Flash-lights From The Seven Seas Part 16

"I feel like a cartoon I see in your peculiar paper--what you call him--_Puck_? _Judge_? No--he bin in that peculiar paper, _Life_? That was he.

"This picture; he shows two dogs talking to each other.

"One dog he a great, what you call him--Coolie? Pug? Yes, he was a Scottish Coolie. The other was a little wee dog; a Pugnacious Dog, I think you call him.

"The little dog he have his tail all done up in the bandages.

"The big dog say, 'Little dog, for why you have your tail all bandaged up like that? You have an accident?'

"'No,' say the little dog, 'but my master, he just come home from France, and I am so glad to see him I bin wagging my tail all day long until it get broke and I have to have him wrapped up like this.'"

Then the speaker turned dramatically--with the deepest sense of seriousness; without a trace of a smile on his face, without a glimmer of consciousness of the fact that the Americans at that banquet were biting their teeth to keep from bursting into laughter; and with a grand flourish, pointed to the American dignitary and said, "I feel just like that little dog. I so glad to see Dr. ---- come to j.a.pan that I have been wagging my tail all day long."

But he got no further. The American crowd; full-dressed, and full of dignity as it was; exploded. That speech was too much, even for the sake of international courtesy, to expect such a crowd to hold in.

Fortunately most of the educated j.a.panese there saw the joke and joined in the laugh.

We had a funny experience in a dining car on a j.a.panese train coming from northern j.a.pan down to Tokyo one evening.

A well-dressed j.a.panese in a rich Kimono sat drinking heavily at a table a few feet from us.

Suddenly he looked up and yelled "Silence!" looking directly at us.

It was so sudden and so funny that I laughed. This made the j.a.panese gentleman angry.

Then he let forth a more extended English sentence. Later we figured that it was the only sentence in English that he knew, and that he had learned that sentence by sitting at the feet of some stern, English teacher who had occasion to reiterate that sentence frequently.

This drunken j.a.panese looked at me sternly for laughing and said, "Silence! All gentlemen must be silent!"

This was too much for my sense of humor and I laughed again.

"Silence! All gentlemen must be silent!" he yelled a third time.

"We must get away from him; or we'll get into trouble. I can't keep from laughing when he repeats that," I said to Dr. Goucher.

We all moved back to another table, but Dr. Goucher sat by himself at a little table. This moving, insulted the drunken j.a.panese and he came back to where Dr. Goucher sat and leered into his face yelling once again, "All gentlemen must be silent!"

At this one of the party jumped to the side of Dr. Goucher and took the j.a.panese by the shoulder and turned him around and said, "Go! Sit down, fool!"

The train was whirling through the night. There were mutterings and imprecations among the j.a.panese and we thought that they were directed toward us; but a missionary who could understand the language, said that the whole crowd of j.a.panese was severely reprimanding the drunken j.a.panese for insulting foreigners. They told him in j.a.panese phrases that he ought to be ashamed of insulting foreigners in his own country.

About five minutes after this he suddenly left his seat, came staggering down the aisle of the car with a plate full of big red apples and offered an apple to each one of us as a peace offering.

We got to calling him, in our party "Old Mr. 'All gentlemen must be silent!'" and he came to be a real character in our fun.

But one morning a month later as we were all boarding a train in Fusan, Korea, bound for Seoul, who should be sitting in the car but "Old Mr.

'All gentlemen must be silent.'"

This time he was in American clothes. We had a j.a.panese friend with us.

We told this friend about the incident on the train in northern j.a.pan and asked him who the man was.

"Why that is a member of the House of Lords and he is going up to Korea representing the Diet to make a report on the Korean outrages," we were told.

Another month pa.s.sed and I was coming back from Seoul, Korea, to Tokio, j.a.pan, when I suddenly ran into our old friend "All gentlemen must be silent!" This time he was drunk again, and sitting in a j.a.panese dining car with the same Kimono on that he had worn the first time we saw him.

He saw me enter the car.

I tried to avoid him, but he was not to let this opportunity for international courtesy go by unnoticed and unimproved. So, much to my delight and surprise, he arose, and made a low bow.

I bowed back. He made another bow until his nose almost touched the car.

I made a return bow. He made a third one. I followed suit. He made a fourth. I made a fourth, although I was beginning to feel dizzy and my insides were beginning to complain.

I wondered when the thing would stop. I thought of a hundred fat men I had seen on a Gymnasium floor trying to do the same thing and touch the floor with their hands. I knew that there was a limit to my endurance in a test of this kind. He bowed five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times, and I bowed back. I could see things whirling around me.

"Blame it, why doesn't he stop some time!" I said to myself.

I was desperate. Then suddenly I looked at him and he looked at me and he said, with great dignity, "All gentlemen must be silent!" and sat down, with his friends and his wines.

I don't know whether he realized how funny it was or not. I don't know whether he even knew what he was saying in his drunken condition, but I do know that when I got out of that car into the vestibule I had the laugh of my life. A j.a.panese woman came by, smiled at me and I am sure said to herself:

"Ah, these Americans they are all crazy!"

The last Flash-light of Fun is a picture from the Philippines.

I have spoken in the chapter on "Flash-lights of Faith" of the trip to the Negrito tribe, but in that chapter I did not speak of the desperate adventure of the trip back down the jungle trail to civilization after the experience with the old man.

For the second time on that memorable day I dropped in my tracks with a sunstroke. My legs refused to move. My muscles were congested with waste matter and evidently my brain was also. When I returned to consciousness I saw lying beside me Mr. Huddleston, an old missionary who had been in the Philippines for many years. Across from, him was a naked Negrito who was acting as our guide.

I looked up in a tree above us and saw what I thought was a group of monkeys.

"Look at the monkeys!" I said to the missionary.

"There are no monkeys in that tree!" he said.

That made me angry. My mind was affected by the sun to such an extent that I had an insane desire to grab the Bolo of the Negrito guide out of his belt and run it through the missionary. I made a determined mental effort to do so, but my arm would not work. I strove as one strives in a dream when he is trying to run away from some imagined danger and his feet are tied down. If I could have gotten my hands on that bolo I would have run it through the missionary without a minute's hesitation.

But my mind was detracted from this thought by two large elephants which I suddenly saw running down the path on which we were lying. I yelled aloud!

"The elephants! They will trample us man! Look! There they come!" I cried pointing up the trail on which we were lying.

"Why you're plumb crazy man! You've missed too many boats! That sun's got you! There are no elephants on this trail!"

"But I know elephants when I see them!" I cried and tried to roll out of the trail but again found it impossible to make my brain and my muscles coordinate. It was a terrible moment to me.

"My G.o.d man! Are you crazy! I know elephants when I see them. They're right on us now! Help me out of here! I can't move!"