Miscellanea Part 8

"All that you thought wonderful."

"Yes," said Cousin Peregrine. "Don't you think it curious?"

"Oh, very, Cousin, and I like it very much indeed, only if that's all _you_ thought wonderful, now I want you to tell us what _you_ did that _the Chinese_ thought wonderful."

"It's not very easy to surprise a town-bred Chinaman," said Cousin Peregrine. "What I am going to tell you about now happened in the country. It was up in the north, and in a part where Europeans had very rarely been seen."

"How came you to be there, Cousin Peregrine?"

"I was not on duty. I had got leave for a few days to go up and see Pekin. Therefore I was not in uniform, remember, but in plain clothes.

"On this particular occasion I was on the river Peiho, in one of the clumsy Chinese river-boats. If the wind were favourable, we sailed; if we went with the stream--well and good. If neither stream nor wind were in our favour, the boat was towed."

"Like a barge--with a horse--Cousin Peregrine?"

"Like a barge, Maggie, but not with a horse. One or two of the Chinamen put the rope round them and pulled us along. It was not a quick way of travelling, as you may believe, and when the Peiho was slow and winding, I got out and walked by the paths among the fields."

"Paths and fields--like ours?"

"Yes. Very like some bits of the agricultural parts of England. But no pretty meadows. Every sc.r.a.p of land seemed to be cultivated for crops.

You know the population of China is enormous, and the Chinese are very economical in using their land to produce food, and as they are not great meat-eaters--as we are--their fields are mostly ploughed and sown, so I walked along among rice-fields and cotton-fields, and with little villages here and there, where the cottages are built of mud or stone with tile roofs."

"Did you see any of the villagers?"

"Most certainly I did. You must know that the inhospitable way in which the Chinese and j.a.panese have for many long years received strangers has come from misunderstandings, and ignorance, and suspicion, and perhaps from some other reasons; but the Chinese and j.a.panese villagers who see strangers for the first time, and have lived quiet country lives out of the way of politics, are often very hospitable and friendly. I am bound, however, to except the women; not because they wished us ill, but they are afraid of strangers, and they kept well out of our way."

"Do the village Chinese women have those funny smashed-up feet, Cousin Peregrine?"

"In the north of China they have. In the south only ladies deform themselves in this fas.h.i.+on; and the Tartar women always leave their own beautiful little feet uninjured. Well, the men came out of their cottages and fields, and pressed eagerly but good-naturedly round me."

"Do the village men wear pigtails?"

"Every Chinaman wears a pigtail. A Chinaman without a pigtail would be as great a rarity as a Manx cat, or rather, I ought to say, he would be like the tailless fox in the fable; only you would never catch a Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off--as a degradation--when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can, he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if they are in the way, but if a servant came into your room with his tail tucked up you would be very angry with him, It would be like a housemaid coming in with her sleeves and skirt tucked up for house-cleaning--_most_ disrespectful!"

"Were these the men you showed something to that _they_ thought wonderful?"

"Yes, Fred. And now I'll tell you what it was. You must know that I could speak no Chinese, and my new friends could speak no English, so they chattered like magpies to each other, and laughed like children or Chinamen--for the Chinese are very fond of a joke. When they laughed I laughed, and we bowed and shook hands, and they turned me round and felt me all over, and _felt my hands_."

"What about your hands, Cousin?"

"I had on dog-skin gloves, yellow ones. Now when all the male population of the hamlet had stroked these very carefully, I perceived that they had never seen gloves before, and that they believed themselves to be testing the feel of a barbarian's skin."

"Barbarian?"

"Certainly, Bessie. They give us the same polite name that we feel ourselves more justified in applying to them. Well, when they had laughed, and I had laughed, and we had shaken hands afresh, laughing heartily as we did so, and I began to feel it was time to go on and catch up my boat, which was floating sluggishly down the winding stream of the Peiho, I resolved on one final effect, like the last scene of a dramatic performance. Making vigorous signs and noises, to intimate that something was coming, and they must look out sharp, and feeling very much like a conjurer who has requested his audience to keep their eyes on him and 'see how it's done'--I slyly unb.u.t.toned my gloves, and then with much parade began to draw one off by the finger-tips.

"'Eyah! Eyah!' cried the Chinamen on all the notes of the gamut, as they fell back over each other. _They thought I was skinning my hands_. I 'smiled superior,' as I took the gloves off, and made an effect almost as great by putting them on again."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine, weren't they astonished?"

"They were, Maggie, And unless they are more familiar with Europeans now, the mystery is probably to this day as unsolved to them as the trick of the ball of thread and the twelve needles still is to me. By this time, however, my boat was

'Far off, a blot upon the stream,'

and I had to hasten away as fast as I could to catch it up. I parted on the most friendly terms from my narrow-eyed acquaintance, but when I had nearly regained my boat I could still see them in their blue-cotton dresses and long pigtails, gazing open-mouthed at my vanis.h.i.+ng figure across the rice-fields."

After a few seconds' silence, during which Maggie had sat with her eyes thoughtfully fixed on the fire, she said, "Cousin Peregrine, you said in your letters that it was very cold in the north of China. If Chinamen know nothing about gloves, how can they keep their hands warm?" Maggie had a little the air of regarding this question as a poser, but Cousin Peregrine was not disconcerted.

"My dear Maggie, your question reminds me of another occasion, when I astonished a most respectable old China gentleman by my gloves. I will tell you about it, as it will show you how the Chinese keep their hands warm.

"It was on this very same expedition. We were at Tung-Chow, about eight miles from Pekin. At this place we had to leave the river, and take to our Tartar ponies, which our Chinese horse-boys had ridden up to this point to meet us. We had hired a little cart to convey our baggage, and I was sitting on my pony watching the lading up of the cart, when a dear old Chinaman, dressed in blue wadded silk, handsomely lined with fur, came up to me, and with that air of gentlemanly courtesy which is by no means confined to Europe, began to explain and expound in his own language for my benefit."

"What was he talking about? Could you tell?"

"I soon guessed. The fact is I am not very apt to wear gloves when I can help it, especially if I am working at anything. At the moment the old Chinese gentleman came up I was holding the reins of my pony with bare hands (my gloves being in my pocket), and as the morning was cold, my fingers looked rather blue. Having ascertained by feeling that my coat-sleeves would not turn down any lower than my wrists, he touched my hands softly, and made courteous signs, indicating that he was about to do me a good turn. Having signalled a polite disapprobation of the imperfect nature of my sleeves, he drew my attention to his own deep wide ones. Turning them back so as to expose the hands, the fine fur lining lay like a rich tr.i.m.m.i.n.g above his wrists. Then with a glance of infinite triumph he bespoke my close attention as, s.h.i.+vering, to express cold, he turned the long sleeves, each a quarter of a yard, over his hands, and stuffing each hand into the opposite sleeve they were warm and comfortable, as it were in a m.u.f.f, which was a part of his coat.

More sensible than our m.u.f.fs too, the fur was inside instead of out.

"He was the very pink of politeness, but at this point his pride of superior intelligence could not be restrained, and he broke into fits of delighted laughter, in which the horse-boys, the spectators, my friends, and (as is customary in China) everybody within sight and hearing joined.

"I took good care to laugh heartily too. After which I made signs the counterpart of his. He looked anxious. I put my hand in my pocket, and drew out my gloves. He stared. _I put them on_, and nodded, to show that that was the way we barbarians did it.

"'Eyah!' cried the silk-robed old gentleman.

"'Eyah!' echoed the horse-boys and the crowd.

"Then I laughed, and the horse-boys laughed loudly, and the crowd louder still, and finally the old gentleman doubled himself up in his blue silk fur-lined robe in fits of laughter.

"An Asiatic only relishes one thing better than being outwitted--that is to outwit.

"'Eyah! Eyah! Ha! ha! ha!' they cried as we rode away.

"'Ha! ha! ha!' replied I, waving a well-gloved hand, on my road to Pekin."

WAVES OF THE GREAT SOUTH SEAS.

(_Founded on Fact_.)

"Very likely the man who drew it had been nearly drowned by one himself."

"Very likely nothing of the sort!"

"How could he draw it if he hadn't seen it?"