome, little mother? My name is Margaret, called after my father's mother; my father said that the word Margaret means a pearl, so he gave me the pet name "Pearl." Dear father!

"It was a monstrous thing for Brother George to marry away there," I overheard my Aunt Gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "Why could he not have come back home to his own country and found a wife?—And above all to have married a heathen Chinese!"

"Not a heathen," said my grandmother, reproachfully, "she had previously embraced the faith of Europeans; so my dear George wrote me from that far-away country."

"Oh, they are all heathens in my estimation," cried my Aunt Gwendolin, scornfully; "what faith they embrace does not change the fact that they belong to the yellow people."

My mother died while I was yet a child, and my father has died and left me alone in the world within the last year. Grandmother, my father's mother,[Pg 5] when she learned about her son's death, sent at once for me.

"I cannot leave a granddaughter of mine in that country, and among that heathen, if not barbarous, people," she wrote to the American consul, "and I ask your services to assist her to come to my home in America."

The consul, absent-minded, gave me my grandmother's letter to read, and thus I learned her feeling about my mother's people and country. I never would have come to this horrible America if I could have helped myself; but I am scarcely of age, and by my father's will grandmother is appointed my guardian.

The result of it all is, that having crossed the intervening waters, I am here in the home of my grandmother, my Aunt Gwendolin and my Uncle Theodore Morgan.

When I arrived this morning I was ushered into the sitting-room by a maid, and the first one I beheld was my grandmother, sitting in a rocking-chair. She called me to her, and crossing the room, I kotowed to her, that is I went down on my hands and knees and touched my forehead to the floor, as my Chinese nurse had taught me when I was yet a baby that I should always do when I came into the presence of an elderly woman, a mother of children.

"My dear grandchild!" cried my grandmother, "do get up. All you should do is to kiss me—your grandmother!" And she put out her hand and assisted me from the floor.

Grandmother is the dearest, prettiest little woman I ever saw, with white hair and the brightest of eyes, and I have to love her, although I had made[Pg 7] up my mind to hate everything in America. A moment after she had lifted me from the floor, my Aunt Gwendolin came in. She is tall and thin, not nearly so beautiful a woman as my Chinese mother. She wears skirts that drag on the floor, and her hair is built up into a sort of a mountain on top of her head. I am reminded every time I look at her of a certain peak in the Thian Shan mountains. I very much prefer little women, like my own dear mother, like the women of my own country.

My Uncle Theodore is long-armed, long-legged, long-bodied. He looks a little like my father, and for that reason I hate him a little less than my Aunt Gwendolin.

After my mother's death, my father brought into our home a French governess, daughter of a French consul, to[Pg 8] teach me. Father seemed to be lost in his business, or his grief at the loss of my mother, and paid very little heed to me after the arrival of the governess.

"She is an educated woman," he told me when he had engaged her, "and I want her to teach you all you could learn in a first-class girls' school in Europe or America."

After that the French governess spent hours with me every day, and I saw my father only at intervals. How much we talked about, that French lady and I! Everything, almost, except religion; that my father vetoed, as her faith was not the one he wished me to embrace. "I'll take you over to your grandmother by and by," he used to say, "to get the proper religious instruction."

The governess said that I inherited more from my father's side of the house[Pg 9] than my mother's; that although I was born in China, I was more of an Occidental than an Oriental; more than once she said that my American mannerisms and tricks of speech were really remarkable, and that I was a living example of the power of heredity. But I am never going back on my mother's people, never, my dear little oval-faced mother whose grave is under a spreading camphor tree at the heart of the world.

Does it not mean something that China is at the centre of the world—the kernel?

"The girl is not bad to look at, in fact I think she is a beauty—a face filled with the indescribable dash of the Orient," said my Uncle Theodore, when they were talking me over in the sitting-room after I had retired to my[Pg 10] chamber upstairs. Evidently they had forgotten the opening in the floor which had been left by the workmen while making some changes in the plumbing. And they did not know my extraordinary keenness of hearing, which my governess said was an Oriental trait.

It seemed to give my governess some pleasure to talk about that keen sense of the Orientals, and to speculate as to how they had acquired it. "They have lived in a country where it is necessary, for self-protection, to hear all that is being plotted and planned," she said, "a country of conspiracies and intrigues, of plots and counterplots. Centuries of this have developed abnormal hearing."

"She has a superb figure," said my uncle, continuing to talk about me, "and[Pg 11] that oval face of hers, with her creamy complexion, is really bewitching."

"Yellow! you mean, yellow!" interrupted my Aunt Gwendolin; "she's entirely too yellow for beauty. I'm terribly afraid that some of our set will discover her nationality. That's one thing you must remember, Theodore, nobody on this continent is ever to learn anything about her Chinese blood. They are so despised here as a race. She is our brother's daughter, with some foreign strain inherited from her mother; that is enough; never, never, let us acknowledge the Chinese. The Italians and Spanish are yellowish too,—I have it!" she exclaimed, "Spanish!—Spanish will do!—Some of those are our people now, you know! It will be quite interesting to have her a native of one of our Dependencies—a[Pg 12] descendant of some old Spanish family!"

"I could not endure the thought of introducing a Celestial," continued my aunt. "None must know that we have introduced the Yellow Peril into the country!"

"Why, Gwendolin, how you do talk," said my grandmother; "the child's father was an American, and she was admitted into this country as an American."

"You must talk with the girl to-morrow, Theodore," continued my aunt, ignoring my grandmother's remark, "and tell her to keep sacred her progenitors. She speaks such perfect English no one would suspect that there was much foreign about her."

"She has a striking, unusual air that[Pg 13] would attract a second glance from most people," said my uncle. "If you can keep her nationality from Professor Ballington you will do better than I think you can; he is a great ethnologist; it is his life-work to make discoveries in that line."

"Well it must be kept, no matter what means we resort to," returned my Aunt Gwendolin, with a ring of determination in her voice.

"Poor child," said my dear old grandmother, "she is my granddaughter, and I love her already, my George's child. She looks beautiful to me whether yellow or no."

I had gone down to dinner on this first evening in a soft yellow silk, with long flowing sleeves trimmed with dragons, I know I looked well in it. Governess always said I did. It was[Pg 14] partly Chinese and partly European in design. Governess planned it herself, and she said the French were born with a knowledge how to dress artistically; she boasted that she made it to suit my peculiar style.

"Did you notice that China silk she had on at dinner?" said Aunt Gwendolin; "there must be an end to all that; a ban must be put on everything Chinese."

"It was rather becoming I thought," said Uncle Theodore, "in harmony with the clear yellow of her skin. Let her dress alone, she seems to know how to put it. That is a born gift with some women, and if it is not, they never seem to acquire it. There is great elegance in the straight lines of the Oriental dress."

"Let her alone," said Aunt Gwendolin scornfully, "and let the whole city know we have introduced the Yellow Per——"

"Those Chinese silks, of which she seems to have gowns galore—I was at the unpacking of her trunks—must be tabooed," said my aunt. "Her father has evidently intended her to dress like an European or American; she has some waist line, and does not wear the sacque the women wear in China; but her sleeves are years old."

"The dear child may object to having her attire changed at once," said my grandmother. "She is used to those soft clinging silks, and may not want to give them up. And sleeves are of little consequence. Let her alone for awhile."

"Let her alone!" again retorted Aunt Gwendolin, "and let Professor Ballington see her? He'd know her nationality at once in that yellow silk covered with [Pg 16]sprawling dragons, as almost anybody might. I cannot have anything so mortifying occur when the girl is calling me 'aunt'!"

"Ballington is a curious kind of a chap, and values people on their own merits; he'd think none the less of the girl because she has some Chinese blood in her," returned Uncle Theodore.

"I'll take her out to-morrow," continued my aunt, "and buy her some taffeta silks and French muslins, and dress her up as a Christian should be dressed."

Grandmother said no more. The mother is not the head of the house in America as she is in dear old China. I suppose it is the daughter who rules in this country.

I am so sleepy I cannot listen any longer, even to talk about myself. My governess has taught me that [Pg 17]eavesdropping is not honourable, but I cannot avoid hearing so long as I stay in my room, and I have nowhere else to go. I will turn out the electric light, throw myself on the bed, yellow silk and all, and cry myself asleep. I wonder is that an American or a Chinese act? My governess was continually tracing my actions to one or other of the nations.

March 2, 1——

It happened this morning! That man Aunt Gwendolin thought would be so sure to know that I was the Yellow Pearl, came to the house, and was ushered into my uncle's den by the maid, a few moments after I had been sent in there to have the "talk" with him which was spoken about the night before.

"He is a tall man, very, very white," were my thoughts regarding him, as[Pg 18] he bowed politely before me, when my uncle introduced us; and I suppose his thoughts regarding me were: "She is a short woman, very, very, yellow."

He left after a few moments' conversation with my uncle; and turning to me the latter said, "That gentleman who has just gone is professor of ethnology in the State University. He knows all about the peculiarities of all the peoples and tribes that ever have graced or disgraced the face of this planet we call the world—— Has your aunt told you that she thinks it better that you should say nothing about your Chinese ancestry?" he added hastily and awkwardly.

"No, no, I don't suppose they really have," he answered with an air of[Pg 19] annoyance. "A girl like you cannot understand; you had better simply follow instructions. I hope it will not be necessary to mention this subject again," he added meaningly.

I could not mistake him; I must not dare tell Professor Ballington or any one else in this great country that my mother was a Chinese woman.

In the afternoon Aunt Gwendolin took me down into the shops of the city, "to select an outfit," she said.

We stood for hours, it seemed to me, over counters laden with silks and muslins of every colour in the rainbow. Aunt Gwendolin held the various shades up against my face to see which best became my "Spanish complexion." This was said, I suppose, for the ears of the sales-people, and the fashionable customers standing around.

When selections were made among the goods, I was taken to the establishment of a "Parisienne modiste," where I was pinched, puckered, and pulled until I was nearly numb. A sort of a steel waist was put on me, which my aunt and the modiste called a "corset," and was so tightly pulled I could scarcely breathe.

"Yes, you can!" she returned peremptorily, "you'll get used to it; that's nothing like as tight as the girls all wear them in this country."

"I can't breathe," I gasped again, when the modiste had turned her back; (Aunt Gwendolin had signed to me the first time not to let her hear me).

"Hush!" said my aunt; "for pity sake do not let the modiste know that you never had a corset on before."

Aunt Gwendolin placed her jewelled fingers over my mouth before I had finished the sentence.

Just as I was through being "fitted," one of Aunt Gwendolin's fashionable friends came in. "Arabella," my aunt called her, but the modiste called her Mrs. Delaney. I was not noticed, and slipped off into a corner, and this newcomer and my relative fell into a deep and absorbing talk about the new style of sleeve. I saw my opportunity and slipped unnoticed out the front door, which fortunately was behind them.

Hurrying down a few blocks I reached a bookseller's window. With one glance I had noticed, when my aunt and I were passing the window on the way to the establishment of the Parisienne[Pg 22] modiste, the word China on the cover of a book. "I'll buy that book," I had said to myself, "and learn what there is about China that makes Americans despise her people."

Entering the store, I found a number of books about China and the Chinese: "One of China's Scholars," "How the Chinese Think," "The Greatest Novels of China," "Chinese Life." I paid for them all and ordered them sent to my grandmother's house.

The bookseller looked at me very curiously for several moments, and then ventured, "You speak English very well."

"Of course I do," I said, tossing my head and trying to act saucily, as my governess had told me the American girls did. I would not have dared to treat a man that way in China.

He did not venture to speak again. It is funny to be able in this America to frighten a man! Confucius says that women should "be always modest and respectful in demeanour, and prefer others to themselves"; but I have not to mind Confucius any longer; I am now in the "sweet land of liberty," as they sing in their national anthem. I heard my father say once that the gentleness and modesty of Oriental women was really beautiful; but it would not be beautiful in America.

I hurried back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste, and found my aunt and her friend still talking about sleeves. They had never noticed my absence. How very important sleeves are in America! I never heard them talked about in China.

The talkers had evidently forgotten[Pg 24] me, so I slipped out again, and walked several blocks, watching the manners, and catching snatches of the conversation of Americans.

These were the snatches of conversation which I caught from the women as they passed me. The men were mostly silent and glum.

This curious country, that Aunt Gwendolin says has gone away ahead of the[Pg 25] rest of the world, why do its women talk more about dress than anything else? And why have its men such pushing, hurrying, knock-you-down-if-you-stand-in-my-way faces?

When I got back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste I found my aunt ready to take me to the milliner's to be "outfitted with hats."

Walking a block or two we entered a much-decorated room, and at my aunt's request an attendant brought several hats for our inspection—curious-looking things like straw bee-hives, or huge wasps' nests, covered over largely with wings and the heads of poor little dead birds, ends and loops of ribbon, roses and leaves, looking as if they were only half sewed on and liable to tumble off if touched, and long feathers, buckles, and pins. My aunt selected several,[Pg 26] fitted them on my head, and declared they were very becoming to my Spanish style of beauty. I, almost in tears, whispered into her ear, so the attendant would not hear me, "I shall not have to wear them where any one can see me, shall I?" Aunt Gwendolin smiled (the attendant was looking) and replied sweetly, "Yes, they are very pretty, indeed."

We in China could never kill our birds and wear them on our heads—the breasts of our beautiful mandarin ducks, the wings of our gold and silver pheasants, the heads of our pretty parrakeets—we never could do it—we would feel like murderers. Our majestic-looking wild geese, that fly over our heads in flocks sometimes thirty miles in length, going south in the autumn and north in the spring, we never molest them.[Pg 27] The Buddhists believe that all geese perform an aerial pilgrimage to the holiest of the lakes in the mountains every year, transporting the sins of the neighbourhood, returning to the valley with a new stock of inspiration for the people in the locality where they choose to alight. Here in this civilised country—I have been reading in one of their magazines that grandmother loaned me—they catch the beautiful water-fowls, kill them, and hack off their downy breasts to make ladies' hats. And the little young birds starve in the nest, because the mother never returns to feed them. Ugh! Civilised countries are dreadful!

"The cold weather is not over yet," she said, "and while we are about it I shall select some necessary furs."

I had noticed as we were passing through the streets that the ladies had curious looking things around their necks and shoulders, capes trimmed with heads of animals, and tails and paws of the same. I wondered the dogs did not bark at them. They looked like some hunters who had been out shooting and had thrown their dead game over their shoulders.

The furrier whose shop we had entered seemed to know my aunt, and as soon as she said, "I want you to show me some of your best fur garments suitable for a young lady," he brought down from some shelves the greatest quantity of fur articles, ermine, mink, seal, sable, all covered with heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, mouths, teeth, whiskers. I shuddered and drew back when my aunt went to place one around my neck.

"Ha, ha, ha," softly and politely laughed the shopkeeper, "the young lady has not become acquainted with the newest thing in furs, so beautiful and realistic—so charming!"

Aunt Gwendolin frowned. She evidently did not like my display of nerves, and resolutely fastened around my throat an ermine scarf with seven or eight heads, and twice as many tails. "There!" she said, "that will do nicely, it is very becoming to her creamy Spanish."

A muff was then chosen to match the scarf, with just as many horrible grinning heads, and little snaky tails; and paying for them, my aunt ordered them sent home.

On my return home I dropped a silver coin into the housemaid's hand, and told her when the parcel of books arrived she was to carry it up to my room and say nothing about it. She seemed to understand, and asked no questions.

An hour later she came to my door with the books in her arms, and found me examining my new set of furs.

"Betty," I cried, throwing wide the door of my room, "come in and tell me all about my furs—how the man that sells them gets all those little heads and tails. Where do they get them? And how do they catch them? I want to know it all."

"Oh, miss," said Betty, stepping briskly into the room, nothing loath to accept the invitation to examine the new furs, "they lives out in the wild woods—these little critters, an' men[Pg 31] poisons 'em, an' traps 'em. An' when they is dead, they skins 'em, tans the skins, an' makes 'em up into muffs, an' boas, an' tippets, an' fur coats, an' so forth, an' so forth."

"Poison and trap them!" I cried, "doesn't that make the little creatures suffer?"

"Yes, miss, ain't it awful?" returned Betty, making a wry face. "They's a book just been throwed in at the door to-day telling all as to how it is done. The American Humane Association has wrote the book—they don't approve of killin' things. I'll bring it up an' let you read it."

Suiting the action to the thought Betty rushed away down to the kitchen for the book.

She returned in a few moments with a small pamphlet, and thrust it hastily into my hand—my aunt was calling her—and hastened away.

I glanced down at a picture on the front page—a hare caught by the hind leg in a trap. A most agonised expression was on the little animal's face. Below the picture was the title of the story, "The Cost of a Skin." I dropped into a rocking-chair and read the story:

"We'd never do it in China—never!" I cried, throwing the leaflet from me. "It is only this horrid, civilised America that could be so terribly cruel! I shall never wear my furs—never! I shall beg grandmother—she seems to be the only civilised being I know that has any heart—to allow me to go without them!"

I looked again at my leaflet, which I had picked from the floor, and continued to read the words of the author:

I rose from my chair and thrust my headed and tailed ermine scarf and muff into a box, and pushed them far back on the closet shelf.

"Stay there! Stay there!" I cried. "The Yellow Pearl will have nothing to do with civilisation!"

"Yellow Pearl," I said to myself, accusingly, half an hour later, "you know that they have fur in China, that the rich wear fur-lined garments." "Yes," I replied to that accusing I, "the rich wear fur-lined garments, but they procure the fur from animals that have to be killed for food, or for man's self-preservation. They are not caught in[Pg 37] the cruel steely traps of America. Linings, mind you, linings," I reiterated, "to keep them warm, not the heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, teeth of the little animals to bedizen their persons."

March 9th, 1——

The result of all the pinching, puckering, fitting, which I underwent at the establishment of the Parisienne modiste is that I am walking around arrayed in taffeta silk, and squeezed out of all my natural shape by the steel waist. My sleeves are made so that my shoulders appear very much nearer my ears than nature intended them to be. My hair is done up in a quarter hundred—more or less—little puffs, and a quarter hundred hairpins are scratching my scalp. I have had to lay aside my nice soft shoes, and pretty Chinese slippers,[Pg 38] and am gyrating around in tight shoes, with a French heel somewhere about the middle of the sole. I almost fell downstairs the first day I wore them; and when I wanted to take them off my Aunt Gwendolin was indignant.

"You'll learn to walk in them soon," she said; "you are in a civilised country now, and must do as the people do here. You cannot pad around without heels any more."

I look ugly, and I feel cross. I have reached the land of bondage! Oh, for my beautiful China silks, thick, soft, lustrous, and loose enough to be comfortable—which have been bundled up and put in a large cedar chest in the attic. Oh, for my own country, my heathen China, with its dress thousands of years old in fashion! What frights some of the women in this stuck-up country[Pg 39] look—in their tight waists, showing their figures! That may be pretty enough—if really modest, which my country denies—when they are young, slender, lithe; but fancy a great stout woman in a "shirt waist," as they call it, with a belt defining her girth, and perhaps a tight skirt making her look positively vulgar. Ugh!

Grandmother has had me in her room; indeed, she took me in a couple of days after my arrival, and locking the door to keep out all intruders, she talked long and solemnly to me. She was shocked when she learned that I had scarcely heard of Christ, and that I had never read the Bible.

"My dear child," she cried, "what was your father thinking about? Why did he so neglect your religious education?"

"He always said that he was going to bring me over to you, grandmother, to teach me religion," I replied. "I know all about Confucius and Buddha, my nurses used to talk about them; but they never mentioned Christ."

The result of this conversation is, that grandmother has me go into her room for a half-hour every day to study the Bible. We began at the first chapter of Genesis, and already we have got as far as Abraham.

Between times I am reading the Chinese books in my own room upstairs, and I learn from one of them that more than a century before the birth of Abraham, China had two great and good men; fully as good as Abraham I should think,—Yao and Shun—who framed laws that govern the nation to-day. Why did not Yao and Shun get a "call"[Pg 41] as Abraham did? I think they deserved one fully as well.

After we get through our study of Genesis and Abraham, grandmother usually has a little talk about that great and beautiful man, Christ; telling me how kind and gentle he was, and how he always considered the good of others rather than his own good.

She wanted to know what I meant, and I told her that my nurses had told me about China's ideal and model, the "Princely Man," and I thought the Christ must be he.

"More, much more than Confucius, the Princely Man," returned my grandmother. "It is my sincere hope, my dear granddaughter, that your mind may become illumined as you proceed with[Pg 42] your study, until you understand the vast difference between the Princely Man and Christ."

"There is a pretty legend about Christ," she added, "which says that as He walked the earth sweet flowers grew in the path behind Him. The legend is true in a spiritual sense—wherever His steps have pressed the earth all these centuries, flowers have sprung up, flowers of love, kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness." Then grandmother began to sing softly, in the sweetest old trembly soprano voice one ever heard, asking me to join her:

March 10th, 1——

We went to church this morning, it[Pg 43] being Sunday—Aunt Gwendolin, Uncle Theodore, and I. Grandmother was indisposed and did not go. It was my first attendance at church, for Aunt Gwendolin said I had nothing fit to wear until she dressed me up.

"Are you going, Theodore?" I heard my aunt, through the opening in the floor, say in a surprised tone, as if she were not accustomed to seeing him go.

"I think I'll go this morning," returned my uncle, continuing to brush his coat, which act had prompted my aunt's question. "I want to see how our fashionable way of worshipping God will impress the little Celestial. It will be her first attendance at church."

Aunt Gwendolin came up to my room and selected the gown I was to wear, in fact my whole outfit. She took from the wardrobe a white French cloth[Pg 44] costume (it was very much in harmony with my feelings that I should appear in America's church for the first time in the colour which China uses for mourning), and one of the beehive hats with several birds on it.

"Oh, I can't wear that if anybody is going to see me," I cried when she brought out the hat.

"Well, if you are going to make a scene," said my aunt curtly, "wear this," and she brought from its bandbox a "sailor" covered with white drooping ostrich feathers. "You'll look sweet in that," she added; "and when you get more used to civilised head-gear you can wear the others."

"Oh, dear, no," she answered impatiently, "but there is nothing gained in[Pg 45] being a fright—were there no Christians in your country to hold meetings?"

Without waiting for my reply, she dived into the closet and brought out my fur tippet, but I begged so hard not to wear it, that she said as the day was mild I need not.

I'll have to see grandmother and have it disposed of before another churchgoing time.

Aunt Gwendolin herself was beautifully dressed in a light blue-gray; at a glance she looked like a passing cloud dropped down from the sky, but a closer inspection revealed a mystery of shirrings, tuckings, smockings, frillings never seen in a cloud. In reply to my questions she had told me the name of all the strange puckerings. I'd like the cloud-gown better without the puckerings.

"What do we go to church for?" I asked as we were being whirled along in the automobile, which was controlled by a very good-looking young man whom they called "Chauffeur."

"Why—Why—What a heathen you are! To worship God, of course," said my aunt shortly.

"Does God require us to wear such fashionable clothes to worship Him?" I asked, feeling wearied with the effort of dressing—collars, belts, buckles, pins, gloves, corsets, shoes, hats, buttonings, and lacings.

Uncle Theodore laughed, and Aunt Gwendolin frowned, and looked carefully round to see whether her white taffeta petticoat was touching the ground—we were by this time at the church and walking from the automobile to the church door.

We were there but a few moments when a number of young men and women, dressed in black robes, with white ties under their chins, came in through some back door behind the gallery where they afterwards stood, and began to sing.

"Lead me to the Li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight," sang one young woman, all in a tremble.

Then the woman screeched in as high notes as her voice could reach, I am sure, and the man ran away down to a growl.

After the whole company had repeated "Lead me to the Light," they began to sing against each other, all in a jumble; they seemed to finish the song in some foreign language. I did not know a[Pg 48] word of it. I suppose as it was for the worship of God it did not matter whether any one else understood it or not.

After the singing was done, a man—the minister they call him—Uncle Theodore has since told me—stood up before the people and read a verse from the Bible—one of the verses I have not got to yet in my reading with grandmother. Then he began to talk about the hardships of poor missionaries out in what he called "the unchristianised West of our own country," and the awful need of the natives. It was "missionary Sunday;" a bulletin lying in the seat acquainted us with the fact, and the music and the sermon were to be of a missionary character.

The minister told a story about a young man who had gone out as a missionary to the Indians, who was living[Pg 49] in a shack, twelve by fourteen, cooking his own meals, and eating and sleeping in the one room. He had not salary enough to pay his board.

When the minister had talked half an hour, and had us all wrought up about the woes of the missionary, and the needs of the heathen, he closed his sermon. And we leaned back in our seats and were lulled into forgetfulness of the grievous story, by low-toned, dreamy, soothing music, from the echo organ. Aunt Gwendolin has told me since that the organ cost seventy thousand dollars.

Christians are most extraordinary people; they rouse one all up to the pitch of being willing to do most anything by a heart-rending address, and then scatter all the impression by their music. When the organist had finished, I wasn't the[Pg 50] least worried about the ills of the missionary or the Indians. Indeed all the people looked relieved, as if a burden had been lifted from them.

When we were again in the automobile Aunt Gwendolin said: "Didn't the church look well this morning? It has been undergoing some repairs, and three thousand dollars' worth of cathedral oak has been added to the wainscoting."

"That would pay the board of the young missionary among the Indians for a long time," I said.

Perhaps Uncle Theodore thought she shut me up too peremptorily, for he said: "Paying that young man's board out in the West would never be noticed or talked about, my dear; other denominations would pay no attention to[Pg 51] it, while this cathedral oak wainscoting—Oh my! Oh my! will excite the admiration and jealousy of the whole city."

"I love beautiful churches," returned my Aunt Gwendolin poutingly. "I shall take Pearl around to see St. George's, where the altar cost five thousand dollars. It will be an education to the girl. A man gave it in memory of his wife, which was a very beautiful thing to do."

"Pooh!" exclaimed my uncle, "why didn't he do something for some poor wretches who need it, in memory of his wife?"

While they had been talking I was looking at the curious, high-crowned, black, shiny hats (a stove-pipe, Uncle Theodore has since told me they ought to be called) which the men all were wearing. They seem to be as essential in America as the queue is in China.

In the afternoon grandmother invited me into her private room to have a quiet talk with her, she said.

"Everything is very new to you, my dear Margaret—Pearl I believe your father called you—in this country, and you must come to me with all your troubling problems. I feel for you, my dear grandchild, and do not fear to say anything, anything at all you feel like saying to me."

She took my small yellow hands in hers, and looked at me lovingly, saying as she gently chafed them that they were very pretty and plump.

There were things puzzling me, had puzzled me that very day, and I felt inclined to place them before my kind granny.

"My dear child," said my grandmother, "the word simply means the followers of Christ."

Grandmother raised her glasses from her eyes, placed them on her forehead, and stared at me in a puzzled way for a few seconds, then she said:

She was looking at me and I must answer, although fearing that I had hurt her feelings in some way by my abrupt contradiction.

"You said that the man, Christ, was very kind and gentle, and that He always thought of the good of others before His own," I continued. "Would He pay thousands upon thousands for a grand church, in which to sit and be happy, and[Pg 54] feel rich; and thousands upon thousands for a great organ to play sweet music and make Him forget the world's sorrows, while His brothers were too poor to pay for their board——?"

Jumping from my seat I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her wrinkled, quivering face, saying, "You are a follower of the Princely Man—of the good man, Christ, you are, grandmother——"

A peremptory rap at the door stopped further conversation, and when I opened it, a lady was ushered in to see grandmother.

I was introduced to Mrs. Paton, of whom I had before heard my grandmother speak as "a great Christian worker," and whom I heard my Aunt[Pg 55] Gwendolin denounce as a "tiresome crank, spoiling every one's comfort." I looked very earnestly at the lady, trying to fit her into the two definitions.

Mrs. Paton began almost at once to talk about the "temperance movement," and the "evils of intoxicating liquors," and "the selfishness of the onlooking world, who were not the real sufferers."

She left after the expiration of half an hour, and grandmother said to me: "You would not understand Mrs. Paton's remarks, my dear. You will have to be longer in the country before you know what is meant by the 'evils of intoxicating liquors.' Did you ever really see a drunken man?"

"No, grandmother," I said, "I never even heard of one. Drunk!—what does it mean?"

"Oh," said grandmother, "something[Pg 56] that as a country we have reason to be terribly ashamed of—men drinking intoxicating liquors until they lose their senses——"

Another rap interrupted grandmother, and we were called out to tea. The only really delightful thing they do in this America is to drink tea, just the same as we do in China.

I see how it is; they have a new Confucius in this America, but they do not live the new Confucius—none but my dear grandmother.

March 12th, 1——

It is settled—but not without a fight—I do not have to wear the furs with heads and tails, and all the rest. To please my grandmother, who was so afraid I might catch cold, I submitted to accepting a plain set, a set which[Pg 57] dear grandmother had selected herself. Aunt Gwendolin was furious, and fought hard that I should be compelled to wear the first set, but grandmother overruled. I see the mother can be the head of the house in America when she chooses.

It was the kittens that decided grandmother. One day she and I were out for a short walk, and we met a girl with two little kittens around her hat—not real live kittens, but the skins of two little gray and white kittens stuffed with cotton batting, and with glass eyes, arranged as if meeting and sparring around the crown of that girl's hat. "It is barbaric," said grandmother. "There are two kinds of heathen. There are the heathen who are born such, and there are the heathen by choice. And if we look about us we must [Pg 58]acknowledge we have a great multitude of them at home." It almost made grandmother sick, and she decided at once that I could get the furs changed. "I never seem to have awakened to the enormity of it before," said poor grandmother with a sigh. How glad I am that the mother can be the head of the house in America when she chooses!

A young man whom we all call Cousin Ned, because he is a distant relative of the family, comes here to grandmother's house very often. He talks incessantly about "first base," "second base," and "third base," "innings," and "runs," "pitchers," and "short-stop," "outfield," and "infield," "right-fielder," "centre-fielder," and "left-fielder," "scores," and "catchers." It is all Greek to grandmother and me, but we can get him to talk about nothing[Pg 59] else. I asked Uncle Theodore the first time I saw this cousin of ours, what he was doing—his home is many miles away, and he is boarding in the city.

"He is here ostensibly to attend the University," said Uncle Theodore, "but Ned is a great sport."

This was rather unusual, for Uncle Theodore rarely sings, and I am sure I do not know what he meant by it.

By reason of the relationship, Cousin Ned feels free to come to the house without ceremony at all hours of the day. Most of the time he is wearing a[Pg 60] "sweater," with a large letter on the breast.

March 30th, 1——

Aunt Gwendolin decided, soon after I came, that I must begin at once to take lessons in Spanish. The teachers are now visiting the house daily, one to teach me the Spanish language, and the other to instruct me how to sing Spanish songs. Señor de Bobadilla has just been here, and I have been screeching away for half an hour in a small room where my aunt has had a piano placed specially for my use. She says she is not going to "bring me out"—that means introduce me to society, grandmother says; that was one of the puzzling questions I carried to her—until I can sing Spanish songs. I see through it all, because of the conversation I heard through the[Pg 61] floor opening; she thinks by that means to convince her society friends that I am Spanish instead of Chinese. How very funny!

There was a small dinner-party at this house the other evening, but of course I could not be at the table. I have not "come out." Grandmother argued for my appearing, but Aunt Gwendolin was firm to the contrary, and she won. Ancestors are not much regarded in America.

My aunt gave me permission, however, to look in on the guests when they were seated at the table. She had a large mirror fastened to the door, and by leaving it open at a particular angle I could watch—myself unseen behind a curtain—the ceremony of dining as practised in America.

Mercy! those women with bare arms[Pg 62] and bare shoulders sitting there before the men! How could they help blushing for themselves! I just gave one glance at them, then ran away and hid my face!

Having the evening to myself, I went up to my room and enjoyed myself reading my Chinese books. My aunt said that I was to stay at the curtained door, and learn the ways of society by watching the manners of the guests at dinner; but I saw all I wanted to see in one glance. I'd like to carry all those women little shawls to put around their bare shoulders. Mrs. Delancy's was the barest of them all, but I have heard my aunt talk since about how "elegantly gowned Mrs. Delancy was."

A strange thing happened up in my room; I opened one of my books just at the page where it tells about the Chinese[Pg 63] ambassadors, on the occasion of their visits to Christian countries, noticing with grave disapproval the décollete costumes of the women at the state functions. What wonder!—if they looked anything like the women at my aunt's dinner party!

Señor de Bobadilla says that I am making remarkable progress with my Spanish songs; he tells grandmother in a half-whisper, as if fearing to let me hear him, that I am very bright and intelligent; he congratulated her on having such a prodigy for a grandchild. Oh, cunning Señor de Bobadilla, you want to continue my lessons indefinitely. I am learning to quiver and shake, and trill, run up the scale, and down the scale, jump from a note away down low to a note away up high. I'll soon be able to sing "Lead me to the Light," as well as the church choir.

The professor looks very Spanish in brown velvet coat, red necktie, shoes shining like a looking-glass, a moustache waxed into long points on each side of his top lip, and hair hanging in a curling brown mat down to his shoulders. Seated at the piano, his thin yellow fingers sprawl over the white and black ivory keys, while in response to my efforts he keeps ejaculating, "Goot! Goot! Excellent! Superb!"

I, dressed in muslin, cream-coloured ground dashed over with wild roses, or blue ground with white chrysanthemums (the latter is not very becoming to my yellow skin) stand at his left hand stretching my mouth to the utmost, trying to give utterance to the tones he is striking on the piano, and trying to look Spanish, too.

Señor de la Prisa is teaching me the[Pg 65] Spanish language—a lesson every day, and I am beginning to jabber the strange gibberish like a parrot: "Es un dia bonita. El viento es frio. Se esta haciendo tarde. Es temprano." I'll soon believe myself that I am really Spanish, and have never come from "the country of yellow gods and green dragons," as Uncle Theodore calls my dear native land.

I have been watching people, reading the daily newspapers and my Chinese books, and asking grandmother questions until I feel very wise. I am almost as wise as a real American now.

Some weeks following Mrs. Paton's Sunday visit to my grandmother, I was out for a short walk of pleasure when I overtook her. She was pleased to meet me again, she said, and we walked along together, chatting, at least[Pg 66] she talked and I listened, sometimes asking questions.

"Just think of it, my dear," she said, "this is the day on which men are applying for licenses to sell poison to kill their fellow-men."

Then she told me story after story of the terrible misery caused by intoxicating drinks, and the sin and crime they caused people to commit, until I was almost in tears.

A noise of voices and tramping feet interrupted her, and there came around a corner, marching toward us, a long procession of men.

"Who are they?" I inquired, slipping my arm into hers. I had never before seen so many men together.

"Yes," she added, "men who will not[Pg 67] work until their employers pay them the amount they think they ought to be paid."

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! the great crowd passed us in long file, dusty, worn, hard-worked men. My heart swelled as I looked at their strained faces; I could not go any farther on my walk; I had to rush home to ask grandmother questions.

"Grandmother!" I cried, panting into her room, "strikes in a country that follows Christ!—And men asking for a license to sell poison to their fellow-men!"

She took my face in her soft old withered hands, and holding it was about to speak, when my Aunt [Pg 68]Gwendolin, who had overheard me, came into the room and cried indignantly:

"That crank of a Mrs. Paton has been talking to the girl; I know her very words. That woman should be forcibly restrained!"

Grandmother did not answer her, but continued to stroke my face until I grew quieter, and until my aunt had left the room. Then in reply to my many pointed questions she told me in brief, that the reason men got licenses to sell liquor was that they paid money for them, and the country granted them for the sake of the great revenue they brought into its treasury.

"Oh, grandmother!" I cried, raising my head from her lap, "when Britain tried to induce the Chinese Emperor to legalise the opium traffic because of the import duty, he said, 'Nothing shall[Pg 69] induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people'!"—I had read all this in my books on China.

I went up to my own room, and half an hour later I heard my Uncle Theodore, to whom my grandmother had repeated my words, say:

"She is preternaturally sharp. No girl of this country thinks of the things she does. I suppose they develop younger in those Eastern climes."

"It is all new to her," said my grandmother; "she has just come in upon it and sees it with fresh eyes. The girls here have grown up with it and become used to it by degrees."

"Oh, it's that Oriental blood—half witch, half demon—that's at the bottom of all her tantrums. The Orientals[Pg 70] are all a subtle lot, and we as a country are wise to make them stay at home," said my Aunt Gwendolin.

April 10, 1——

Aunt Gwendolin has discovered my Chinese books that I had intended to keep hidden in my room. She came in suddenly one day and found me seated in the midst of them.

"What's this? What's this?" she cried in great agitation. "How are we ever going to get you into the ways of Christianised, civilised folk if you keep feeding your mind on literature about uncivilised people?" And she gathered my books up into her arms and carried them away.

I have them all read, however, and she cannot carry away the thoughts they have left in my mind. What great[Pg 71] creatures we human beings are! What a world with which no one else can meddle we can carry around in our little brains and hearts! It is all the same whether they are American or Chinese brains or hearts.

"I see now where she has gotten all her smart sayings about the Chinese," my aunt said to my grandmother and Uncle Theodore. "How can we ever hope to do anything with her when she is being poisoned by such stuff as is in those books? 'For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain' commend me to the Chinese!"

"I'll sicken her of the Chinese," she added: "I'll bring one into the kitchen to cook; then perhaps she'll feel more compunction about acknowledging that she is part Celestial. She actually seems as if she were proud of the fact now."

Grandmother remonstrated, but my aunt replied: "I have always been wanting to try a Chinese cook; they are really the world's cooks and so careful and clean, it is said. Then I would like to give Pearl enough of it. She will not be so fond of claiming kinship with the cook."

The result of all this was that inside of twenty-four hours a Chinaman was installed in the kitchen—and the biscuits are perfect.

His name is Yee Yick; of course he has three names, all Chinamen have; but trying to become Americanised they use only two in this country.

My aunt has decided that it is sufficient to call him Yick. "The English call their servants by their surnames," was all the explanation she made.

Yick is a dude; he has a suit for almost[Pg 73] every day in the week, and is very vain of his appearance. His queue is rolled up around his head, which is a sign that he has not yet abandoned his home gods. He is very anxious to learn English, and Betty tells me that he has a slate hanging up in the kitchen on which he is writing English words every spare moment.

I had watched Yick a good deal, but I never exchanged a word with him, until the event occurred about which I am going to write; and I know he never dreamed that I could speak his language. Poor Yick! if he is "chief cook and bottle-washer," as my aunt says, he is my countryman, and I cannot help taking an interest in him.

One day I walked to the end of the veranda which runs the whole length of the house, and glancing in through[Pg 74] the kitchen window as I passed, I saw Yick making his tea-biscuits. He had the flour and shortening all mixed, and raising the bowl of milk which was on the table, he took a great mouthful, and then began to force it out in a heavy spray through his teeth into the dish of prepared flour, in the same manner as the Chinese laundryman sprinkles clothes.

I wrung my hands, and cried within myself, "Oh, Yick, you terrible man! You horrible little pigtail!"

But I slipped back to the front of the veranda without making an audible sound. How could I tell on poor Yick, and bring down such an awful storm on his head as would result? He was a stranger in a strange land, and it was my duty to protect him. Was it such a very wicked thing he had done? He[Pg 75] never killed little birds, anyway, and wore them on his head; nor trapped cunning little animals, and strung their heads and tails around his neck! I decided I would not tell on him.

But that evening at dinner I passed the plate of white, flaky biscuits without taking any. I sat at grandmother's left hand, and when she was not looking, I slipped the biscuit which she had taken away from her bread-and-butter plate, and let it slide from my hand down onto the floor. Dear, absent-minded grandmother never missed it. Aunt Gwendolin and Uncle Theodore ate three biscuits each.

"It seems to me that Yick keeps constantly improving in his biscuits," said my aunt, as she reached for her third.

"They ought to be better than other[Pg 76] people at most everything," returned my Uncle Theodore, "they have been a long while practising. They may have been making biscuits before Moses was born. The Chinaman possesses a history which dwarfs the little day of modern nations. It is a saying of theirs that from the time heaven was spread and earth was brought into existence China can boast a continuous line of great men."

That evening when my aunt and uncle were out, and grandmother had gone to bed, I slipped down to the kitchen and stood face to face with Yick.

He almost kotowed to me, but commanding him to stand up, I told him in[Pg 77] plain Chinese that I had seen him mixing the biscuits, and disapproved of his plan.

His hair almost seemed to stand on end when he heard me speaking his native tongue. He started to tremble, and his knees bent under him.

"Yee Yick," I continued, in the language he thoroughly understood, "if you ever put the milk in your mouth again, and sift it out through your teeth into the flour, I shall inform the mistress of the house, and you shall be dismissed!"

Trembling all over Yick began rapidly in Chinese to promise that he would never, never be guilty of the act again. Then, as if scarcely able to believe that I could understand his native tongue, he repeated his promise in English.

"No, missee, Yee Yick not putee milk in mouthee! No, missee, Yee Yick not putee milk in mouthee!"

I assured him in Chinese that I would keep the secret of what I had seen on condition that he would keep his promise, and went out of the kitchen, leaving the poor fellow almost in tears. I believe he scarcely knows whether to regard me as a spirit or a being of flesh and blood, it is so hard for him to understand how I can speak Chinese.

The plumbers have closed up the hole in the floor, so I shall hear no more about the "wily Celestial."

April 20th, 1——

While I have been waiting to be prepared to "come out," I determined to walk around the streets and see some more of the doings of Americans. Grandmother gave her consent, with a warning to keep off certain streets.

"It is quite safe for a young girl to[Pg 79] walk alone in most places in our country, thank God," said dear grandmother devoutly, "and I am very willing that you should look about you. I remember when I was a girl I liked to walk and see things, too."

"It is so plebeian for her to go tramping through the streets," she said to my grandmother. "Cannot she be satisfied to go out every day with us in the automobile? The grounds are spacious around this place, and she can have all the exercise she wants right here."

A week after my aunt's fiat I read in the daily newspaper that in the "House of Jacob," a certain Jewish synagogue downtown, there was conducted on a[Pg 80] certain afternoon every week sewing classes for young Jewish girls. Instantly I decided that I wished to visit it, and see those "Children of Abraham," about whom grandmother had been teaching me in the Bible, those people who were God's favourites, and I set about laying plans to accomplish my desire.

Happily, when that afternoon came around, Aunt Gwendolin went out to a Bridge Party—I have not yet found out what that means, but I hoped that afternoon that she would have a good many bridges to cross, so it would keep her a long time away—and it was Betty's day out.

Previous to this I had found in a closet a black skirt and shawl formerly worn by grandmother, and a bonnet which she had laid aside.

As soon as my aunt had safely [Pg 81]departed (I had seen Betty go an hour before), I hastily threw the heavy black satin skirt over mine, draped the black embroidered silk shawl around my shoulders, and tied on the bonnet. With a black chiffon veil, which was not very transparent, tied over my face, I felt very comfortable. It was quite proper for an elderly lady to go anywhere she wished.

Grandmother was taking her customary afternoon nap, as I slipped down the backstairs into the kitchen. Yick, preparing the flour for his biscuits, saw me and started. I could not keep my secret from him; I decided to take him into my confidence and trust him.

So lifting my veil, I looked at him markedly, and told him rapidly in Chinese that he was not to tell any one he had seen me.

He smiled, winked, and nodded knowingly, assuring me in voluble Chinese that he would keep my secret.

"You no tellee onee me," he said significantly, with grimaces and gesticulations.

Going out through the back door, and down through a lane at the back of the house, I was soon on the street.

Taking the street-cars—in which Aunt Gwendolin thinks it is very plebeian to ride—I was soon whirled down in front of the "House of Jacob."

What a mercy it is, in this curious America, that so many people are plebeian and ride in street-cars that they do not pay any attention to one another. Nobody noticed my grandmotherly garb.

A woman reporter entered the front door of the synagogue along with me,[Pg 83] and I imagined that I was regarded with some deference—grandmother's old skirt and shawl are made of rich material.

I followed the reporter around the room in which the classes were held, a few yards in the rear.

There they were, a hundred or more little Jewish children, red-headed, black-headed, blonde-headed, and Jewish women had them arranged in groups, and were teaching them to sew.

"These little red-heads are typical Russian Jews," I heard the director of the ceremonies say to the reporter, "only in this country a few months. There's one that has the marked Jewish features," she added, pointing to another type of child. "They are all fond of jewellery—an Oriental trait."

Dear, dear, I only stayed a short time looking at them. They are not much[Pg 84] different from others, those people who struck rocks and water gushed out, had manna and quails rained down on them, and walked through a wilderness led by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. I have seen hundreds of Chinese who looked just as remarkable. I cannot understand why God showed partiality to Abraham's children.

I went out onto the street again, and wandered on till I came to what I recognized as Chinese quarters. There were the laundries of Hoy Jan, Lem Tong, Lee Ling, and the shops and warehouses of Moy Yen, Man Hing, and Cheng Key. The dear names; it did me almost as much good to look at them as it could to make a visit to my own country.

As I walked down the quiet street, a wistful oval face looked down on me[Pg 85] from a window. A Chinese woman's face, and the first I had seen since coming to America. Stepping into a little shop near by, a shop containing preserved ginger, curious embroidered screens, little ivory elephants and jade ornaments, I asked who lived in the house where I saw the face at the window, and was informed that it was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Yet.

It was drawing near dinner time in my grandmother's house; already I had stayed out longer than I had intended: I had no time to investigate further regarding Mrs. Yet.

When I got back to the house I found that my aunt had returned before me, but fortunately had not noticed my absence.

When Yick walked into the dining room with the steaming plum-pudding for our dinner, Aunt Gwendolin said:

"Yick, who was that little old woman I saw coming up our back lane half an hour ago?"

"How stupid those Chinese are," said my aunt, when Yick had left the room. "I certainly saw an old woman, and there that creature never saw her!"

The Creature had helped a young woman take off her black bonnet and shawl, and escape up the backstairs half an hour before.

I suppose it's "that Oriental blood—half witch, and half demon" that's at the bottom of my tantrum of this afternoon.

April 25th, 1——

Mrs. Paton has been in to make another Sunday visit to grandmother; she[Pg 87] is an old friend and privileged to come when she chooses—and as before I had the privilege of hearing her talk.

"We are calling ourselves a Christian country," she said to grandmother, "and yet we care more for pleasure than for anything else. An actress is paid more money in one month than a preacher of the Gospel is paid in a year. Does not that show what the people of our country care most for? Going over to Christianise the heathen forsooth! We are not following Christ ourselves! What an example we set them! How can we expect them to think much of our religion when they see it has done so little for us?

"Christianity is despised, and rightly so. It is called cant, and so it is; going around with the Bible under its arm, and never obeying its precepts. We want[Pg 88] more men overturning the tables of the money-changers, and upsetting the commercialism that is grinding other men down to starvation!"

Dear grandmother was not argumentative, and gently assented to all her visitor was saying.

"When this country is really following Christ itself," continued the visitor, "we shall see our wealthy men, instead of using their wealth to build palaces, and to minister to the pride of themselves in a thousand forms, choosing to lead the simple life, with personal expenditure cut down to a minimum, and their ability to minister to others increased to a maximum; in short we will find them following in the footsteps of their Lord. Man is really the richer as he decreases his wants, and increases his capacity to help."

When she rose to leave, at the end of an hour's chat, she said very solemnly to me as she held my hand in a farewell clasp:

"My dear, each man and woman is born with an aptitude to do something impossible to any other. You have an aptitude that the world has no match for. It is your aptitude for your own peculiar and immediate duty."

Oh, how solemn the words look as I write them down. What can my duty be? I wonder when I am going to find out. Aunt Gwendolin thinks it is to sing Spanish songs, I know; she firmly believes that to be my own peculiar and immediate duty. Grandmother thinks it is to study the Bible. And Uncle Theodore thinks it is to look artistically dressed. I have not come to a conclusion yet as to what I think myself.

When I get so terribly lonesome in this America that I cannot stand it any longer, I get Betty to steal down my yellow silk out of the box in the attic, the one trimmed with green dragons, and I dress up in it, and put on my head the pretty embroidered band that the Chinese women wear instead of the hideous hats of America, and sweep up and down the room like a peacock with a spreading tail, Betty going into raptures over my appearance, sometimes laughing hysterically, and sometimes almost in tears, because they have "no such grand clothes in America." If Aunt Gwendolin hears a noise and comes trailing along the hall, I jump into bed and cover myself up, yellow silk and all, and Betty proceeds to bathe my head for a headache—I really have one by that time.

How many foreigners they have in[Pg 91] this great country, Shanghai roosters, Turkey hens, Persian cats, Arabian horses. I wonder do all those foreign creatures feel something calling them back, back to their own country?

Cousin Ned spends most all his time at grandmother's at present. He had his arm broken at a baseball game, and is carrying it in a sling.

April 30th, 1——

We had the pleasure of Professor Ballington's company at lunch to-day—Uncle Theodore had him down in his office on some business, and insisted on his coming home and lunching with him.

When he and my uncle walked in unannounced they found grandmother, Aunt Gwendolin, and me in the sitting-room.

The professor shook hands with me in a very friendly manner; he really seemed pleased to see me. Oh, it is awfully nice for a girl in a strange land, feeling alone and lonesome, to have some one glad to see her. He had not spoken to me since that morning my uncle introduced me to him, but he has seen me a number of times when I have been out in the carriage with my grandmother and aunt.

He seated himself beside me, and we were just beginning to chat pleasantly when my Aunt Gwendolin said:

"Pearl, dear," she added sweetly, addressing me, "give us one of your stirring Spanish songs before we go to[Pg 93] lunch. You can sing better before lunch than after."

In obedience to the request—which I felt to be a command—I went to the piano and sang lightly the only Spanish song I could sing.

All the hearers seemed pleased with my effort. Professor Ballington looked calmly at me, but a smile lay behind his blue eyes. What did that smile mean?

We immediately sat down to lunch, and I was saved the embarrassment of having to tell that I could only sing one Spanish song. I guess Aunt Gwendolin made sure that no such a dilemma should occur.

By some stray remark of Uncle Theodore's, the conversation at the table turned on what he calls the "Asiatic Problem."

"Those dreadful Asiatics," interposed[Pg 94] Aunt Gwendolin, "so sly and subtle, they certainly should be shut out. They are a menace to any country."

"We can scarcely call the Chinese inferior, Miss Morgan," returned Professor Ballington. (How I wanted to give him a hug!) "The Chinaman despises our day of small things. Like the Jew he possesses a great national history which dwarfs that of all other nations. The golden era of Confucius lies back five hundred years before the coming of Christ, and the palmy days of the Chan dynasty antedate the period of David and Solomon."

"Oh, yes," said my aunt curtly, "but what has he accomplished in all[Pg 95] that time? We regard them as a nation of laundrymen."

"And they regard us as a nation of shopkeepers, and express lofty contempt for our greed of gain," said the professor.

"The idea!" said my aunt scornfully; "the fact is I always feel inclined to relegate the yellow-skinned denizens of China to the brute kingdom. Think of the dreadful things that happen there! Life itself is of small account to them!"

"One of our own writers," returned the professor, "says, 'Life is safer in Pekin than in New York.' Another writer adds, 'Chicago beats China for official dishonesty!'"

"It is a nation which for thousands of years has set more store by education than any other nation under the sun," said Uncle Theodore, "I have been reading up about them lately" (that's[Pg 96] because of me) "and it is perfectly astonishing, their high ideals. There are clearly marked gradations in society, and the highest rank is open only to highly educated men. First, the scholar; because mind is superior to wealth. Second, the farmer; because the mind cannot act without the body, and the body cannot exist without food and raiment. Third, the mechanic; because next to food and raiment shelter is necessary. Fourth, the tradesman; men to carry on exchange and barter become a necessity. And last of all the soldier; because his business is to destroy, and not to build up society. How does that compare with our country which makes more of the destroyer than of any other citizen? No man in China can rise to any position of responsibility except by education; money in this country will[Pg 97] carry a man into the legislature if he cannot write his own name."

"Chinese ethics are grand," added the professor. "Listen to the teaching of Lao Teh. 'I would meet good with good, but I would also meet evil with good, confidence with confidence—distrust with confidence. Virtue is both good and trustful.'"

"There isn't a doubt that they are a wonderful people," returned Uncle Theodore. "When our ancestors were wandering about in sheep-skins and goat-skins—if in any other skins but their own—China had a civilisation. Wrong seems to be not a question of right with us, but of might. We do not attempt to stop people taking chances on the stock exchange; taking such chances is perfectly legal, but taking chances in a lottery is a serious offence. If a[Pg 98] Chinaman takes chances in a little game which he understands, the morals of the community are endangered, and the poor Celestial must be hurried off to jail. We civilised people allow betting at a horse-race, and disallow it in other places. It is only the uninfluential people we send to jail for violation of the law."

They talked back and forth in an animated way for some time. I was dying to speak, but did not dare; but I am sure that once in the heat of the argument, Professor Ballington shot a glance across the table at me which spoke volumes. The same smile was in his eyes that was there when I sang for him my one Spanish song. What did he mean? Can he guess? Does he know that I am not Spanish?—that I am the Yellow Pearl?

May 5th, 1——

A very important item has appeared in the newspaper to-day—poor Lee Yet has fallen into trouble; rather, other people are trying to get him into trouble, and his wife, the little oval-faced Mrs. Yet, has been subpœnaed to appear as a witness in his behalf.

That dear little sad woman to have to go to court before all those Americans! "She shall not be studied and laughed at as a curiosity. She shall be dressed up like an American woman!" I declared as soon as I read the item.

In pursuance of my idea this afternoon, I a second time donned grandmother's garments—lucky that grandmother and I are the same height—and a second time left the house unnoticed by any one except Yick.

How very much at home I feel in the[Pg 100] garments of an elderly gentlewoman! Perhaps I am walking around the world the eighteen-year-old reincarnation of some dear, silken-clad old granny who inhabited this sphere hundreds of years ago.

It was opened by the little woman herself, who looked even sadder than when I first saw her. I addressed her in Chinese and lifting my veil, told her that I had come to make her a visit. She smiled in a pleased way, opened wide the door, and invited me into the house. She had never noticed the discrepancy between my antiquated dress and young face, and was blissfully unconscious that my garments were fifty years (more or less) out of date.

On my entrance something small and[Pg 101] pink moved behind a wire screen in the corner of the room, and Mrs. Yet clipclapped across the floor in her Chinese sandals, and picked up a little bundle of Chinese life, saying:

We talked about the baby, she sometimes speaking in Chinese, and sometimes in broken English, until we felt acquainted. Then I said:

"Mrs. Yet, I see by the newspaper that you will have to appear in court to give evidence in behalf of your husband. You do not want to go there in Chinese dress to be the subject of curiosity, and newspaper remark?"

The trouble which had left her face while she was talking about the baby, reappeared, and tears gathered in her almond eyes.

It was more than I could stand, and I cried, "Don't! Don't! Mrs. Yet—I have come to make things all right—I, your country-woman—speaking your own language. I am going to give myself the pleasure of dressing you like an American woman."

She remonstrated politely but I urged so strongly that at last she yielded; and it seemed when she did so as if a great burden had rolled from off her pale little face.

Immediately I went out to one of the great stores and ordered several costumes for her to "fit on"—I wasn't a child any longer. Grandmother's rich old skirt and shawl carried weight a second time (they could not see my face distinctly through the veil), for without hesitation a woman was despatched with the costumes.

This woman expert worked over the little Mrs. Yet, pinching, and pulling, and puckering, after the manner of American dressmakers, until she had her resplendent in a rich maroon-coloured wool costume, which exactly suited her olive skin, and made her almost a beauty.

At last the costume was satisfactorily settled and paid for. Oh, it is nice to have plenty of money to pay for all one wants. Father left me plenty (and although I do not control it until I come of a certain age, I get a liberal monthly instalment). I then went to a milliner's and bought a hat of a shade to harmonise with the costume. It was trimmed with ribbon, and deep, rich, maroon roses, and just looked too sweet for anything. "Youthful and stylish," as the milliner said. Why not? Mrs. Yet is young, and[Pg 104] she has just as good a right to look stylish as any American woman!

Happy? I should say I am! I never was happier in my life than I am to-night; even if I did steal out in grandmother's old clothes, and am a "sly, subtle Oriental."

May 10th, 1——

Oh, isn't it delightful to think that I have been instrumental in bringing all this to a happy issue! I shall carry this newspaper down to Mrs. Yet's home, and read to her this pleasing paragraph.

May 11th, 1——

A "Windfall," as Uncle Theodore calls it, has come to the family; grandmother was quite a "well-to-do" woman before, now she is a rich woman. Some investments in mines that grandfather made years ago have turned out to be of marvellous value, and the result is that my grandmother, my Uncle Theodore, my Aunt Gwendolin have greatly increased in wealth.

Aunt Gwendolin wanted to change the form of our living at once; she would introduce a page and a butler to our household staff. But grandmother said she was accustomed to a quiet life and preferred it. She insists, in spite of my aunt's protests, that a Chinese cook, a house-maid, a laundress, a gardener, and that lovely chauffeur ought to be enough to attend to the wants of four people.

Aunt Gwendolin stormed, and said it was so common to live as we did, that the English always kept a butler; but grandmother was firm. Another example that mothers in America can rule in the house if they wish.

Grandmother seemed a good deal concerned about this sudden acquisition of wealth. "An addition of silver to bell-metal does not add to the sweetness[Pg 107] of the tone," she said. "I fear an undue proportion of silver impairs more than bells."

May 13th, 1——

"BULLS AND BEARS IN A HARD STRUGGLE OVER WHEAT." Uncle Theodore read the great headline from his evening paper.

"Wild scenes prevailed to-day at the Board of Trade," he continued, "when John Smith began taking in his profits on wheat. It is estimated that he made a profit of over three hundred thousand in less than half an hour. Altogether he has cleared more than five millions on his wheat deal, and that within six months."

"Well," returned Uncle Theodore, "Smith is only a highly sensitive product of our so-called civilisation; the civilisation we are rushing and straining to carry to the quiet, unassuming people whom we call heathen. They have no millionaires, made so at the expense of their brothers. When we teach them all the graft, lynching, homicide, enormities of trusts, railroads, new religions, and quack remedies, we shall have them civilised."

I have been asking grandmother since how bulls and bears could struggle over wheat; and she tells me that the strugglers are not four-footed beasts at all, but men. I see how it is, bulls and bears are both cantankerous animals, which, if they come in conflict about[Pg 109] anything, are sure to have a fight; and men who have given evidence of like natures have been called after those fierce animals. It must be that way. I have asked grandmother whether that is not the way they came by their names, and she said she supposed it must be.

May 21st, 1——

My poor despised people have fallen upon hard lines. Lee Yet met with an accident on the street and had to be taken to the hospital where he must remain for weeks, and the day following Mrs. Yet was stricken down with diphtheria.

I was out in the automobile with grandmother and Aunt Gwendolin and chancing to pass the house of Lee Yet, I saw the awful word "Diphtheria." in black letters on a scarlet ground, tacked to the door.

That night when all his day's work was done I gave Yick a coin and asked him to go down and learn who was stricken with the disease.

He came back with the intelligence that it was poor little Mrs. Yet, and that there was no one waiting on her.

Fortunately the next afternoon Aunt Gwendolin went to "bridge," and again donning grandmother's garments, I slipped out of the house and down to the home of Mrs. Yet.

Meeting the doctor at the door, just as he was coming out, I ordered him to engage a nurse.

He looked at me in surprise, but I paid in advance for a week's service, so he could do nothing but obey me.

Opening the door I went into the front room of the little home and found the Celestial baby fretting away in its[Pg 111] cradle just as any other baby would fret if left to itself. I began to call it all sorts of pet names in Chinese, and the little slant-eye cooed and smiled back at me as if he really liked it.

A Chinese neighbour woman came in and told me that the baby was to be kept in the front room, while its mother was quarantined in a room upstairs. She further informed me that she came in twice a day to feed the baby, and the rest of the time he was alone.

"I have it! I have it!" I cried exultingly to my own interior self, "I know now my aptitude! I know now what I can do that is impossible to any other; it surely is impossible to any other—in this nation of an hour—to jabber the Chinese I can jabber to this eighteen months' old baby! I shall come here and take care of him, while[Pg 112] the trained nurse is taking care of the mother upstairs. I'll come for awhile every day anyway, and will pay the Chinese woman, who cannot leave her laundry-minding in the daytime, to take care of him at night! He's just as much a dear human baby as any purple-and-fine-linen American baby!"

How fortune favoured me that evening! Aunt Gwendolin announced that she was going in the morning on a month's visit to another city.

She was not much more than out the door the following day when I asked grandmother's permission to go where I liked every afternoon of the week.

Dear grandmother remonstrated a little—for fear I might tire myself too much—or might go where it was not wise to go, etc., etc. But I coaxed, and I won the day.

A strange event happened the very first afternoon. Just as I had passed through the lane at the rear of the house, who should be standing there at the back gate but the chauffeur, beside the automobile. He knew me despite my grandmotherly garb (as I had commenced going to the house of Mrs. Yet in grandmother's black shawl, bonnet, and skirt, I thought it better to continue doing so), politely touched his cap, and said if I had far to go it would take him but a few minutes to whirl me there in the automobile.

He is very good looking, and a gentleman. Uncle Theodore says he is a student who is taking this means to earn money further to pursue his medical studies. Sometimes Uncle Theodore familiarly calls him "Sawbones."

Nodding my assent, I entered the car, gave my directions, and soon was down in front of Mrs. Yet's small house.

I lifted the fretting little baby out of his cradle as soon as I entered, washed and dressed him, he kicking and squirming just as I suppose any other baby kicks and squirms. All the fear I had was that he would roll out of my hands, he was such a slippery little eel when his body was wet.

Where did I learn how to wash and dress a baby? I must have known how by instinct, for I never did it, or saw it done before. The Chinese woman who keeps the little Oriental at night told me the articles that went next the skin, and I had no trouble guessing about where to put the others. After one or two attempts I did it as well as a mother of twenty babies.

Every day I am being conveyed down to my duties in the automobile. The chauffeur seemed to divine that I would go out every afternoon (perhaps because Aunt Gwendolin was away) without my telling him, and is always waiting at the little rear gate in the back street to obey my commands.

Dear grandmother has never seen me either leave or return to the house, but necessarily Yick and Betty are both into the secret.

May 22d, 1——

A most impressive occurrence has[Pg 116] transpired, as Mrs. Paton would say. Just as I was coming out of Mrs. Yet's house this afternoon who should be passing but Professor Ballington!

I had not yet dropped my black chiffon veil, and glancing down from his great height of six feet, he looked me full in the face.

At the same instant he saw the word, "Diphtheria," in the great black letters on a scarlet ground, and stopping he exclaimed:

"Why, Miss Pearl! This is a surprise! Do you know where you are—what risk you are running? Diphtheria is contagious—very!"

"I know," I replied, "but some one has to mind a little Chinese baby in there. Its father is in the hospital, and its mother is shut in a room upstairs with diphtheria, and there is no one to stay[Pg 117] all afternoon with the baby if I do not. He's a Chinese baby, and of no account in America," I added. (I came within one of telling him that I was the only one who could call him pet names in the language he could understand; wouldn't Aunt Gwendolin have taken a fit?) "I just had to come," I pleaded, seeing his look of disapproval. "Each man and woman is born with an aptitude to do something impossible to any other, an aptitude that the world has no match for, Mrs. Paton says; and I have just found out that my aptitude, impossible to any other, is to mind this Chinese baby; no one else can match me in this!"

He looked less severe, almost kind, and half as if he could scarcely keep from laughing. Then he said, "Have you disinfectants? They are very necessary."

And I, decked in my grandmother's cast-off clothes, walked along the street, and into the "Palace Drug Store" with the elegantly dressed and caned professor.

He didn't seem the least ashamed of me; indeed, he was so polite that I forgot for the moment that my dress was anything odd—forgot it until I saw a young man clerk looking at me in an amused way; then I dropped my thick veil.

The professor insisted on my taking a certain kind of lozenge to hold in my mouth while I was in the infected house, and ordered quantities and quantities of disinfectants carried there, giving me instruction as to how they should be used.

When we were walking back to the house of Mrs. Yet, the professor [Pg 119]remarked that the Chinese were a people worth studying.

"Have you heard any of their poetry, Miss Pearl?" he questioned. And before I had time to reply—perhaps he thought he had no right to make me give an answer to that question, he is a "great philologist"—he continued: "Could anything be more exquisite than those lines to a plum blossom?

"A certain collection of Chinese lyrics," he continued, "'A Lute of Jade,' moved a London journal to observe that,[Pg 120] the more we look into Chinese nature as revealed by this book of songs, the more we are convinced that our fathers were right in speaking of man's brotherhood. Here's another to a calycanthus flower:

"This is Wang Seng-Ju's tiny poem," he added, "I presume a great many people in this greatly enlightened America never ascribe any sentiment to the Chinaman:

The moon had appeared in all her full-orbed glory, although it was early twilight, and the professor looked at me so earnestly while quoting those words that I actually believe I blushed.

"Ou-Yang Hein penned those lines," he added, raising his hat in adieu. But before we parted I made him promise to write out for me the Chinese verses he had quoted; and it is his beautifully written lines I have copied. I am going to learn them off by heart. How I would love to recite them at one of Aunt Gwendolin's "Drawing-rooms!"

The professor had gone but a few paces when he returned to inquire what hospital poor Lee Yet was in, saying[Pg 122] that he would go around and see how he was faring.

"This is such a very selfish world," he added, as if half to himself, "I sometimes fear those poor foreigners that come to our shores get woefully treated."

That was lovely of him! After all, men are brothers under their skin. That was what their great man, Christ, taught—that all men are brothers; he did not except the Chinese, as some Americans want to do.

June 7th, 1——

Almost as soon as Mrs. Yet was pronounced well, and was allowed to go among people again and before Mr. Yet had left the hospital, Baby Yet fell seriously ill—his teeth.

He grew worse, and worse. Yick told me about it one day in a few concise[Pg 123] Chinese words, which he snatched an opportunity to drop to me in passing through the dining room. The wily Celestial seems to understand, without being told, that no one is to know that he and I can exchange thoughts in our native tongue.

That afternoon I stole out again, and went down to the little Yet home. It was just as Yick had said, the baby was very ill.

He lay on his little pallet, white and still, almost unconscious, and his mother stood over him wringing her hands, and shedding bitter tears.

"Oh, my baby! My baby! He die and leave me! My heart break!" she cried in Chinese when she saw me. "Precious treasure! Precious treasure!" she continued, bending toward the almost inanimate form on the pallet.

The latter is the almost universal term of endearment in China, and no American mother ever agonised more bitterly than did that Chinese mother over that atom of herself lying before her.

I had to do something to comfort her, so I began to tell her about heaven. I, who was not sure that I could get to that blessed place myself (stealing out on the sly in a grandmother's clothes is not a very heavenly trick), said that whoever missed it, babies would be there.

"Will Chinese babies be there? They do not want them in America," she asked rapidly and tremblingly in Chinese.

"Certainly," I replied; and at that moment I seemed to have a vision of all the babies of this wide world that had died—black babies, brown babies, yellow babies, red babies (probably the[Pg 125] colour of their skin was only the earth garb); I saw the whole throng, for grandmother had read to me from the Bible that of such was the kingdom of heaven.

Then she grew very, very still, and a glow stole over her yellow face which made it beautiful.

She looked at me in a startled way, then drawing a tiny handkerchief from her bosom, she carefully wiped the spot on her cheek where my lips had touched. The practice of kissing is unknown in China.

On the way home, when but a few yards from the house of Mrs. Yet, I met Professor Ballington again, and told him the story about the sick baby.

He asked me to go back with him, and take him in to see it, which I did. He looked scrutinisingly at the little hard pallet on which the baby lay; and what did that dear man do but go out to one of the great stores not far away, and buy the prettiest little cot, and the softest and best mattress that could be found in the market, and order them sent home without delay to that little yellow baby.

Was it the soft mattress that did it? I do not know; but almost immediately the baby seemed to rest easier, and by degrees came back to life and strength.

Oh, this would be a glorious country[Pg 127] to live in!—if the people were all like Professor Ballington.

June 10th, 1——

I made my first visit to the theatre. Aunt Gwendolin said I should not go until I came out, but Uncle Theodore said he would take me himself, and defy all fashions and formalities.

"I enjoy seeing the little girl absorbing our civilisation," he said to grandmother; "sometimes I fancy it seems rather uncivilised to her."

Grandmother demurred a good deal; she said she did not know but I would be quite as well, or better, if I never went near a theatre. But Uncle Theodore said that was an old-fashioned idea that grandmother held to because of her Puritan ancestry; that it was generally[Pg 128] conceded now that the theatre is a great educator, the greatest educator of the people extant to-day.

"There is going to be a world-renowned actress to-night, a star of first magnitude in the theatrical world," he added, "and I want my niece to have the advantage of hearing her."

I dressed my very prettiest for the occasion. Uncle Theodore always has an eye for the artistic in dress. I donned soft silks, soft ribbons, and soft feathers. It is one of my uncle's ideas that women should be softly clad; he absolutely hates anything hard, stiff, or masculine-looking on a woman.

When we entered the theatre the orchestra was playing most ravishing music. I could have stayed there all night and listened to it without tiring, I believe. It must be the American half[Pg 129] of me that is the music-lover, for the Chinese are not very musical.

The boxes were full of wonderfully well-dressed men and women. How beautiful women can look in this great country, dressed in every colour of the rainbow! Men are of less account in America; but they looked well enough, too, in black coats and white shirt-bosoms.

After awhile the heavenly music stopped, the curtain on the stage rolled up, and the play began.

At first it was entrancing, magnificent—the stage-furnishings, gorgeously dressed women, clever-looking men, all acting a part—a lovely world without anything to mar it, right there in that small space of the stage before our eyes.

Then a woman, the star actress, came in wearing a very décolleté gown (I[Pg 130] am getting hardened to them now), and began to talk in a manner I never had imagined people in good society would talk—right before those hundreds of men and women. I'll not write it down; I do not wish to remember it. But the party of women on the stage, instead of being shocked or ashamed, all laughed little, rippling, merry laughs. My cheeks burned, and I did not dare to look at anybody, not even Uncle Theodore.

After that I could not like the theatre any more and drawing away within myself, I looked and listened as if the actors had been hundreds of miles from me.

When the play was over and we were on the way home Uncle Theodore said: "If I had known the nature of the play, I would not have taken you to-night, Pearl."

"But I," I cried, "I am only one! There were hundreds of people being educated as well as I!"

When we reached home I went at once upstairs to my room, and Uncle Theodore retired to his den.

Cousin Ned is around morning, noon, and night now. He is walking with a crutch, having had his shin kicked at a foot-ball match.

June 20th, 1——

I went with grandmother to-day on her weekly visit to the "Home for Incurable Children." Grandmother goes to carry[Pg 132] her presents, and "to cheer up the little folk," she says; I went prompted by curiosity.

We were ushered in by a cheery, wholesome-looking maid who knew grandmother, and gave her the freedom of the house.

We first entered the ward where the older children were kept, and there grandmother distributed her books and pictures.

While she sat to rest I wandered from one cot to another, where white little faces looked up at me, pleasantly answering my questions, or volunteering information.

"That's one blessed fact about[Pg 133] children," said the attending nurse, "they never fret in anticipation. They look forward with positive pride to a new experience—even if it is an operation."

In one bright room three boys were playing a game of number-cards, one a hunchback, another with crippled lower limbs, and a third, seated on a long high bench, handling the cards with his toes, his arms and hands being useless.

The top part of the foot of the socks belonging to this last lad had been cut off, and he was picking the cards off the table with his bare toes; passing them from foot to foot, and replacing a certain card on the table, quite as expertly as another boy might do it with his fingers.

I walked into another room to see the little babies; blind, crooked-limbed,[Pg 134] distorted, never going to be able to use their bodies properly.

"Why does God leave them here?" I demanded of grandmother as soon as we had reached the open air again.

"Perhaps," said grandmother quietly, "to give us the blessed privilege of acting the God toward them."

"Christianity means brotherhood, Pearl, dear," she added, after we had walked several yards in silence.

What a great country this America is! Caring for its ailing and crippled in such a beautiful way!

"Oh, China!" I cried, when I was all alone in my own room, "you would drown your blind, crooked-limbed, distorted babies, or throw them out on the hillsides to die! Oh, China! China! would you could come over here and see how America treats her 'weak and[Pg 135] wounded, sick and sore?' These are the words of a church hymn."

I said something to this effect the same evening to grandmother, and she replied:

Seaside, July 31st, 1——

We are at the seaside. It is the fashion in America for whole families to shut up their houses in hot weather and go off to some summer resort—the women of them—whether to be cool, or to be in the fashion I do not yet know. Grandmother wanted to go one place, Aunt Gwendolin to another, and Uncle Theodore, who said he might run over for a few Sundays, to yet another. At last a charming spot upon the Atlantic coast was decided upon. Uncle Theodore settled the question[Pg 136] emphatically, because dear grandmother needed the revivifying influence of the sea air.

Aunt Gwendolin fretted a little at first for fear it might be humdrum, and commonplace, and for fear none of "our set" would be there; but she recovered from her depression when she heard that Mrs. Delancy, Mrs. Deforest, Mrs. Austin, and others of the same clique had also chosen that particular part of the coast as their recuperating place.

Mrs. Delancy dropped in one day to tell her that the whole fashionable tide had turned toward that coast this summer, and she knew we should have a "simply grand season."

Aunt Gwendolin's spirits rose after that, and she immediately went about ordering a most elaborate summer [Pg 137]wardrobe—morning gowns, evening gowns, walking suits, yachting suits, bathing suits.

Uncle Theodore went ahead of the rest of the party and engaged a suite of rooms in the most fashionable hotel on the Beach, from the broad balconies of which the view of the sea is grand, and the air delicious.

Grandmother and I spend much time together. As I am not "out" Aunt Gwendolin says that I cannot attend any of the functions to which she is going daily—and nightly. I do not know what I miss by being obliged to stay away from the parties and balls, but I know it is very delightful wandering on the beach with grandmother, watching the lights, shades, and colours on the water, the dipping and skimming of the water birds, the movements of the lobster fishers, the going out and[Pg 138] coming in of the tide, and all the many, many objects of interest around the great sea world; never caring whether I am fashionable or not fashionable, whether anybody is noticing me or not noticing me.

The only objects that I do not like to look at on this sea beach are the human bathers. The sea-gulls taking their bath are graceful, but, oh! those grown-up women in skirts up to their knees, and bare arms, wandering over the beach like great ostriches! They mar the picture of beauty which the earth and sky and sea unite to make, and I would shut them up if I had the power—or add more length to their bathing suits.

Perhaps the sea-gulls would not look graceful either if they had half their feathers off.

We were here a week when Professor Ballington came. We were all a little surprised to see him because he is not a "society man," as Aunt Gwendolin says. He does not appear to care much for "functions," and spends much time wandering on the beach. Grandmother and I meet him frequently.

One time when I went out for a little run before breakfast I found him staring at the great green sea that kept restlessly licking the sand at his feet. He looked lonesome, and I tried to say something to cheer him up. Then he asked permission to join me in my stroll, and we had a most delightful time, finding shells, and stones, the formations of various periods of time, Professor Ballington said. He seems to know everything. I do not wonder he cares so little for society, or the company of[Pg 140] women in general. Strange how much more the men, the cultured men, the society men, of America know than the women! I suppose it is because the women have to spend so much time talking about the change of sleeves.

There was a dance one night in the ballroom, which is around at the opposite side of the house from our apartments, and leaving grandmother absorbed in her book, I slipped around on the balcony and peeped through the slats of the closed shutters on the dancers within.

All was in a whirl, and there I saw, with my own two eyes, men with their arms around the waists of women, whirling those same women around the great room in time to music played by an orchestra. It made me dizzy to look at them.

"Wouldn't that shock China!" I cried.[Pg 141] "Shall I have to submit to that when I come out? Oh, why cannot I always stay in?"

I was so excited I did not know I was talking aloud, until the voice of Professor Ballington over my head said:

"You do not like the thought of coming out into society? You would like always to stay in domestic retirement?"

"Marry some good man," he said, "and spend your energies making a quiet, happy home for him."

He was looking at me in a very peculiar way, and I felt frightened, I don't know why, and skipped along the balcony back to grandmother's sitting-room.

When I entered who should be there talking to grandmother but Mrs. Paton. She said she had felt lonesome without[Pg 142] grandmother in the city, and had made up her mind to spend a week at the seaside.

"Oh, grandmother!" I cried, as soon as I had greeted Mrs. Paton, "shall I have to come out? Cannot I always stay in?"

Grandmother clasped my hand in hers, in the old way she had of quieting me, and explained to Mrs. Paton that I did not incline to the ways of society people, and had a dread of entering the world which Aunt Gwendolin loved so well.

"Give your life to some noble cause, my dear," said Mrs. Paton earnestly, turning her eyes upon me. "The world is in sore need of consecrated women. You could be a foreign missionary, or a home missionary. Oh, don't waste your life on the frivolity called Society!"

This is not Professor Ballington's advice. Which is right? How glad I am that in this "land of the free," I am not compelled to follow any will but my own!

August Seaside.

Well, I did get a surprise last evening while out strolling on the beach, for whom should I meet but "Sawbones," otherwise Chauffeur Graham. He is having summer holidays now, and before settling down to some work to make money for his autumn college expenses, he snatched a day to get a whiff of sea air, he said.

He seemed very pleased to see me, and I was delighted to see him, and extended my hand to him in cordial greeting.

I know Aunt Gwendolin would object[Pg 144] to her niece shaking hands with the chauffeur—it was the medical man I shook hands with.

I stayed out there as long as I dared, and we had a lovely stroll along the beach in the moonlight, the waves whispering at our feet as we walked and talked. Chauffeur Graham said that it always seemed to him that the waves were coming from the many far-off lands with their incessant pleadings that we carry our enlightenment and advantages to the suffering places of the earth.

That was the medical man speaking in him. He must be noble or he would never hear those voices in the waves.

How I wish it were proper for me to give him some of the money I do not know what to do with, so that he[Pg 145] could go on with his studies and not need to work between times to earn a pittance.

Grandmother says she is going to engage him again in the autumn, when we all return to the city; she knows him now, and feels safe in his hands, he is so careful.

"It is such a nuisance to have a man that you cannot command at any hour of the day—or night," said Aunt Gwendolin. "Make him understand, if you engage him again, that all his time belongs to us. These gentlemen chauffeurs who are straining after a university education are unendurable!"

"He shall have whatever time he wants for his studies or examinations. It is the least I can do to show my sympathy with his life work," returned my grandmother.

Another Stroll.

I had another stroll this evening on the beach with Chauffeur Graham—while Aunt Gwendolin was getting ready for the dance—and he told me something.

"When I am through with my medical course," he said, "I intend to go to China to practise what I have learned."

I stopped suddenly in my walk and faced him. "Why are you going to China?" I demanded.

It makes me indignant to have this nation, an infant in years, patronising my hoary-headed Empire!

"If a man is going to do his duty by the world," he returned, "he will go where his work is most needed. They have no native medical school in China.

"They are a great people," he added[Pg 147] after a short pause, "likely to be in the van of the world's march in the ages to come; and I want to have a hand in getting them ready. Napoleon said, 'When China moves she will move the world.' All the broken legs will be set in this country whether I am here to set them or not; I want to go where they will not be set unless I do it."

He left this morning on an early train, to go back to the peg and grind, and now the place is slow and lonesome. After all I think it is better to have to peg and grind; it surely must be the spice of life which rich people miss. I do not care[Pg 148] how quickly the hot months pass, and we can go back to the city again.

Sept. 30th, 1——

We are all back in the city again, and settled into the old routine; but there is a new excitement in the air. Aunt Gwendolin insists that I require to go to some fashionable "Young Ladies' Boarding School," to be "finished." She says (but not in grandmother's hearing) that I do not talk as I should, that my voice is quite ordinary, and I must learn the tone of society ladies before I can be brought out.

"You mean the artificial tone?" said Uncle Theodore, who was present when I was getting my lecture.

"Call it what you like, Theodore," snapped Aunt Gwendolin, "it is the tone used by an American society woman;[Pg 149] the girl talks yet in the natural voice of a child."

After much talking my aunt persuaded my grandmother that I should go to some such school.

"My dear," said grandmother timidly, "your aunt seems to think you may gain much by a period spent in some good school. She may be right. It certainly cannot hurt you, and if it can be of any benefit there is nothing to prevent your having it."

To comfort dear grandmother I raised no objection, and it is settled that I go in the fall term. The choice of a school was left entirely to Aunt Gwendolin, and she has decided upon the most expensive and most fashionable one in the country. She has been corresponding[Pg 150] with the lady principal; my rooms have been ordered; and everything is complete.

One day my aunt placed in my hand one of her monogrammed sheets of writing-paper, pointing to the following paragraph:

"It is the family's wish that much attention be given to preparing the young girl whom I am sending to you, for Society; heavy or arduous work in any other line is of secondary consideration. The prestige of your school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of a Spanish girl of good family."

"I did not say you were," returned my aunt, "I simply said the prestige of her school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of one."

Boarding School, October 10th, 1——

I am here at last, accompanied by two large leather trunks, which Aunt Gwendolin has filled with all sorts of costumes, for all sorts of occasions.

A page opened the door in response to the hackman's ring, when after some hours' journey by rail, I arrived at the fashionable "Boarding School," and a maid conducted me up a flight of softly carpeted steps to my appointed rooms.

I had not more than taken off my wraps, when Madam Demill (she has declared that her name should be spelled De Mille, but it has become corrupted in this democratic America) the head of the establishment, called upon me. She was cold, hard, stately; a creature of whalebone and steel as to body, and of pompadours and artificial braids as to head.

She announced after her first greeting that there was going to be a party that evening, and she wished me to be dressed in evening costume, and appear in the drawing-room at half past eight o'clock.

"If you would wear some of your distinctly Spanish costumes it would be very apropos," she added. "I see you have the decided Spanish complexion. I am glad you are pronounced in your nationality; it is so much more interesting. As you did not arrive in time for dinner, a tray shall be brought to your room with sufficient refreshment to keep you in good feature until you partake of the refreshment offered at the party," she added as she swept from the room.

How helpless I felt! I was to dress in evening costume for the "party." What was I to put on? For the first time in my life I wished that Aunt Gwendolin were[Pg 153] near me. How I longed for my yellow silk gown that my governess in China had designed with flowing sleeves trimmed with "sprawling dragons!" I knew I looked better in that than in anything else, and I knew how to put it on; no infinitesimal hooks and eyes, pins and buttons, to be found, and put in exact places; which if one fails to do in the American gown the whole thing goes awry.

My worry was dispelled by the arrival of the maid with the promised tray. It was not too heavily laden to prevent me from completely emptying it, with the exception of the dishes.

While I was eating the maid unpacked my trunks,—you have not got to do much for yourself in a fashionable boarding school—hanging the articles in an adjoining clothes closet. During the[Pg 154] same period of time a happy thought occurred to me.

"I will call Aunt Gwendolin over the long distance telephone and ask her what I shall wear at the party to-night!" was the happy inspiration.

In response to my request the maid conducted me to the telephone, and when the connection was made, I called:

"How does that little minx know that she is the yellow peril?" I heard my aunt say, probably to Uncle Theodore in the room beside her. Then she turned to me and replied:

Back over the two hundred miles of[Pg 155] field, forest, lake, came Aunt Gwendolin's thin, squeaky voice:

"Does it fasten in the front or back? If in the back I cannot put it on myself!" I returned, over the fields and trees and waters.

"Yes, you can, get some of the girls to fasten it for you," cried the voice through the phone. "Be sure and wear that; it so emphasises your Spanish style of beau——"

At my request the maid helped me to get into the cream Oriental lace; and at half past eight I made my appearance in the drawing-room, as to dress, looking like a Spanish grande dame, and as to face, looking as yellow, and lonesome, and sour as the fiercest Spanish brigand.

I was introduced to Mr. This-One, and Mr. That-One and Mr. The-Other-One. They all looked alike to me, with high collars, and patent-leather shoes. After awhile there was a little dance, but as I did not know how I had to sit against the wall, and Madam Demill said I must be put under a dancing master at once.

The day following, in the afternoon (all the so-called lessons are gone through in the forenoon, and we have nothing to do but amuse ourselves the rest of the day) a number of the girls came to call on me in my apartments. There were a dozen or more of them present when an arrogant-looking one, with her hair arranged in an immense pompadour over her forehead, from ear to ear, drawled through her nose.

"I suppose you do not love Americans[Pg 157] since we beat your country at the battle of Manila?"

"No," I said truthfully, "I do not love Americans." (Of course I mentally excepted grandmother, Professor Ballington, Chauffeur Graham—and Uncle Theodore when he acts nice.)

The girls threw their chins into the air, their eyes shot fire, and I heard several faint sniffs.

Then a slim, golden-haired, blue-eyed girl stepped out from the group, and coming quickly to my side, she put her arm around me and said:

"We'll make her love us!" and she actually touched her rosebud lips to my yellow cheek.

The act seemed to have a softening effect on the others, too, for from that[Pg 158] time they all have treated me very decently, even the girl with the pompadour.

Golden Hair seems to have a great deal of influence in the school. There are some nice girls in America.

Oct. 15th, 1——

Life in this "Fashionable Boarding School" is just about a repetition, daily, of what transpired the evening of my arrival. It is not worth recording, so I am closing up my diary until I return to grandmother's. It takes Yick, and Mrs. Yet, and Chauffeur Graham, and Professor Ballington, and even a pinch of Aunt Gwendolin to give a little spice to life.

Thanksgiving

I took a run back to grandmother's[Pg 159] for what those Americans call Thanksgiving—It is most amusing to foreigners like me—and Yick.

On grandmother's table there was what they tell me is the regulation dinner for the day—roast turkey and pumpkin pie.

When Yick, in his best costume, had walked proudly into the dining room with the immense turkey on a platter, and deposited it on the table, he returned to the kitchen convulsed with laughter, Betty has told me since.

"Christians queer people! Christians queer people!" he sputtered merrily. "Thank God eat turkey, thank God eat turkey!"

I knew what Yick meant, the Oriental idea of thanking God would have been some act of self-denial. It was hard for the poor "heathen Chinee" to construe[Pg 160] the American self-indulgence into an act of thanksgiving. Poor Yick, and poor Yellow Pearl! How far both of you are from comprehending civilisation.

Holidays, Dec. 20th, 1——

I am back again at grandmother's for the holidays. Grandmother and Uncle Theodore seemed so glad to see me that I am beginning to feel quite as if this were home. Yick and Betty are still here, Chauffeur Graham still manipulates the automobile.

Mrs. Delancy gave a "little Christmas dance," as she calls it, last night, and the description has come out in the morning paper:

There was a lot more of the same, but my hand refuses to write it. One would think it was a number of half-grown children the newspaper reporter was trying to please by saying nice things about them. Strange that in this America nothing is ever said about what the women say or do at those social functions; nothing seems worth noticing about them but the kind of clothes they have on. The men do not count for anything at all.

I wonder was Professor Ballington there. I wonder did he look at any one with that smile away back in his eyes which was there when he looked at me the time I sang my one Spanish song.

December 21st, 1——

Yick has given us a new diversion. Aunt Gwendolin gave him orders to make a particularly nice layer-cake for an afternoon "tea."

Yick is quite proud of his cakes, and this day he wished to outdo anything he had previously done, so he made a layer cake, icing it with red and white trimmings. He delights to get a new recipe, or find some new way of decoration. The daily paper, which always in the end finds its way into the kitchen, had evidently attracted his attention. He saw in the advertisement pages a[Pg 165] round box with an inscription on top. Taking the box for a cake, he decorated his culinary effort in imitation of the picture. Aunt Gwendolin never saw it until it was carried in to the table, before all the finest ladies of the city, and this was what they all read, in three rows of red letters across the white icing:

Dec. 23d, 1——

It is drawing near the festive season in this remarkable land, and there is a great bustle everywhere. Some people are concerned about providing luxuries for themselves, and some are concerned[Pg 166] about providing for those poorer than themselves.

"I have just been treating myself to a few little Christmas presents," she gasped, as she carried a great, fat, pug dog and deposited him on grandmother's best white satin sofa pillow. She called the dog many endearing names, such as "darling," "little baby boy," "sweet one," and "tootsy-wootsy."

Dogs are thought as much of as babies in America; those are the very same terms of endearment that the women address to their babies.

"I had to leave this little darling in a restaurant to be fed and cared for while I did my shopping," she explained. "He would come with me, the pet."

She then informed Aunt Gwendolin[Pg 167] that she had been to the milliner's and ordered five hats, and had just completed the purchase of a three thousand dollar jacket at the furrier's.

The dog on the pillow whined in the midst of her recital, and she stopped long enough to go over and give him a kiss.

She was still enlarging on the beauty of the fur coat, when the housemaid tapped on the door, and ushered Mrs. Paton into the sitting-room.

"I heard that you ladies were here," she said, "and I thought you might like to have the privilege of helping a little in those charities," and she began to unfold some papers which she held in her hand.

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Paton, do not ask me to-day, really," exclaimed Mrs. Delancy, holding up her hands. "I am among the poor myself to-day, and you[Pg 168] know charity begins at home. I really haven't a cent to give to any one else. I'm stony broke, as the boys say. I have laid out so much money to-day for necessities!"

Mrs. Paton then turned to my aunt and said, "Gwendolin, do give something out of the thousands you are expending on self-indulgence to help those who have not the necessities of life!"

Taking the paper into her hand with an ungracious air, my aunt wrote down a certain amount, and then passed it back.

"Dear me!" sighed Mrs. Delancy, as soon as Mrs. Paton had left the place, "how tired I get of those people with their solicitations for some Y. M. C. A., or Y. W. C. A., or something else eternally. They'd keep a person poor if one paid any heed to them, really! Some one[Pg 169] starving or unclothed every time! It does annoy me so to hear harrowing tales!"

January 1st, 1——

Last night there was a sound of revelry in this great land. At the solemn hour of midnight, when the old year was dying, and the new year was just being born, one class of people in this American city rushed out into the open streets, cheering, blowing horns, ringing bells, and making all possible noises on all sorts of musical instruments. Another class celebrated the birth of the new year by eating an elaborate meal. This is what appeared in the morning paper regarding the latter:

This is the first time I have seen the birth of a new year in any but my native land, and my mind goes back to the celebration on a similar occasion in China. It is a solemn event there. For weeks the people are preparing for it; houses are cleaned, and debts are paid, for a Chinaman, if he has any self-respect, will be sure to pay his debts before the new year.

I told this to Uncle Theodore a few days ago, and he said, "I wish that Americans would rise to that state of grace."

Nobody goes to bed that night, but all sit up waiting for the first hour of the new year, when the father of the home, his wife and children all worship[Pg 171] before the spirit tablets of their ancestors, and then at the shrine of the household gods.

Then the door is opened, and the whole family with the servants go outside and bow down to a certain part of the heavens, and so worship heaven and earth, and receive the spirit of gladness and good fortune, which they say comes from that quarter.

At the same hour, when the old year is dying, China's Emperor, as High Priest of his people, goes in state to worship. Kneeling alone under the silent stars he renders homage to the Superior Powers. He on his imperial throne makes the third in the great Trinity, Heaven, Earth, and Man. Should there come a famine or pestilence, upon him rests the blame, and he must by sacrifice and prayer atone for the [Pg 172]imperfections of which heaven has seen him guilty.

Oh, China! I would prefer kneeling with you under the silent stars on New Year's eve, to feasting at the groaning tables, or ringing the bells and blowing the horns of this great, civilised, noisy America!

January 7th, 1——

Oh, glorious! Grandmother says I need not go back to boarding school for the winter term; she says the family always go South during the cold weather, and she wants me to go with them. Wants me, think of it, wants me. Isn't it nice to have somebody want one along with her! I believe grandmother really loves me. Aunt Gwendolin doesn't; she wanted me sent back to school. She said I would never be fit to be brought[Pg 173] out with that kind of carrying on. I love those that love me, but as for loving those that hate me, as grandmother had been teaching me from the Bible, I haven't come to that yet.

That reminds me, I wish Aunt Gwendolin would stop snapping at Yick; I am afraid some day he will kill himself on the doorstep, so his ghost may haunt her the rest of her life. But I think he likes grandmother and the other members of the family sufficiently well to cause him to refrain from that act of Chinese revenge.

Mexico, February 1st, 1——

A great migratory movement has taken place in our family—we are now in the warm, sunny country called Mexico.

Aunt Gwendolin was the cause of it. She said she was tired of going to Florida,[Pg 174] that it was so common to go there now, everybody was going there, that the latest thing was to winter in Mexico, and she thought we all ought to follow suit. She talked and argued so much about it that she persuaded grandmother and Uncle Theodore to her way of thinking, and after travelling hundreds of miles in Pullman and sleeper cars, here we are in this land of cactus fences, tortillas, great snakes, and parrots; this land where roses and strawberries grow all the year round; where in some parts are luscious tropical fruits, flowers, and palms.

Mrs. Delancy has come along with us, and Professor Ballington says he may join our party later. There are many Americans around us in the various towns—it is so fashionable at present to winter in Mexico.

Uncle Theodore takes me out for long walks with him in this land of perpetual summer, and we see many strange and interesting sights. The rich are so very rich, and the poor are so very poor. There is one drawback—we had to leave behind us our automobile. Of course we can hire one here, but we can not have our own lovely chauffeur, and grandmother says she is afraid to trust any of those Mexicans. I suppose our poor chauffeur is pegging away hard over his medical lore now, while I am lounging around doing nothing. The granddaughter of a millionairess, with money to get anything I want, and yet I am beginning to think there is nothing worth getting. It is lovely to be poor like the chauffeur and have to work hard for something. My life is so small and worthless that I am oppressed with it.

One of the sights that interest us the most when we are out in the country are the cactus hedges. There are great palisades of the organ-cactus lining the railways, and there are ragged, loose-jointed varieties used for corralling cattle. Great plantations of a species of cactus called maguey with stiff, prickly leaves a dull, bluish-green, are seen in abundance. From this plant the Mexicans get not only thread, pins, and needles, but pulque, the juice or sap of the plant, which they ferment and make into a national beverage. Pulque is used by the Mexicans as whisky is used by Americans, and opium by Chinamen.

Great fields of maize are cultivated, of which there are two or three crops a year. The food of the people is tortillas, made out of this maize mashed into a paste and baked into flat cakes.

I ate those tortillas when I first came, as a curiosity, a native production, but I am not going to eat any more. While Uncle Theodore and I were watching a woman making them, great drops of perspiration fell from her brow into the paste. She pounded away, poor tired creature, and paid no heed to the drops. Poor women of Mexico, they have to work so hard, preparing the paste, and making those little cakes to be eaten hot at every meal! But no more tortillas for me.

We visited the old churches which are beautifully decorated with veined marble and alabaster. Precious stones seem to grow in this remarkable land.

"Keep your eyes open, Pearl," said my uncle, "and you may pick up some opals, or amethysts. They grow in this[Pg 178] country, and I have heard they can be had for the picking."

Mexico, February 12th, 1——

I have made a discovery—I have found out America's Princely Man! It is Abraham Lincoln, and this is his Birthday!

Magazines have been coming down from the North telling us all about this Princely Man, and I have asked grandmother and Uncle Theodore hundreds of questions, it seems to me, about him. And I can see that they never get tired answering those questions, but seem as if they could talk about him forever.

Scarcely a political debate occurs, either in Congress or in the Press of the country, but the possible views or actual example of Abraham Lincoln are quoted[Pg 179] as the strongest argument, Uncle Theodore says.

The magazines find it impossible to publish too much about him. Mention of his name in an incidental fashion from a stage or forum draws a burst of cheering; or if the reference is of a humorous nature the laughter is close to tears.

"With love and reverence his memory is cherished by the American people as is the memory of no other man," said dear grandmother. "Quoting a 'Decoration Day' orator," she added, "'He was called to go by the sorrowful way, bearing the awful burden of his people's woe, the cry of the uncomforted in his ears, the bitterness of their passion on his heart. Misunderstood, misjudged, he was the most solitary of men. He had to tread the wine-press alone, and of the people none went with him.[Pg 180] But he turned not back. He never faltered. As one upheld, sustained by the Unseen Hand, he set his face steadfastly, undaunted, unafraid, until in Death's black minute he paid glad life's arrears: the slaves free! Himself immortal!'"

I would like to make something happen in the world that would be talked about after I am dead. Grandmother says that it is only something that one does for the good of the world that is remembered after he is dead. "If a man has money, people will lionize him as long as he is living for the sake of it," she says, "but money counts for nothing when a man is dead."

"Money!" said Uncle Theodore, who had been listening to our talk. "I doubt[Pg 181] whether Abe ever owned enough to buy a farm."

February 15th, 1——

One comfort, I am not bothered much with Aunt Gwendolin—she has become acquainted with a French nobleman, Count de Pensier, and he is attracting all her attention, thanks be to goodness! Mrs. Delancy is delighted, and is doing all she can to further the acquaintance. "It is not every day that one has the privilege of associating daily and hourly with one of the titled aristocracy of the old world," she has said several times in my hearing.

When we first arrived Aunt Gwendolin saw some of the Spanish ladies wearing mantillas on their heads, and she immediately bought one for me.

"There!" she said when I put it on,[Pg 182] "isn't that simply perfect? Doesn't that make her Spanish through and through?" She says that when I become a thorough Spanish-American she is going to give a "coming out party" for me.

The scarf is really quite becoming. Uncle Theodore admired it, or admired me with it on, so I wear it wound around my head when I go on my rambles through the country with him. I really much prefer it to the bristling hats of the American women, and it is quite pleasant to be called "señorita," and to be thought Spanish.

These long head scarfs are also worn by the poor women, but theirs are made of cotton. On the street they carry their babies strapped to their backs with it, the little heads and legs bobbing up and down until one would think they might snap off. Sometimes the[Pg 183] scarf ties the baby to the mother's bosom, thus leaving her hands free for other work.

"Our American sensibilities" (quoting Aunt Gwendolin) "are sometimes shocked by Mexican doings."

One day we saw a procession headed by the father carrying a tiny coffin on his head. Behind him walked the mother dragging by the hand a little bare-foot girl, of two or three; and behind them again trotted a dog. The father was drunk, and staggered as he walked.

As we watched the little procession on the way to the graveyard they passed in front of a saloon where they sold pulque. The father wanted another drink, so he started to enter the saloon taking the little coffin under his arm. He stumbled on the threshold, and the little pine box fell out of his hands down[Pg 184] onto the flag-stones, the cover coming off. And we saw a little dead baby within the coffin, with a crown of gilt paper on its head, and a cross of gilt paper on its brow. In its little hands were a bunch of flowers. The man laughed awkwardly, put the lid on the coffin and placed it on his head again, proceeding toward the graveyard without his drink, followed by the mother, the girl, and the dog.

"Why do not the American missionaries who are crossing oceans to find heathen, look for them at their own doorstep?" said Uncle Theodore afterwards, when he was telling the story to grandmother.

"Sure enough," returned grandmother, "it does look as if the unenlightened of its own continent is America's first duty."

Aunt Gwendolin is having moonlight walks and talks innumerable with Count de Pensier—and—oh, I am having LIBERTY!

February 21st, 1——

We have had some unusual excitement lately—a bull and tiger fight. The day following, the description came out in a morning paper:

Mrs. Delancy, and Aunt Gwendolin, along with Uncle Theodore and Count de Pensier, attended the fight. Grandmother would not go, and I stayed with her.

"A Christian lady going to a bull fight," I said to grandmother under my breath.

"Yes, my dear," returned grandmother looking really pale, "it shocks me quite as much as you. It was not so when I was young. American women of the present day must see everything. It is deplorable!"

When the scene was the most harrowing, and the Americans were calling for the fight to be stopped, Aunt Gwendolin, and I believe several other American women, fainted, and had to be carried out.

"Dear me, dear me," said grandmother again, when she heard the harrowing details. "That is just the way with Americans of the present day; they must see everything. It was not so when I was young."

Who should walk into our presence at that very moment but Professor Ballington. He had heard [Pg 189]grandmother's remark, without knowing the cause for her words, and as he was shaking hands with us he said:

"It was not so when I was young," said grandmother. "How can we lay the shortcoming at the door of Fate?"

"Chinese women would never attend a bull and tiger fight, grandmother," I whispered into her ear when the professor was looking the other way, "nor Chinese gentlemen."

Professor Ballington only stayed with us a day or two; he was just on a tour, he said, and had to cover a certain amount of space within a certain period of time. Grandmother and I were very desirous that he should remain longer; but I really believe Aunt Gwendolin felt relieved when he was gone. She did not appear to feel comfortable with his comprehending eyes upon her when she was entertaining Count de Pensier.

February 28th, 1——

The Count has proposed to my Aunt Gwendolin, and she has accepted him. Grandmother is in tears ever since, and Uncle Theodore is furious. I heard the latter talking to my grandmother—in his excitement he seemed to forget my presence—and he said:

"That Frenchman is just a [Pg 191]fortune-hunter, one of those penniless, titled gentry that swarm in Europe. He wants Gwendolin's money to regild a tarnished title, and Gwendolin wants the title! He has found out from Arabella Delancy the size of Gwendolin's fortune, in possession and in prospective, and he has offered his title in exchange for it! That's the size of the whole affair!"

"That's what grieves me most," said grandmother, with quivering lips; "it is not holy matrimony."

"I had always hoped that Gwendolin and Professor Ballington would make up some time," added grandmother.

"Oh, Gwendolin would never suit Ballington," returned Uncle Theodore. "Your granddaughter—the little Celestial—is the making of a woman much more[Pg 192] to his taste—" He looked up suddenly, and seemed to remember for the first time that I was in the room.

I, sly, subtle Oriental that I am, worked away on my shadow embroidery and never by the wink of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle showed that I heard a word.

April 5th, 1——

We are home again, and all is bustle and confusion—Aunt Gwendolin is going to be married. She pays no attention to me now at all; and you know, dear diary, how that grieves me. Dressmakers, milliners, caterers, florists, decorators, throng the house. Count de Pensier is staying in a hotel downtown. He calls every forenoon, and every afternoon; and declares, with his hand on his heart, that he cannot[Pg 193] return to his own country without his bride.

Cousin Ned has asked me to marry him. He is down in his luck, and blue—missed in his examinations—and he says he believes he might settle down and do something if he were only married. He says the relationship is so far out that there is nothing to hinder him and me from being married.

May 25th, 1——

Well the fuss and flurry are all over—they are married, Aunt Gwendolin and Count de Pensier. I cannot do better than copy a paragraph out of the newspaper to describe the doings:

As is usual at American functions, the men did not seem to be of enough importance to mention anything more than their bare names.

It all took place in Christ's Church. Was He there? Grandmother says He is back in this world now in spirit. What did He think of it all?

"Grandmother," I said when it was all over—the church display, the reception, the eating and drinking, the dressing—"if I am ever married let it be in China."

"My dear child," said grandmother in alarm, "why do you make such a wild request as that?"

"Seated at a table the bride is offered a tiny cup of wine," I replied, "of which she takes a sip, while the bridegroom in a seat opposite her also sips from a similar cup of wine. The cups are then [Pg 196]exchanged, and again tasted, and the marriage service is completed. They have time to think about each other, instead of thinking of what a grand show they are making for the world."

"Your grandfather and I were married quietly in our own little home parlour. I was dressed in white muslin, and your grandfather in corduroy. We were thinking more about each other than anything else, my dear."

The bride and groom, Count and Countess de Pensier, started at once for the ancestral home in sunny France, I suppose to begin regilding the tarnished title Uncle Theodore spoke about.

Oh, be joyful! I shall not have to go to the "Fashionable Boarding School" any more! I shall not have to appear[Pg 197] at a "coming out party!" I shall never come out now; I shall always stay in! Grandmother says I may stay in if I want to, and I do want to. I shall never have to steal out the back door in grandmother's clothes any more, sing any more foreign songs, or pretend I am Spanish! It is lovely to be able to act the truth! "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good." (This last is one of grandmother's familiar sayings.)

May 30th, 1——

I have made a most astounding discovery. Walking down the street yesterday I saw a great placard on a wall announcing a lecture; subject, "The Yellow Peril." What did it mean? I[Pg 198] thought I was the Yellow Pearl, and that nobody outside of the family knew it. But this was spelled p-e-r-i-l instead of P-e-a-r-l. What could it mean? I could go no farther, but returned at once to question grandmother.

Dear grandmother's cheeks flushed, and she said, "My dear child, why bother yourself about that?"

"Why, grandmother, I thought when I overheard Aunt Gwendolin talk, that I was the Yellow Pearl; she called me such the first day I came," I said. "But on the placard it is spelled p-e-r-i-l. What does it mean?"

"I am sorry you saw it," said grandmother hesitatingly. "There is too much being said on that subject by a certain class of people—It is the[Pg 199] world God loves," she added as if talking to herself, "not the United States, Great Britain, Germany; the yellow people are just as dear to God as we are. The gentle Christ looked widely over the world, shed tears for it, shed blood for it."

"The Mongolian races are more yellow than the Caucasian races," said grandmother, when forced to answer. "They are also more numerous, and some people fear that if we allow them in the country they may get the upper hand, and become a menace to our people. Do not think any more about it, Pearl. Our dear late Phillips Brooks," she added after a short pause, "said, 'No nation, as no man, has a right to take possession of a choice bit of God's[Pg 200] earth, to exclude the foreigner from its territory, that it may live more comfortably and be a little more at peace. But if this particular nation has been given the development of a certain part of God's earth for universal purposes, if the world in the great march of centuries is going to be richer for the development of a certain national character, built up by a larger type of manhood here, then for the world's sake, for the sake of every nation that would pour in upon it that which would disturb that development, we have a right to stand guard over it.'"

This was a long speech for dear grandmother, who is not given to speechifying, and I know the subject must have given her serious thought, or she would never have remembered it.

"Is America being built up by a[Pg 201] larger type of manhood, grandmother?" I asked.

I stopped talking to grandmother, because she looked worried, but I could not stop thinking, I am both the Yellow Pearl, and the yellow peril! Why am I here? What were four hundred millions of us born into the world for? Is yellow badness any worse than white badness?

June 20th, 1——

What a heavenly time we are having, grandmother, Uncle Theodore, and myself, living our nice, quiet lives without distraction! Sometimes we have Professor Ballington in to dinner, then he drops in evenings quite often when he is not formally invited. Other old friends[Pg 202] come too, enough to break the monotony.

Chauffeur Graham was obliged to leave grandmother's employ some time ago; indeed he has never come back since we returned from Mexico. He says it is his last term in the Medical College, and he has to give all the time to his studies. It would be nicer if he were around. I do not seem to care about going out in the automobile now at all.—How is one to know whether this new chauffeur may not run the automobile into a telegraph pole, or something, and kill us all?

June 13th, 1——

Chauffeur Graham has graduated. He is now Doctor Graham. Isn't that lovely! Just like a story book! Uncle Theodore and I went up to see him take his degree. My! wasn't he fine looking! Tall, [Pg 203]beautiful figure, and, as I said before, a handsome face. Uncle Theodore is quite interested in him, as well as grandmother.

On the evening of the day on which he received his degree, he overtook me as I was walking through the park, and told me that he had noticed me in the audience.

He says he is going to put in a year's practice in the hospital before going to China. I was glad to hear that; it would seem rather lonesome in this big America without him, I really believe.

Poor Cousin Ned is standing behind a counter downtown, selling tacks and shingle nails. He had to give up his studies on account of his eyes—the one eye could not stand the strain. Unluckily about that time his father lost his money in some speculation, and there was[Pg 204] nothing for it but poor Ned must go to work.

Another June.

I have been so happy, and life has been so satisfactory that I have not written in my diary for many months. I believe it is only when one's heart is so sorrowful and distracted that it must overflow somewhere, that one pours it into a diary. I have so much to say now that I scarcely know where to begin.

Well, to begin at the beginning, one night Uncle Theodore asked Doctor Graham to dinner, along with Professor Ballington, and another gentleman. After that Doctor Graham began to call quite frequently evenings—he seemed to enjoy grandmother's company so much, and I am sure she enjoyed his.

Well—Oh, I never can tell how it[Pg 205] all came about, but I have promised to go to China with Dr. Graham, to help him learn the Chinese language. It is an awful language for a foreigner to learn, and I just could not bear the thought of the poor fellow having to wrestle with it alone.

It was one evening we were alone in the drawing-room, grandmother having been unable to appear owing to a headache, that we came to the final arrangement.

But suddenly I thought of something that was going to upset it all, I believed,—he didn't know who I was!

"Oh!" I cried, "I cannot go with you—you will not want me—you do not know—that—I—am the Yellow Peril!"

He smiled down at me, and raised my chin in the palm of his left hand—for he had not let me go from his right,[Pg 206] although I had tried to get away—and said, "I expect to be very proud of my Yellow Pearl."

Now I am receiving congratulations which are making me feel very happy and proud, with the exception of Professor Ballington's. I cannot help feeling sorry for that poor old bachelor. He came up to me and said:

"My dear Miss Pearl, I had been vain enough to hope once that I might sometime call this pearl mine, but if I cannot do so, I do not know of any one that I would sooner see claim it than Doctor Graham. And so I say, God bless you! God bless you! You shall always have the love of an old bachelor. And in this world, obsessed with fever and noise, with the sham and superficial, may you always remain the genuine pearl you are."

We are going to China, Doctor Graham and I, my native land; the land of flashing poppy-blossoms, red azaleas, purple wistarias, blue larkspur, yellow jasmine, oleanders, begonias, and flowering bamboos—the Flowery Kingdom. Dr. Graham is going to establish a hospital, to set broken legs and bind up broken heads; and I am going to try and prevent any more of those little Chinese babies from being thrown out on the hillsides to die.

Grandmother says if we go to China it ought to be to tell the Confucionists and Buddhists about the great Christ. But I believe if He went there Himself He would be mending broken legs, binding up broken heads and hearts, and saving the little babies from being thrown[Pg 208] out on the hillsides to die. Dear grandmother is a standing proof to me that the Christ means much more to the world than China's Confucius or Buddha. One day when she was seated in her rocking-chair I threw my arm around her and told her so. The dear old lady never seemed to accept my words as a personal compliment at all, but began, as once before, to sing in a low, quavering voice:

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Yellow Pearl: A Story of the East and the West

E-text prepared by Mary Glenn Krause, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)

THE YELLOWPEARL

March 1st, 1——

March 2, 1——

March 9th, 1——

March 10th, 1——

March 12th, 1——

March 30th, 1——

April 10, 1——

April 20th, 1——

April 25th, 1——

April 30th, 1——

May 5th, 1——

May 10th, 1——

May 11th, 1——

May 13th, 1——

May 21st, 1——

May 22d, 1——

June 7th, 1——

June 10th, 1——

June 20th, 1——

Seaside, July 31st, 1——

August Seaside.

Another Stroll.

Sept. 30th, 1——

Boarding School, October 10th, 1——

Oct. 15th, 1——

Thanksgiving

Holidays, Dec. 20th, 1——

December 21st, 1——

Dec. 23d, 1——

January 1st, 1——

January 7th, 1——

Mexico, February 1st, 1——

Mexico, February 12th, 1——

February 15th, 1——

February 21st, 1——

February 28th, 1——

April 5th, 1——

May 25th, 1——

May 30th, 1——

June 20th, 1——

June 13th, 1——

Another June.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

E-text prepared by Mary Glenn Krause, Martin Pettit,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)

THE YELLOW
PEARL