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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57473 ***
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 57473-h.htm or 57473-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/57473/57473-h/57473-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/57473/57473-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      https://archive.org/details/yellowpearlstory00tesk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE YELLOW PEARL
+
+A Story of the East and the West
+
+by
+
+ADELINE M. TESKEY
+
+Author of "Where the Sugar Maple
+Grows," etc.
+
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Hodder and Stoughton
+New York
+George H. Doran Company
+
+Copyright, 1911,
+By George H. Doran Company
+
+
+[Illustration: Frontispiece]
+
+
+
+
+THE YELLOW PEARL
+
+ADELINE M. TESKEY
+
+
+
+
+THE YELLOW PEARL
+
+
+
+
+_March 1st, 1----_
+
+
+Here I am in this strange country about which I have learned in the
+geography and history, and about which I heard my father talk. The
+daughter of an American man and a Chinese woman, I suppose I am what is
+called a mongrel. My father was a Commissioner of Customs in China, and
+living for years in that country he fell in love with my mother and
+married her--as was natural. Who could help falling in love with my
+dear, yellow, winsome, little mother? My name is Margaret, called after
+my father's mother; my father said that the word Margaret means a pearl,
+so he gave me the pet name "Pearl." Dear father!
+
+"It was a monstrous thing for Brother George to marry away there," I
+overheard my Aunt Gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "Why
+could he not have come back home to his own country and found a
+wife?--And above all to have married a heathen Chinese!"
+
+"Not a heathen," said my grandmother, reproachfully, "she had previously
+embraced the faith of Europeans; so my dear George wrote me from that
+far-away country."
+
+"Oh, they are all heathens in my estimation," cried my Aunt Gwendolin,
+scornfully; "what faith they embrace does not change the fact that they
+belong to the yellow people."
+
+My mother died while I was yet a child, and my father has died and left
+me alone in the world within the last year. Grandmother, my father's
+mother, when she learned about her son's death, sent at once for me.
+
+"I cannot leave a granddaughter of mine in that country, and among that
+heathen, if not barbarous, people," she wrote to the American consul,
+"and I ask your services to assist her to come to my home in America."
+
+The consul, absent-minded, gave me my grandmother's letter to read, and
+thus I learned her feeling about my mother's people and country. I never
+would have come to this horrible America if I could have helped myself;
+but I am scarcely of age, and by my father's will grandmother is
+appointed my guardian.
+
+The result of it all is, that having crossed the intervening waters, I
+am here in the home of my grandmother, my Aunt Gwendolin and my Uncle
+Theodore Morgan.
+
+When I arrived this morning I was ushered into the sitting-room by a
+maid, and the first one I beheld was my grandmother, sitting in a
+rocking-chair. She called me to her, and crossing the room, I kotowed to
+her, that is I went down on my hands and knees and touched my forehead
+to the floor, as my Chinese nurse had taught me when I was yet a baby
+that I should always do when I came into the presence of an elderly
+woman, a mother of children.
+
+"My _dear_ grandchild!" cried my grandmother, "_do_ get up. All you
+should do is to kiss me--your grandmother!" And she put out her hand and
+assisted me from the floor.
+
+Grandmother is the dearest, prettiest little woman I ever saw, with
+white hair and the brightest of eyes, and I have to love her, although I
+had made up my mind to hate everything in America. A moment after she
+had lifted me from the floor, my Aunt Gwendolin came in. She is tall and
+thin, not nearly so beautiful a woman as my Chinese mother. She wears
+skirts that drag on the floor, and her hair is built up into a sort of a
+mountain on top of her head. I am reminded every time I look at her of a
+certain peak in the Thian Shan mountains. I very much prefer little
+women, like my own dear mother, like the women of my own country.
+
+My Uncle Theodore is long-armed, long-legged, long-bodied. He looks a
+little like my father, and for that reason I hate him a little less than
+my Aunt Gwendolin.
+
+After my mother's death, my father brought into our home a French
+governess, daughter of a French consul, to teach me. Father seemed to
+be lost in his business, or his grief at the loss of my mother, and paid
+very little heed to me after the arrival of the governess.
+
+"She is an educated woman," he told me when he had engaged her, "and I
+want her to teach you all you could learn in a first-class girls' school
+in Europe or America."
+
+After that the French governess spent hours with me every day, and I saw
+my father only at intervals. How much we talked about, that French lady
+and I! Everything, almost, except religion; _that_ my father vetoed, as
+her faith was not the one he wished me to embrace. "I'll take you over
+to your grandmother by and by," he used to say, "to get the proper
+religious instruction."
+
+The governess said that I inherited more from my father's side of the
+house than my mother's; that although I was born in China, I was more
+of an Occidental than an Oriental; more than once she said that my
+American mannerisms and tricks of speech were really remarkable, and
+that I was a living example of the power of heredity. But I am never
+going back on my mother's people, _never_, my dear little oval-faced
+mother whose grave is under a spreading camphor tree at the heart of the
+world.
+
+Does it not mean something that China is at the centre of the world--the
+kernel?
+
+"The girl is not bad to look at, in fact I think she is a beauty--a face
+filled with the indescribable dash of the Orient," said my Uncle
+Theodore, when they were talking me over in the sitting-room after I had
+retired to my chamber upstairs. Evidently they had forgotten the
+opening in the floor which had been left by the workmen while making
+some changes in the plumbing. And they did not know my extraordinary
+keenness of hearing, which my governess said was an Oriental trait.
+
+It seemed to give my governess some pleasure to talk about that keen
+sense of the Orientals, and to speculate as to how they had acquired it.
+"They have lived in a country where it is necessary, for
+self-protection, to hear all that is being plotted and planned," she
+said, "a country of conspiracies and intrigues, of plots and
+counterplots. Centuries of this have developed abnormal hearing."
+
+"She has a superb figure," said my uncle, continuing to talk about me,
+"and that oval face of hers, with her creamy complexion, is really
+bewitching."
+
+"Yellow! you mean, _yellow_!" interrupted my Aunt Gwendolin; "she's
+entirely too yellow for beauty. I'm terribly afraid that some of our set
+will discover her nationality. That's _one_ thing you must remember,
+Theodore, nobody on this continent is ever to learn anything about her
+Chinese blood. They are so despised here as a race. She is our brother's
+daughter, with some foreign strain inherited from her mother; that
+is enough; never, _never_, let us acknowledge the Chinese. The
+Italians and Spanish are yellowish too,--I have it!" she exclaimed,
+"_Spanish!_--Spanish will do!--Some of those are _our_ people now, you
+know! It will be quite interesting to have her a native of one of our
+Dependencies--a descendant of some old Spanish family!"
+
+"Do not be foolish, Gwendolin," said my grandmother.
+
+"I could not endure the thought of introducing a Celestial," continued
+my aunt. "None must know that we have introduced the Yellow Peril into
+the country!"
+
+"Why, Gwendolin, how you do talk," said my grandmother; "the child's
+father was an American, and she was admitted into this country as an
+American."
+
+"You must talk with the girl to-morrow, Theodore," continued my aunt,
+ignoring my grandmother's remark, "and tell her to keep sacred her
+progenitors. She speaks such perfect English no one would suspect that
+there was much foreign about her."
+
+"She has a striking, unusual air that would attract a second glance
+from most people," said my uncle. "If you can keep her nationality from
+Professor Ballington you will do better than I think you can; he is a
+great ethnologist; it is his life-work to make discoveries in that
+line."
+
+"Well it _must_ be kept, no matter what means we resort to," returned my
+Aunt Gwendolin, with a ring of determination in her voice.
+
+"Poor child," said my dear old grandmother, "she is my granddaughter,
+and I love her already, my George's child. She looks beautiful to me
+whether yellow or no."
+
+I had gone down to dinner on this first evening in a soft yellow silk,
+with long flowing sleeves trimmed with dragons, I know I looked well in
+it. Governess always said I did. It was partly Chinese and partly
+European in design. Governess planned it herself, and she said the
+French were born with a knowledge how to dress artistically; she boasted
+that she made it to suit my peculiar style.
+
+"Did you notice that China silk she had on at dinner?" said Aunt
+Gwendolin; "there must be an end to all that; a ban must be put on
+everything Chinese."
+
+"It was rather becoming I thought," said Uncle Theodore, "in harmony
+with the clear yellow of her skin. Let her dress alone, she seems to
+know how to put it. That is a born gift with some women, and if it is
+not, they never seem to acquire it. There is great elegance in the
+straight lines of the Oriental dress."
+
+"Let her alone," said Aunt Gwendolin scornfully, "and let the whole city
+know we have introduced the Yellow Per----"
+
+"Gwendolin, dear," interrupted grandmother, "do not speak so."
+
+"Those Chinese silks, of which she seems to have gowns galore--I was at
+the unpacking of her trunks--must be tabooed," said my aunt. "Her father
+has evidently intended her to dress like an European or American; she
+has _some_ waist line, and does not wear the sacque the women wear in
+China; but her sleeves are _years_ old."
+
+"The dear child may object to having her attire changed at once," said
+my grandmother. "She is used to those soft clinging silks, and may not
+want to give them up. And sleeves are of little consequence. Let her
+alone for awhile."
+
+"Let her alone!" again retorted Aunt Gwendolin, "and let Professor
+Ballington see her? He'd know her nationality at once in that yellow
+silk covered with sprawling dragons, as almost anybody might. I cannot
+have anything so mortifying occur when the girl is calling me 'aunt'!"
+
+"Ballington is a curious kind of a chap, and values people on their own
+merits; _he'd_ think none the less of the girl because she has some
+Chinese blood in her," returned Uncle Theodore.
+
+"I'll take her out to-morrow," continued my aunt, "and buy her some
+taffeta silks and French muslins, and dress her up as a Christian
+_should_ be dressed."
+
+Grandmother said no more. The mother is not the head of the house in
+America as she is in dear old China. I suppose it is the daughter who
+rules in this country.
+
+I am so sleepy I cannot listen any longer, even to talk about myself. My
+governess has taught me that eavesdropping is not honourable, but I
+cannot avoid hearing so long as I stay in my room, and I have nowhere
+else to go. I will turn out the electric light, throw myself on the bed,
+yellow silk and all, and cry myself asleep. I wonder is that an American
+or a Chinese act? My governess was continually tracing my actions to one
+or other of the nations.
+
+
+
+
+_March 2, 1----_
+
+
+It happened this morning! That man Aunt Gwendolin thought would be so
+sure to know that I was the Yellow Pearl, came to the house, and was
+ushered into my uncle's den by the maid, a few moments after I had been
+sent in there to have the "talk" with him which was spoken about the
+night before.
+
+"He is a tall man, very, very white," were my thoughts regarding him,
+as he bowed politely before me, when my uncle introduced us; and I
+suppose his thoughts regarding me were: "She is a short woman, very,
+very, yellow."
+
+He left after a few moments' conversation with my uncle; and turning to
+me the latter said, "That gentleman who has just gone is professor of
+ethnology in the State University. He knows all about the peculiarities
+of all the peoples and tribes that ever have graced or disgraced the
+face of this planet we call the world---- Has your aunt told you that
+she thinks it better that you should say nothing about your Chinese
+ancestry?" he added hastily and awkwardly.
+
+"Have the Chinese done anything disgraceful?" I asked him.
+
+"No, no, I don't suppose they really have," he answered with an air of
+annoyance. "A girl like you cannot understand; you had better simply
+follow instructions. I hope it will not be necessary to mention this
+subject again," he added meaningly.
+
+I could not mistake him; I must not _dare_ tell Professor Ballington or
+any one else in this great country that my mother was a Chinese woman.
+
+In the afternoon Aunt Gwendolin took me down into the shops of the city,
+"to select an outfit," she said.
+
+We stood for hours, it seemed to me, over counters laden with silks and
+muslins of every colour in the rainbow. Aunt Gwendolin held the various
+shades up against my face to see which best became my "Spanish
+complexion." This was said, I suppose, for the ears of the sales-people,
+and the fashionable customers standing around.
+
+When selections were made among the goods, I was taken to the
+establishment of a "Parisienne modiste," where I was pinched, puckered,
+and pulled until I was nearly numb. A sort of a steel waist was put on
+me, which my aunt and the modiste called a "corset," and was so tightly
+pulled I could scarcely breathe.
+
+"I can't stand it, Aunt Gwendolin," I whisperingly gasped.
+
+"Yes, you _can_!" she returned peremptorily, "you'll get used to it;
+that's nothing like as tight as the girls all wear them in this
+country."
+
+"I can't breathe," I gasped again, when the modiste had turned her back;
+(Aunt Gwendolin had signed to me the first time not to let her hear me).
+
+"Hush!" said my aunt; "for pity sake do not let the modiste know that
+you never had a corset on before."
+
+"I'd rather have my feet bound like the women do in Chi----"
+
+Aunt Gwendolin placed her jewelled fingers over my mouth before I had
+finished the sentence.
+
+Just as I was through being "fitted," one of Aunt Gwendolin's
+fashionable friends came in. "Arabella," my aunt called her, but the
+modiste called her Mrs. Delaney. I was not noticed, and slipped off into
+a corner, and this newcomer and my relative fell into a deep and
+absorbing talk about the new style of sleeve. I saw my opportunity and
+slipped unnoticed out the front door, which fortunately was behind them.
+
+Hurrying down a few blocks I reached a bookseller's window. With one
+glance I had noticed, when my aunt and I were passing the window on the
+way to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste, the word China on
+the cover of a book. "I'll buy that book," I had said to myself, "and
+learn what there is about China that makes Americans despise her
+people."
+
+Entering the store, I found a number of books about China and the
+Chinese: "One of China's Scholars," "How the Chinese Think," "The
+Greatest Novels of China," "Chinese Life." I paid for them all and
+ordered them sent to my grandmother's house.
+
+The bookseller looked at me very curiously for several moments, and then
+ventured, "You speak English very well."
+
+"Of course I do," I said, tossing my head and trying to act saucily, as
+my governess had told me the American girls did. I would not have dared
+to treat a man that way in China.
+
+He did not venture to speak again. It is funny to be able in this
+America to frighten a man! Confucius says that women should "be always
+modest and respectful in demeanour, and prefer others to themselves";
+but I have not to mind Confucius any longer; I am now in the "sweet land
+of liberty," as they sing in their national anthem. I heard my father
+say once that the gentleness and modesty of Oriental women was really
+beautiful; but it would not be beautiful in America.
+
+I hurried back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste, and found
+my aunt and her friend still talking about sleeves. They had never
+noticed my absence. How very important sleeves are in America! I never
+heard them talked about in China.
+
+The talkers had evidently forgotten me, so I slipped out again, and
+walked several blocks, watching the manners, and catching snatches of
+the conversation of Americans.
+
+"I'm going to have mine eighteen gores----"
+
+"Pleating down the front, frills at the side----"
+
+"Pocahontas hat, and Prince Chap suit----"
+
+"Front panel, and revers turned----"
+
+"Frills and pipings all around----"
+
+"Gored, or cut in one piece----"
+
+"Oh, pompadour, by all means, with----"
+
+These were the snatches of conversation which I caught from the women as
+they passed me. The men were mostly silent and glum.
+
+This curious country, that Aunt Gwendolin says has gone away ahead of
+the rest of the world, why do its women talk more about dress than
+anything else? And why have its men such pushing, hurrying,
+knock-you-down-if-you-stand-in-my-way faces?
+
+When I got back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste I found
+my aunt ready to take me to the milliner's to be "outfitted with hats."
+
+Walking a block or two we entered a much-decorated room, and at my
+aunt's request an attendant brought several hats for our
+inspection--curious-looking things like straw bee-hives, or huge wasps'
+nests, covered over largely with wings and the heads of poor little dead
+birds, ends and loops of ribbon, roses and leaves, looking as if they
+were only half sewed on and liable to tumble off if touched, and long
+feathers, buckles, and pins. My aunt selected several, fitted them on
+my head, and declared they were very becoming to my Spanish style of
+beauty. I, almost in tears, whispered into her ear, so the attendant
+would not hear me, "I shall not have to wear them where any one can see
+me, shall I?" Aunt Gwendolin smiled (the attendant was looking) and
+replied sweetly, "Yes, they are very pretty, indeed."
+
+We in China could never kill our birds and wear them on our heads--the
+breasts of our beautiful mandarin ducks, the wings of our gold and
+silver pheasants, the heads of our pretty parrakeets--we never could do
+it--we would feel like murderers. Our majestic-looking wild geese, that
+fly over our heads in flocks sometimes thirty miles in length, going
+south in the autumn and north in the spring, we never molest them. The
+Buddhists believe that all geese perform an aerial pilgrimage to the
+holiest of the lakes in the mountains every year, transporting the sins
+of the neighbourhood, returning to the valley with a new stock of
+inspiration for the people in the locality where they choose to alight.
+Here in this civilised country--I have been reading in one of their
+magazines that grandmother loaned me--they catch the beautiful
+water-fowls, kill them, and hack off their downy breasts to make ladies'
+hats. And the little young birds starve in the nest, because the mother
+never returns to feed them. Ugh! Civilised countries are dreadful!
+
+When the hats were selected my aunt conducted me to the furrier's.
+
+"The cold weather is not over yet," she said, "and while we are about it
+I shall select some necessary furs."
+
+I had noticed as we were passing through the streets that the ladies
+had curious looking things around their necks and shoulders, capes
+trimmed with heads of animals, and tails and paws of the same. I
+wondered the dogs did not bark at them. They looked like some hunters
+who had been out shooting and had thrown their dead game over their
+shoulders.
+
+The furrier whose shop we had entered seemed to know my aunt, and as
+soon as she said, "I want you to show me some of your best fur garments
+suitable for a young lady," he brought down from some shelves the
+greatest quantity of fur articles, ermine, mink, seal, sable, all
+covered with heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, mouths, teeth, whiskers. I
+shuddered and drew back when my aunt went to place one around my neck.
+
+"Oh, auntie!" I cried, "don't touch it to me!"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha," softly and politely laughed the shopkeeper, "the young
+lady has not become acquainted with the newest thing in furs, so
+beautiful and realistic--so charming!"
+
+Aunt Gwendolin frowned. She evidently did not like my display of nerves,
+and resolutely fastened around my throat an ermine scarf with seven or
+eight heads, and twice as many tails. "There!" she said, "that will do
+nicely, it is very becoming to her creamy Spanish."
+
+"It could not be better," said the polite shopkeeper.
+
+A muff was then chosen to match the scarf, with just as many horrible
+grinning heads, and little snaky tails; and paying for them, my aunt
+ordered them sent home.
+
+On my return home I dropped a silver coin into the housemaid's hand,
+and told her when the parcel of books arrived she was to carry it up to
+my room and say nothing about it. She seemed to understand, and asked no
+questions.
+
+An hour later she came to my door with the books in her arms, and found
+me examining my new set of furs.
+
+"Betty," I cried, throwing wide the door of my room, "come in and tell
+me all about my furs--how the man that sells them gets all those little
+heads and tails. Where do they get them? And how do they catch them? I
+want to know it all."
+
+"Oh, miss," said Betty, stepping briskly into the room, nothing loath to
+accept the invitation to examine the new furs, "they lives out in the
+wild woods--these little critters, an' men poisons 'em, an' traps 'em.
+An' when they is dead, they skins 'em, tans the skins, an' makes 'em up
+into muffs, an' boas, an' tippets, an' fur coats, an' so forth, an' so
+forth."
+
+"Poison and trap them!" I cried, "doesn't that make the little creatures
+suffer?"
+
+"You bet!" said Betty.
+
+"How cruel!" I added.
+
+"Yes, miss, ain't it awful?" returned Betty, making a wry face. "They's
+a book just been throwed in at the door to-day telling all as to how it
+is done. The American Humane Association has wrote the book--_they_
+don't approve of killin' things. I'll bring it up an' let you read it."
+
+Suiting the action to the thought Betty rushed away down to the kitchen
+for the book.
+
+She returned in a few moments with a small pamphlet, and thrust it
+hastily into my hand--my aunt was calling her--and hastened away.
+
+I glanced down at a picture on the front page--a hare caught by the hind
+leg in a trap. A most agonised expression was on the little animal's
+face. Below the picture was the title of the story, "_The Cost of a
+Skin_." I dropped into a rocking-chair and read the story:
+
+
+     "Furs are luxuries, and it cannot be said in apology for the wrongs
+     done in obtaining them that they are essential to human life. Skins
+     and dead birds are not half so beautiful as flowers, or ribbons, or
+     velvets, or mohair. They are popular because they are barbaric.
+     They appeal to the vulgarians. Our ideas of art, like our
+     impulses, and like human psychology generally, are still largely in
+     the savage state of evolution. No one but a vulgarian would attempt
+     to adorn herself by putting the dead bodies of birds on her head,
+     or muffling her shoulders in grinning weasels, and dangling
+     mink-tails. Indeed, to one who sees things as they are, in the full
+     light of adult understanding, a woman rigged out in such cemeterial
+     appurtenances is repulsive. She is a concourse of unnecessary
+     funerals; she is about as fascinating, about as choice and
+     ingenious in her decorations, as she would be, embellished with a
+     necklace of human scalps. She should excite pity and contempt. She
+     is a pathetic example of a being trying to add to her charms by
+     high crimes and misdemeanours, and succeeding only in advertising
+     her indifference to feeling.
+
+     "Of all the accessories gathered from every quarter of the earth to
+     garnish human vanity, furs are the most expensive; for in no way
+     does man show such complete indifference to the feelings of his
+     victims as he does in the fur trade.
+
+     "The most of the skins used for furs are obtained by catching their
+     owners in traps, and death in such cases comes usually at the close
+     of hours, or even days, of the most intense suffering and terror.
+     The principal device used by professional trappers is the
+     steel-trap, the most villanous instrument of arrest that was ever
+     invented by the human mind. It is not an uncommon thing for the
+     savage jaws of this monstrous instrument to bite off the leg of
+     their would-be captive at a single stroke. If the leg is not
+     completely amputated by the snap of the terrible steel, it is
+     likely to be so deeply cut as to encourage the animal to gnaw or
+     twist it off. This latter is the common road to escape of many
+     animals. Trappers say that on an average one animal in every five
+     caught has only three legs."
+
+
+"We'd never do it in China--_never_!" I cried, throwing the leaflet from
+me. "It is only this horrid, civilised America that could be so terribly
+cruel! I shall never wear my furs--_never_! I shall beg grandmother--she
+seems to be the only civilised being I know that has any heart--to allow
+me to go without them!"
+
+I looked again at my leaflet, which I had picked from the floor, and
+continued to read the words of the author:
+
+
+     "I would rather be an insect--a bee or a butterfly--and float in
+     dim dreams among the wild flowers of summer than be a man and feel
+     the wrongs of this wretched world."
+
+
+I rose from my chair and thrust my headed and tailed ermine scarf and
+muff into a box, and pushed them far back on the closet shelf.
+
+"Stay there! Stay there!" I cried. "The Yellow Pearl will have nothing
+to do with civilisation!"
+
+"Yellow Pearl," I said to myself, accusingly, half an hour later, "_you_
+know that they have fur in China, that the rich wear fur-lined
+garments." "Yes," I replied to that accusing _I_, "the rich wear
+fur-lined garments, but they procure the fur from animals that have to
+be killed for food, or for man's self-preservation. They are not caught
+in the cruel steely traps of America. Linings, mind you, _linings_," I
+reiterated, "to keep them warm, not the heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes,
+teeth of the little animals to bedizen their persons."
+
+
+
+
+_March 9th, 1----_
+
+
+The result of all the pinching, puckering, fitting, which I underwent at
+the establishment of the Parisienne modiste is that I am walking around
+arrayed in taffeta silk, and squeezed out of all my natural shape by the
+steel waist. My sleeves are made so that my shoulders appear very much
+nearer my ears than nature intended them to be. My hair is done up in a
+quarter hundred--more or less--little puffs, and a quarter hundred
+hairpins are scratching my scalp. I have had to lay aside my nice soft
+shoes, and pretty Chinese slippers, and am gyrating around in tight
+shoes, with a French heel somewhere about the middle of the sole. I
+almost fell downstairs the first day I wore them; and when I wanted to
+take them off my Aunt Gwendolin was indignant.
+
+"You'll learn to walk in them soon," she said; "you are in a civilised
+country now, and must do as the people do here. You cannot pad around
+without heels any more."
+
+I look ugly, and I feel cross. I have reached the land of bondage! Oh,
+for my beautiful China silks, thick, soft, lustrous, and loose enough to
+be comfortable--which have been bundled up and put in a large cedar
+chest in the attic. Oh, for my own country, my heathen China, with its
+dress thousands of years old in fashion! What frights some of the women
+in this stuck-up country look--in their tight waists, showing their
+figures! That may be pretty enough--if really modest, which my country
+denies--when they are young, slender, lithe; but fancy a great stout
+woman in a "shirt waist," as they call it, with a belt defining her
+girth, and perhaps a tight skirt making her look positively vulgar. Ugh!
+
+Grandmother has had me in her room; indeed, she took me in a couple of
+days after my arrival, and locking the door to keep out all intruders,
+she talked long and solemnly to me. She was shocked when she learned
+that I had scarcely heard of Christ, and that I had never read the
+Bible.
+
+"My dear child," she cried, "what was your father thinking about? Why
+did he so neglect your religious education?"
+
+"He always said that he was going to bring me over to you, grandmother,
+to teach me religion," I replied. "I know all about Confucius and
+Buddha, my nurses used to talk about them; but they never mentioned
+Christ."
+
+The result of this conversation is, that grandmother has me go into her
+room for a half-hour every day to study the Bible. We began at the first
+chapter of Genesis, and already we have got as far as Abraham.
+
+Between times I am reading the Chinese books in my own room upstairs,
+and I learn from one of them that more than a century before the birth
+of Abraham, China had two great and good men; fully as good as Abraham I
+should think,--Yao and Shun--who framed laws that govern the nation
+to-day. Why did not Yao and Shun get a "_call_" as Abraham did? I think
+they deserved one fully as well.
+
+After we get through our study of Genesis and Abraham, grandmother
+usually has a little talk about that great and beautiful man, Christ;
+telling me how kind and gentle he was, and how he always considered the
+good of others rather than his own good.
+
+"The Princely Man!" I cried the first time she mentioned him.
+
+She wanted to know what I meant, and I told her that my nurses had told
+me about China's ideal and model, the "Princely Man," and I thought the
+Christ must be _he_.
+
+"More, much more than Confucius, the Princely Man," returned my
+grandmother. "It is my sincere hope, my dear granddaughter, that your
+mind may become illumined as you proceed with your study, until you
+understand the vast difference between the Princely Man and Christ."
+
+"There is a pretty legend about Christ," she added, "which says that as
+He walked the earth sweet flowers grew in the path behind Him. The
+legend is true in a spiritual sense--wherever His steps have pressed the
+earth all these centuries, flowers have sprung up, flowers of love,
+kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness." Then grandmother began to sing
+softly, in the sweetest old trembly soprano voice one ever heard, asking
+me to join her:
+
+
+     "Let every kindred, every tribe
+     On this terrestrial ball,
+     To Him all majesty ascribe,
+     And crown Him Lord of all."
+
+
+
+
+_March 10th, 1----_
+
+
+We went to church this morning, it being Sunday--Aunt Gwendolin, Uncle
+Theodore, and I. Grandmother was indisposed and did not go. It was my
+first attendance at church, for Aunt Gwendolin said I had nothing fit to
+wear until she dressed me up.
+
+"Are _you_ going, Theodore?" I heard my aunt, through the opening in the
+floor, say in a surprised tone, as if she were not accustomed to seeing
+him go.
+
+"I think I'll go this morning," returned my uncle, continuing to brush
+his coat, which act had prompted my aunt's question. "I want to see how
+our fashionable way of worshipping God will impress the little
+Celestial. It will be her first attendance at church."
+
+Aunt Gwendolin came up to my room and selected the gown I was to wear,
+in fact my whole outfit. She took from the wardrobe a white French
+cloth costume (it was very much in harmony with my feelings that I
+should appear in America's church for the first time in the colour which
+China uses for mourning), and one of the beehive hats with several birds
+on it.
+
+"Oh, I can't wear that if anybody is going to see me," I cried when she
+brought out the hat.
+
+"Well, if you are going to make a scene," said my aunt curtly, "wear
+_this_," and she brought from its bandbox a "sailor" covered with white
+drooping ostrich feathers. "You'll look sweet in that," she added; "and
+when you get more used to civilised head-gear you can wear the others."
+
+"Do we go to church to look sweet?" I inquired.
+
+"Oh, dear, no," she answered impatiently, "but there is nothing gained
+in being a fright--were there no Christians in your country to hold
+meetings?"
+
+Without waiting for my reply, she dived into the closet and brought out
+my fur tippet, but I begged so hard not to wear it, that she said as the
+day was mild I need not.
+
+I'll have to see grandmother and have it disposed of before another
+churchgoing time.
+
+Aunt Gwendolin herself was beautifully dressed in a light blue-gray; at
+a glance she looked like a passing cloud dropped down from the sky, but
+a closer inspection revealed a mystery of shirrings, tuckings,
+smockings, frillings never seen in a cloud. In reply to my questions she
+had told me the name of all the strange puckerings. I'd like the
+cloud-gown better without the puckerings.
+
+"What do we go to church for?" I asked as we were being whirled along
+in the automobile, which was controlled by a very good-looking young man
+whom they called "Chauffeur."
+
+"Why--Why--What a heathen you are! To worship God, of course," said my
+aunt shortly.
+
+"Does God require us to wear such fashionable clothes to worship Him?" I
+asked, feeling wearied with the effort of dressing--collars, belts,
+buckles, pins, gloves, corsets, shoes, hats, buttonings, and lacings.
+
+Uncle Theodore laughed, and Aunt Gwendolin frowned, and looked carefully
+round to see whether her white taffeta petticoat was touching the
+ground--we were by this time at the church and walking from the
+automobile to the church door.
+
+Following Aunt Gwendolin's lead, we were soon in a front seat.
+
+We were there but a few moments when a number of young men and women,
+dressed in black robes, with white ties under their chins, came in
+through some back door behind the gallery where they afterwards stood,
+and began to sing.
+
+"Lead me to the Li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight," sang one young woman, all in a
+tremble.
+
+"Lead me to the Li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight," sang a man in a heavy voice.
+
+Then the woman screeched in as high notes as her voice could reach, I am
+sure, and the man ran away down to a growl.
+
+After the whole company had repeated "Lead me to the Light," they began
+to sing against each other, all in a jumble; they seemed to finish the
+song in some foreign language. I did not know a word of it. I suppose
+as it was for the worship of God it did not matter whether any one else
+understood it or not.
+
+After the singing was done, a man--the minister they call him--Uncle
+Theodore has since told me--stood up before the people and read a verse
+from the Bible--one of the verses I have not got to yet in my reading
+with grandmother. Then he began to talk about the hardships of poor
+missionaries out in what he called "the unchristianised West of our own
+country," and the _awful_ need of the natives. It was "missionary
+Sunday;" a bulletin lying in the seat acquainted us with the fact, and
+the music and the sermon were to be of a missionary character.
+
+The minister told a story about a young man who had gone out as a
+missionary to the Indians, who was living in a shack, twelve by
+fourteen, cooking his own meals, and eating and sleeping in the one
+room. He had not salary enough to pay his board.
+
+When the minister had talked half an hour, and had us all wrought up
+about the woes of the missionary, and the needs of the heathen, he
+closed his sermon. And we leaned back in our seats and were lulled into
+forgetfulness of the grievous story, by low-toned, dreamy, soothing
+music, from the echo organ. Aunt Gwendolin has told me since that the
+organ cost seventy thousand dollars.
+
+Christians are most extraordinary people; they rouse one all up to the
+pitch of being willing to do most anything by a heart-rending address,
+and then scatter all the impression by their music. When the organist
+had finished, I wasn't the least worried about the ills of the
+missionary or the Indians. Indeed all the people looked relieved, as if
+a burden had been lifted from them.
+
+When we were again in the automobile Aunt Gwendolin said: "Didn't the
+church look well this morning? It has been undergoing some repairs, and
+three thousand dollars' worth of cathedral oak has been added to the
+wainscoting."
+
+"That would pay the board of the young missionary among the Indians for
+a long time," I said.
+
+"Hush!" said Aunt Gwendolin impatiently, "do not talk foolishness!"
+
+Perhaps Uncle Theodore thought she shut me up too peremptorily, for he
+said: "Paying that young man's board out in the West would never be
+noticed or talked about, my dear; other denominations would pay no
+attention to it, while this cathedral oak wainscoting--Oh my! Oh my!
+will excite the admiration and jealousy of the whole city."
+
+"I _love_ beautiful churches," returned my Aunt Gwendolin poutingly. "I
+shall take Pearl around to see St. George's, where the altar cost five
+thousand dollars. It will be an education to the girl. A man gave it in
+memory of his wife, which was a very beautiful thing to do."
+
+"Pooh!" exclaimed my uncle, "why didn't he do something for some poor
+wretches who need it, in memory of his wife?"
+
+While they had been talking I was looking at the curious, high-crowned,
+black, shiny hats (a stove-pipe, Uncle Theodore has since told me they
+ought to be called) which the men all were wearing. They seem to be as
+essential in America as the queue is in China.
+
+In the afternoon grandmother invited me into her private room to have a
+quiet talk with her, she said.
+
+"Everything is very new to you, my dear Margaret--Pearl I believe your
+father called you--in this country, and you must come to me with all
+your troubling problems. I feel for you, my dear grandchild, and do not
+fear to say anything, _anything_ at all you feel like saying to me."
+
+She took my small yellow hands in hers, and looked at me lovingly,
+saying as she gently chafed them that they were very pretty and plump.
+
+There _were_ things puzzling me, had puzzled me that very day, and I
+felt inclined to place them before my kind granny.
+
+"What are Christians, grandmother?" I asked.
+
+"My dear child," said my grandmother, "the word simply means the
+followers of Christ."
+
+"Oh, it cannot mean _that_!" I cried, then stopped, abashed.
+
+Grandmother raised her glasses from her eyes, placed them on her
+forehead, and stared at me in a puzzled way for a few seconds, then she
+said:
+
+"My dear Pearl, why do you say that?"
+
+She was looking at me and I must answer, although fearing that I had
+hurt her feelings in some way by my abrupt contradiction.
+
+"You said that the man, Christ, was very kind and gentle, and that He
+always thought of the good of others before His own," I continued.
+"Would _He_ pay thousands upon thousands for a grand church, in which to
+sit and be happy, and feel rich; and thousands upon thousands for a
+great organ to play sweet music and make Him forget the world's sorrows,
+while His brothers were too poor to pay for their board----?"
+
+"No, he would _not_!" said grandmother, tears welling into her blue
+eyes.
+
+Jumping from my seat I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her
+wrinkled, quivering face, saying, "_You_ are a follower of the Princely
+Man--of the good man, Christ, _you_ are, grandmother----"
+
+A peremptory rap at the door stopped further conversation, and when I
+opened it, a lady was ushered in to see grandmother.
+
+I was introduced to Mrs. Paton, of whom I had before heard my
+grandmother speak as "a great Christian worker," and whom I heard my
+Aunt Gwendolin denounce as a "tiresome crank, spoiling every one's
+comfort." I looked very earnestly at the lady, trying to fit her into
+the two definitions.
+
+Mrs. Paton began almost at once to talk about the "temperance movement,"
+and the "evils of intoxicating liquors," and "the selfishness of the
+onlooking world, who were not the real sufferers."
+
+She left after the expiration of half an hour, and grandmother said to
+me: "You would not understand Mrs. Paton's remarks, my dear. You will
+have to be longer in the country before you know what is meant by the
+'evils of intoxicating liquors.' Did you ever really see a drunken man?"
+
+"No, grandmother," I said, "I never even _heard_ of one. _Drunk!_--what
+does it mean?"
+
+"Oh," said grandmother, "something that as a country we have reason to
+be terribly ashamed of--men drinking intoxicating liquors until they
+lose their senses----"
+
+Another rap interrupted grandmother, and we were called out to tea. The
+only really delightful thing they do in this America is to drink tea,
+just the same as we do in China.
+
+I see how it is; they have a new Confucius in this America, but they do
+not live the new Confucius--none but my dear grandmother.
+
+
+
+
+_March 12th, 1----_
+
+
+It is settled--but not without a fight--I do not have to wear the furs
+with heads and tails, and all the rest. To please my grandmother, who
+was so afraid I might catch cold, I submitted to accepting a plain set,
+a set which dear grandmother had selected herself. Aunt Gwendolin was
+furious, and fought hard that I should be compelled to wear the first
+set, but grandmother overruled. I see the mother can be the head of the
+house in America when she chooses.
+
+It was the kittens that decided grandmother. One day she and I were out
+for a short walk, and we met a girl with two little kittens around her
+hat--not real live kittens, but the skins of two little gray and white
+kittens stuffed with cotton batting, and with glass eyes, arranged as if
+meeting and sparring around the crown of that girl's hat. "It is
+barbaric," said grandmother. "There are two kinds of heathen. There are
+the heathen who are born such, and there are the heathen by choice. And
+if we look about us we must acknowledge we have a great multitude of
+them at home." It almost made grandmother sick, and she decided at once
+that I could get the furs changed. "I never seem to have awakened to the
+enormity of it before," said poor grandmother with a sigh. How glad I am
+that the mother can be the head of the house in America when she
+chooses!
+
+A young man whom we all call Cousin Ned, because he is a distant
+relative of the family, comes here to grandmother's house very often. He
+talks incessantly about "first base," "second base," and "third base,"
+"innings," and "runs," "pitchers," and "short-stop," "outfield," and
+"infield," "right-fielder," "centre-fielder," and "left-fielder,"
+"scores," and "catchers." It is all Greek to grandmother and me, but we
+can get him to talk about nothing else. I asked Uncle Theodore the
+first time I saw this cousin of ours, what he was doing--his home is
+many miles away, and he is boarding in the city.
+
+"He is here ostensibly to attend the University," said Uncle Theodore,
+"but Ned is a great sport."
+
+As Uncle Theodore was walking away he sang lightly:
+
+
+     "If fame you're on the lookout for and seek it over all
+     The words you must engrave upon your mind are these: Play Ball!"
+
+
+This was rather unusual, for Uncle Theodore rarely sings, and I am sure
+I do not know what he meant by it.
+
+By reason of the relationship, Cousin Ned feels free to come to the
+house without ceremony at all hours of the day. Most of the time he is
+wearing a "sweater," with a large letter on the breast.
+
+
+
+
+_March 30th, 1----_
+
+
+Aunt Gwendolin decided, soon after I came, that I must begin at once to
+take lessons in Spanish. The teachers are now visiting the house daily,
+one to teach me the Spanish language, and the other to instruct me how
+to sing Spanish songs. Señor de Bobadilla has just been here, and I have
+been screeching away for half an hour in a small room where my aunt has
+had a piano placed specially for my use. She says she is not going to
+"bring me out"--that means introduce me to society, grandmother says;
+that was one of the puzzling questions I carried to her--until I can
+sing Spanish songs. I see through it all, because of the conversation I
+heard through the floor opening; she thinks by that means to convince
+her society friends that I am Spanish instead of Chinese. How very
+funny!
+
+There was a small dinner-party at this house the other evening, but of
+course I could not be at the table. I have not "come out." Grandmother
+argued for my appearing, but Aunt Gwendolin was firm to the contrary,
+and she won. Ancestors are not much regarded in America.
+
+My aunt gave me permission, however, to look in on the guests when they
+were seated at the table. She had a large mirror fastened to the door,
+and by leaving it open at a particular angle I could watch--myself
+unseen behind a curtain--the ceremony of dining as practised in America.
+
+Mercy! those women with bare arms and bare shoulders sitting there
+before the men! How could they help blushing for themselves! I just gave
+one glance at them, then ran away and hid my face!
+
+Having the evening to myself, I went up to my room and enjoyed myself
+reading my Chinese books. My aunt said that I was to stay at the
+curtained door, and learn the ways of society by watching the manners of
+the guests at dinner; but I saw all I wanted to see in one glance. I'd
+like to carry all those women little shawls to put around their bare
+shoulders. Mrs. Delancy's was the barest of them all, but I have heard
+my aunt talk since about how "elegantly gowned Mrs. Delancy was."
+
+A strange thing happened up in my room; I opened one of my books just at
+the page where it tells about the Chinese ambassadors, on the occasion
+of their visits to Christian countries, noticing with grave disapproval
+the décollete costumes of the women at the state functions. What
+wonder!--if they looked anything like the women at my aunt's dinner
+party!
+
+Señor de Bobadilla says that I am making remarkable progress with my
+Spanish songs; he tells grandmother in a half-whisper, as if fearing to
+let me hear him, that I am very bright and intelligent; he congratulated
+her on having such a prodigy for a grandchild. Oh, cunning Señor de
+Bobadilla, you want to continue my lessons indefinitely. I am learning
+to quiver and shake, and trill, run up the scale, and down the scale,
+jump from a note away down low to a note away up high. I'll soon be able
+to sing "Lead me to the Light," as well as the church choir.
+
+The professor looks very Spanish in brown velvet coat, red necktie,
+shoes shining like a looking-glass, a moustache waxed into long points
+on each side of his top lip, and hair hanging in a curling brown mat
+down to his shoulders. Seated at the piano, his thin yellow fingers
+sprawl over the white and black ivory keys, while in response to my
+efforts he keeps ejaculating, "Goot! Goot! _Excellent! Superb!_"
+
+I, dressed in muslin, cream-coloured ground dashed over with wild roses,
+or blue ground with white chrysanthemums (the latter is not very
+becoming to my yellow skin) stand at his left hand stretching my mouth
+to the utmost, trying to give utterance to the tones he is striking on
+the piano, and trying to look Spanish, too.
+
+Señor de la Prisa is teaching me the Spanish language--a lesson every
+day, and I am beginning to jabber the strange gibberish like a parrot:
+"_Es un dia bonita. El viento es frio. Se esta haciendo tarde. Es
+temprano._" I'll soon believe myself that I am _really_ Spanish, and
+have never come from "the country of yellow gods and green dragons," as
+Uncle Theodore calls my dear native land.
+
+I have been watching people, reading the daily newspapers and my Chinese
+books, and asking grandmother questions until I feel very wise. I am
+almost as wise as a real American now.
+
+Some weeks following Mrs. Paton's Sunday visit to my grandmother, I was
+out for a short walk of pleasure when I overtook her. She was pleased to
+meet me again, she said, and we walked along together, chatting, at
+least she talked and I listened, sometimes asking questions.
+
+"Just think of it, my dear," she said, "this is the day on which men are
+applying for licenses to sell poison to kill their fellow-men."
+
+Then she told me story after story of the terrible misery caused by
+intoxicating drinks, and the sin and crime they caused people to commit,
+until I was almost in tears.
+
+A noise of voices and tramping feet interrupted her, and there came
+around a corner, marching toward us, a long procession of men.
+
+"Who are they?" I inquired, slipping my arm into hers. I had never
+before seen so many men together.
+
+"Strikers," she returned sadly.
+
+"Strikers?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," she added, "men who will not work until their employers pay them
+the amount they think they ought to be paid."
+
+Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! the great crowd passed us in long file, dusty,
+worn, hard-worked men. My heart swelled as I looked at their strained
+faces; I could not go any farther on my walk; I had to rush home to ask
+grandmother questions.
+
+"Grandmother!" I cried, panting into her room, "strikes in a country
+that follows Christ!--And men asking for a license to sell poison to
+their fellow-men!"
+
+I fell on my knees in front of her chair and sobbed, I could not have
+told why.
+
+She took my face in her soft old withered hands, and holding it was
+about to speak, when my Aunt Gwendolin, who had overheard me, came into
+the room and cried indignantly:
+
+"That crank of a Mrs. Paton has been talking to the girl; I know her
+very words. That woman should be forcibly restrained!"
+
+Grandmother did not answer her, but continued to stroke my face until I
+grew quieter, and until my aunt had left the room. Then in reply to my
+many pointed questions she told me in brief, that the reason men got
+licenses to sell liquor was that they paid money for them, and the
+country granted them for the sake of the great revenue they brought into
+its treasury.
+
+"Oh, grandmother!" I cried, raising my head from her lap, "when Britain
+tried to induce the Chinese Emperor to legalise the opium traffic
+because of the import duty, he said, 'Nothing shall induce me to derive
+a revenue from the vice and misery of my people'!"--I had read all this
+in my books on China.
+
+Grandmother was wiping away tears, and I said no more.
+
+I went up to my own room, and half an hour later I heard my Uncle
+Theodore, to whom my grandmother had repeated my words, say:
+
+"She is preternaturally sharp. No girl of this country thinks of the
+things she does. I suppose they develop younger in those Eastern
+climes."
+
+"It is all new to her," said my grandmother; "she has just come in upon
+it and sees it with fresh eyes. The girls here have grown up with it and
+become used to it by degrees."
+
+"Oh, it's that Oriental blood--half witch, half demon--that's at the
+bottom of all her tantrums. The Orientals are all a subtle lot, and we
+as a country are wise to make them stay at home," said my Aunt
+Gwendolin.
+
+
+
+
+_April 10, 1----_
+
+
+Aunt Gwendolin has discovered my Chinese books that I had intended to
+keep hidden in my room. She came in suddenly one day and found me seated
+in the midst of them.
+
+"What's this? What's this?" she cried in great agitation. "How are we
+ever going to get you into the ways of Christianised, civilised folk if
+you keep feeding your mind on literature about uncivilised people?" And
+she gathered my books up into her arms and carried them away.
+
+I have them all read, however, and she cannot carry away the thoughts
+they have left in my mind. What great creatures we human beings are!
+What a world with which no one else can meddle we can carry around in
+our little brains and hearts! It is all the same whether they are
+American or Chinese brains or hearts.
+
+"I see now where she has gotten all her smart sayings about the
+Chinese," my aunt said to my grandmother and Uncle Theodore. "How can we
+ever hope to do anything with her when she is being poisoned by such
+stuff as is in those books? 'For ways that are dark and tricks that are
+vain' commend me to the Chinese!"
+
+"I'll sicken her of the Chinese," she added: "I'll bring one into the
+kitchen to cook; then perhaps she'll feel more compunction about
+acknowledging that she is part Celestial. She actually seems as if she
+were proud of the fact now."
+
+Grandmother remonstrated, but my aunt replied: "I have always been
+wanting to try a Chinese cook; they are really the world's cooks and so
+careful and clean, it is said. Then I would like to give Pearl enough of
+it. She will not be so fond of claiming kinship with the cook."
+
+The result of all this was that inside of twenty-four hours a Chinaman
+was installed in the kitchen--and the biscuits are perfect.
+
+His name is Yee Yick; of course he has three names, all Chinamen have;
+but trying to become Americanised they use only two in this country.
+
+My aunt has decided that it is sufficient to call him Yick. "The English
+call their servants by their surnames," was all the explanation she
+made.
+
+Yick is a dude; he has a suit for almost every day in the week, and is
+very vain of his appearance. His queue is rolled up around his head,
+which is a sign that he has not yet abandoned his home gods. He is very
+anxious to learn English, and Betty tells me that he has a slate hanging
+up in the kitchen on which he is writing English words every spare
+moment.
+
+I had watched Yick a good deal, but I never exchanged a word with him,
+until the event occurred about which I am going to write; and I know he
+never dreamed that I could speak his language. Poor Yick! if he is
+"chief cook and bottle-washer," as my aunt says, he is my countryman,
+and I cannot help taking an interest in him.
+
+One day I walked to the end of the veranda which runs the whole length
+of the house, and glancing in through the kitchen window as I passed, I
+saw Yick making his tea-biscuits. He had the flour and shortening all
+mixed, and raising the bowl of milk which was on the table, he took a
+great mouthful, and then began to force it out in a heavy spray through
+his teeth into the dish of prepared flour, in the same manner as the
+Chinese laundryman sprinkles clothes.
+
+I wrung my hands, and cried within myself, "Oh, Yick, you terrible man!
+You horrible little pigtail!"
+
+But I slipped back to the front of the veranda without making an audible
+sound. How could I tell on poor Yick, and bring down such an awful storm
+on his head as would result? He was a stranger in a strange land, and it
+was my duty to protect him. Was it such a very wicked thing he had done?
+He never killed little birds, anyway, and wore them on his head; nor
+trapped cunning little animals, and strung their heads and tails around
+his neck! I decided I would not tell on him.
+
+But that evening at dinner I passed the plate of white, flaky biscuits
+without taking any. I sat at grandmother's left hand, and when she was
+not looking, I slipped the biscuit which she had taken away from her
+bread-and-butter plate, and let it slide from my hand down onto the
+floor. Dear, absent-minded grandmother never missed it. Aunt Gwendolin
+and Uncle Theodore ate three biscuits each.
+
+"It seems to me that Yick keeps constantly improving in his biscuits,"
+said my aunt, as she reached for her third.
+
+"They ought to be better than other people at most everything,"
+returned my Uncle Theodore, "they have been a long while practising.
+They may have been making biscuits before Moses was born. The Chinaman
+possesses a history which dwarfs the little day of modern nations. It is
+a saying of theirs that from the time heaven was spread and earth was
+brought into existence China can boast a continuous line of great men."
+
+I looked pleased and smiled. My aunt seeing it said, with a toss of her
+head:
+
+"A continuous line of great cooks and laundrymen."
+
+That evening when my aunt and uncle were out, and grandmother had gone
+to bed, I slipped down to the kitchen and stood face to face with Yick.
+
+He almost kotowed to me, but commanding him to stand up, I told him in
+plain Chinese that I had seen him mixing the biscuits, and disapproved
+of his plan.
+
+His hair almost seemed to stand on end when he heard me speaking his
+native tongue. He started to tremble, and his knees bent under him.
+
+"Yee Yick," I continued, in the language he thoroughly understood, "if
+you ever put the milk in your mouth again, and sift it out through your
+teeth into the flour, I shall inform the mistress of the house, and you
+shall be dismissed!"
+
+Trembling all over Yick began rapidly in Chinese to promise that he
+would never, _never_ be guilty of the act again. Then, as if scarcely
+able to believe that I could understand his native tongue, he repeated
+his promise in English.
+
+"No, missee, Yee Yick not putee milk in mouthee! No, missee, Yee Yick
+not putee milk in mouthee!"
+
+I assured him in Chinese that I would keep the secret of what I had
+seen on condition that he would keep his promise, and went out of the
+kitchen, leaving the poor fellow almost in tears. I believe he scarcely
+knows whether to regard me as a spirit or a being of flesh and blood, it
+is so hard for him to understand how I can speak Chinese.
+
+The plumbers have closed up the hole in the floor, so I shall hear no
+more about the "wily Celestial."
+
+
+
+
+_April 20th, 1----_
+
+
+While I have been waiting to be prepared to "come out," I determined to
+walk around the streets and see some more of the doings of Americans.
+Grandmother gave her consent, with a warning to keep off certain
+streets.
+
+"It is quite safe for a young girl to walk alone in most places in our
+country, thank God," said dear grandmother devoutly, "and I am very
+willing that you should look about you. I remember when I was a girl I
+liked to walk and see things, too."
+
+But Aunt Gwendolin knocked the whole thing in the head--apparently.
+
+"It is so plebeian for her to go tramping through the streets," she said
+to my grandmother. "Cannot she be satisfied to go out every day with us
+in the automobile? The grounds are spacious around this place, and she
+can have all the exercise she wants right here."
+
+So the question was settled--to all appearance.
+
+A week after my aunt's fiat I read in the daily newspaper that in the
+"House of Jacob," a certain Jewish synagogue downtown, there was
+conducted on a certain afternoon every week sewing classes for young
+Jewish girls. Instantly I decided that I wished to visit it, and see
+those "Children of Abraham," about whom grandmother had been teaching me
+in the Bible, those people who were God's favourites, and I set about
+laying plans to accomplish my desire.
+
+Happily, when that afternoon came around, Aunt Gwendolin went out to a
+Bridge Party--I have not yet found out what that means, but I hoped that
+afternoon that she would have a good many bridges to cross, so it would
+keep her a long time away--and it was Betty's day out.
+
+Previous to this I had found in a closet a black skirt and shawl
+formerly worn by grandmother, and a bonnet which she had laid aside.
+
+As soon as my aunt had safely departed (I had seen Betty go an hour
+before), I hastily threw the heavy black satin skirt over mine, draped
+the black embroidered silk shawl around my shoulders, and tied on the
+bonnet. With a black chiffon veil, which was not very transparent, tied
+over my face, I felt very comfortable. It was quite proper for an
+_elderly_ lady to go anywhere she wished.
+
+Grandmother was taking her customary afternoon nap, as I slipped down
+the backstairs into the kitchen. Yick, preparing the flour for his
+biscuits, saw me and started. I could not keep my secret from him; I
+decided to take him into my confidence and trust him.
+
+So lifting my veil, I looked at him markedly, and told him rapidly in
+Chinese that he was not to tell any one he had seen me.
+
+He smiled, winked, and nodded knowingly, assuring me in voluble Chinese
+that he would keep my secret.
+
+"You no tellee onee me," he said significantly, with grimaces and
+gesticulations.
+
+Going out through the back door, and down through a lane at the back of
+the house, I was soon on the street.
+
+Taking the street-cars--in which Aunt Gwendolin thinks it is very
+plebeian to ride--I was soon whirled down in front of the "House of
+Jacob."
+
+What a mercy it is, in this curious America, that so many people are
+plebeian and ride in street-cars that they do not pay any attention to
+one another. Nobody noticed my grandmotherly garb.
+
+A woman reporter entered the front door of the synagogue along with me,
+and I imagined that I was regarded with some deference--grandmother's
+old skirt and shawl are made of rich material.
+
+I followed the reporter around the room in which the classes were held,
+a few yards in the rear.
+
+There they were, a hundred or more little Jewish children, red-headed,
+black-headed, blonde-headed, and Jewish women had them arranged in
+groups, and were teaching them to sew.
+
+"These little red-heads are typical Russian Jews," I heard the director
+of the ceremonies say to the reporter, "only in this country a few
+months. _There's_ one that has the marked Jewish features," she added,
+pointing to another type of child. "They are all fond of jewellery--an
+Oriental trait."
+
+Dear, dear, I only stayed a short time looking at them. They are not
+much different from others, those people who struck rocks and water
+gushed out, had manna and quails rained down on them, and walked through
+a wilderness led by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by
+night. I have seen hundreds of Chinese who looked just as remarkable. I
+cannot understand why God showed partiality to Abraham's children.
+
+I went out onto the street again, and wandered on till I came to what I
+recognized as Chinese quarters. There were the laundries of Hoy Jan, Lem
+Tong, Lee Ling, and the shops and warehouses of Moy Yen, Man Hing, and
+Cheng Key. The dear names; it did me almost as much good to look at them
+as it could to make a visit to my own country.
+
+As I walked down the quiet street, a wistful oval face looked down on
+me from a window. A Chinese woman's face, and the first I had seen
+since coming to America. Stepping into a little shop near by, a shop
+containing preserved ginger, curious embroidered screens, little ivory
+elephants and jade ornaments, I asked who lived in the house where I saw
+the face at the window, and was informed that it was the home of Mr. and
+Mrs. Lee Yet.
+
+It was drawing near dinner time in my grandmother's house; already I had
+stayed out longer than I had intended: I had no time to investigate
+further regarding Mrs. Yet.
+
+When I got back to the house I found that my aunt had returned before
+me, but fortunately had not noticed my absence.
+
+When Yick walked into the dining room with the steaming plum-pudding for
+our dinner, Aunt Gwendolin said:
+
+"Yick, who was that little old woman I saw coming up our back lane half
+an hour ago?"
+
+"Me nevee see no little old womee," returned Yick, with a child-like
+smile.
+
+"How stupid those Chinese are," said my aunt, when Yick had left the
+room. "I certainly saw an old woman, and there that creature never saw
+her!"
+
+The _Creature_ had helped a _young_ woman take off her black bonnet and
+shawl, and escape up the backstairs half an hour before.
+
+I suppose it's "that Oriental blood--half witch, and half demon" that's
+at the bottom of my tantrum of this afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+_April 25th, 1----_
+
+
+Mrs. Paton has been in to make another Sunday visit to grandmother; she
+is an old friend and privileged to come when she chooses--and as before
+I had the privilege of hearing her talk.
+
+"We are calling ourselves a Christian country," she said to grandmother,
+"and yet we care more for pleasure than for anything else. An actress is
+paid more money in one month than a preacher of the Gospel is paid in a
+year. Does not that show what the people of our country care most for?
+Going over to Christianise the heathen forsooth! We are not following
+Christ ourselves! What an example we set them! How can we expect them to
+think much of our religion when they see it has done so little for _us_?
+
+"Christianity is despised, and rightly so. It is called cant, and so it
+is; going around with the Bible under its arm, and never obeying its
+precepts. We want more men overturning the tables of the
+money-changers, and upsetting the commercialism that is grinding other
+men down to starvation!"
+
+Dear grandmother was not argumentative, and gently assented to all her
+visitor was saying.
+
+"When this country is really following Christ itself," continued the
+visitor, "we shall see our wealthy men, instead of using their wealth to
+build palaces, and to minister to the pride of themselves in a thousand
+forms, choosing to lead the simple life, with personal expenditure cut
+down to a minimum, and their ability to minister to others increased to
+a maximum; in short we will find them following in the footsteps of
+their Lord. Man is really the richer as he decreases his wants, and
+increases his capacity to help."
+
+When she rose to leave, at the end of an hour's chat, she said very
+solemnly to me as she held my hand in a farewell clasp:
+
+"My dear, each man and woman is born with an aptitude to do something
+impossible to any other. _You_ have an aptitude that the world has no
+match for. It is your aptitude for your own peculiar and immediate
+duty."
+
+Oh, how solemn the words look as I write them down. What can my duty be?
+I wonder when I am going to find out. Aunt Gwendolin thinks it is to
+sing Spanish songs, I know; she firmly believes that to be my own
+_peculiar and immediate duty_. Grandmother thinks it is to study the
+Bible. And Uncle Theodore thinks it is to look artistically dressed. I
+have not come to a conclusion yet as to what I think myself.
+
+When I get so terribly lonesome in this America that I cannot stand it
+any longer, I get Betty to steal down my yellow silk out of the box in
+the attic, the one trimmed with green dragons, and I dress up in it, and
+put on my head the pretty embroidered band that the Chinese women wear
+instead of the hideous hats of America, and sweep up and down the room
+like a peacock with a spreading tail, Betty going into raptures over my
+appearance, sometimes laughing hysterically, and sometimes almost in
+tears, because they have "no such grand clothes in America." If Aunt
+Gwendolin hears a noise and comes trailing along the hall, I jump into
+bed and cover myself up, yellow silk and all, and Betty proceeds to
+bathe my head for a headache--I really have one by that time.
+
+How many foreigners they have in this great country, Shanghai roosters,
+Turkey hens, Persian cats, Arabian horses. I wonder do all those foreign
+creatures feel something calling them back, back to their own country?
+
+Cousin Ned spends most all his time at grandmother's at present. He had
+his arm broken at a baseball game, and is carrying it in a sling.
+
+
+
+
+_April 30th, 1----_
+
+
+We had the pleasure of Professor Ballington's company at lunch
+to-day--Uncle Theodore had him down in his office on some business, and
+insisted on his coming home and lunching with him.
+
+When he and my uncle walked in unannounced they found grandmother, Aunt
+Gwendolin, and me in the sitting-room.
+
+The professor shook hands with me in a very friendly manner; he really
+seemed pleased to see me. Oh, it is awfully nice for a girl in a strange
+land, feeling alone and lonesome, to have some one glad to see her. He
+had not spoken to me since that morning my uncle introduced me to him,
+but he has seen me a number of times when I have been out in the
+carriage with my grandmother and aunt.
+
+He seated himself beside me, and we were just beginning to chat
+pleasantly when my Aunt Gwendolin said:
+
+"You have not heard our little Dependency sing, Professor Ballington?"
+
+Grandmother's cheeks flushed, and Uncle Theodore looked embarrassed.
+
+"Pearl, dear," she added sweetly, addressing me, "give us one of your
+stirring Spanish songs before we go to lunch. You can sing better
+before lunch than after."
+
+In obedience to the request--which I felt to be a command--I went to the
+piano and sang lightly the only Spanish song _I could_ sing.
+
+All the hearers seemed pleased with my effort. Professor Ballington
+looked calmly at me, but a smile lay behind his blue eyes. What did that
+smile mean?
+
+We immediately sat down to lunch, and I was saved the embarrassment of
+having to tell that I could only sing _one_ Spanish song. I guess Aunt
+Gwendolin made sure that no such a dilemma should occur.
+
+By some stray remark of Uncle Theodore's, the conversation at the table
+turned on what he calls the "Asiatic Problem."
+
+"Those dreadful Asiatics," interposed Aunt Gwendolin, "so sly and
+subtle, they certainly should be shut out. They are a menace to any
+country."
+
+"Above all nations is humanity," smilingly returned Professor
+Ballington.
+
+"Especially those inferior people, the Chinese," added my aunt.
+
+"We can scarcely call the Chinese inferior, Miss Morgan," returned
+Professor Ballington. (How I wanted to give him a hug!) "The Chinaman
+despises our day of small things. Like the Jew he possesses a great
+national history which dwarfs that of all other nations. The golden era
+of Confucius lies back five hundred years before the coming of Christ,
+and the palmy days of the Chan dynasty antedate the period of David and
+Solomon."
+
+"Oh, yes," said my aunt curtly, "but what has he accomplished in all
+that time? We regard them as a nation of laundrymen."
+
+"And they regard us as a nation of shopkeepers, and express lofty
+contempt for our greed of gain," said the professor.
+
+"The idea!" said my aunt scornfully; "the fact is I always feel inclined
+to relegate the yellow-skinned denizens of China to the brute kingdom.
+Think of the _dreadful_ things that happen there! Life itself is of
+small account to them!"
+
+"One of our own writers," returned the professor, "says, 'Life is safer
+in Pekin than in New York.' Another writer adds, 'Chicago beats China
+for official dishonesty!'"
+
+"It is a nation which for thousands of years has set more store by
+education than any other nation under the sun," said Uncle Theodore, "I
+have been reading up about them lately" (that's because of me) "and it
+is perfectly astonishing, their high ideals. There are clearly marked
+gradations in society, and the highest rank is open only to highly
+educated men. First, the scholar; because mind is superior to wealth.
+Second, the farmer; because the mind cannot act without the body, and
+the body cannot exist without food and raiment. Third, the mechanic;
+because next to food and raiment shelter is necessary. Fourth, the
+tradesman; men to carry on exchange and barter become a necessity. And
+last of all the soldier; because his business is to destroy, and not to
+build up society. How does that compare with our country which makes
+more of the destroyer than of any other citizen? No man in China can
+rise to any position of responsibility except by education; money in
+_this_ country will carry a man into the legislature if he cannot write
+his own name."
+
+"Chinese ethics are grand," added the professor. "Listen to the teaching
+of Lao Teh. 'I would meet good with good, but I would also meet evil
+with good, confidence with confidence--distrust with confidence. Virtue
+is both good and trustful.'"
+
+"There isn't a doubt that they are a wonderful people," returned Uncle
+Theodore. "When our ancestors were wandering about in sheep-skins and
+goat-skins--if in any other skins but their own--China had a
+civilisation. Wrong seems to be not a question of right with us, but of
+might. We do not attempt to stop people taking chances on the stock
+exchange; taking such chances is perfectly legal, but taking chances in
+a lottery is a serious offence. If a Chinaman takes chances in a little
+game which he understands, the morals of the community are endangered,
+and the poor Celestial must be hurried off to jail. We civilised people
+allow betting at a horse-race, and disallow it in other places. It is
+only the uninfluential people we send to jail for violation of the law."
+
+They talked back and forth in an animated way for some time. I was dying
+to speak, but did not dare; but I am sure that once in the heat of the
+argument, Professor Ballington shot a glance across the table at me
+which spoke volumes. The same smile was in his eyes that was there when
+I sang for him my _one_ Spanish song. What did he mean? Can he guess?
+Does he know that I am not Spanish?--that I am the Yellow Pearl?
+
+
+
+
+_May 5th, 1----_
+
+
+A very important item has appeared in the newspaper to-day--poor Lee Yet
+has fallen into trouble; rather, other people are trying to get him into
+trouble, and his wife, the little oval-faced Mrs. Yet, has been
+subpoenaed to appear as a witness in his behalf.
+
+That dear little sad woman to have to go to court before all those
+Americans! "She shall _not_ be studied and laughed at as a curiosity.
+She _shall_ be dressed up like an American woman!" I declared as soon as
+I read the item.
+
+In pursuance of my idea this afternoon, I a second time donned
+grandmother's garments--lucky that grandmother and I are the same
+height--and a second time left the house unnoticed by any one except
+Yick.
+
+How very much at home I feel in the garments of an elderly gentlewoman!
+Perhaps I am walking around the world the eighteen-year-old
+reincarnation of some dear, silken-clad old granny who inhabited this
+sphere hundreds of years ago.
+
+I quickly found my way down to the home of Mrs. Yet, and rapped at the
+door.
+
+It was opened by the little woman herself, who looked even sadder than
+when I first saw her. I addressed her in Chinese and lifting my veil,
+told her that I had come to make her a visit. She smiled in a pleased
+way, opened wide the door, and invited me into the house. She had never
+noticed the discrepancy between my antiquated dress and young face, and
+was blissfully unconscious that my garments were fifty years (more or
+less) out of date.
+
+On my entrance something small and pink moved behind a wire screen in
+the corner of the room, and Mrs. Yet clipclapped across the floor in her
+Chinese sandals, and picked up a little bundle of Chinese life, saying:
+
+"This my baby. He eighteen month. He sick--get tooth--got one tooth."
+
+We talked about the baby, she sometimes speaking in Chinese, and
+sometimes in broken English, until we felt acquainted. Then I said:
+
+"Mrs. Yet, I see by the newspaper that you will have to appear in court
+to give evidence in behalf of your husband. You do not want to go there
+in Chinese dress to be the subject of curiosity, and newspaper remark?"
+
+The trouble which had left her face while she was talking about the
+baby, reappeared, and tears gathered in her almond eyes.
+
+It was more than I could stand, and I cried, "Don't! Don't! Mrs. Yet--I
+have come to make things all right--I, your country-woman--speaking your
+own language. I am going to give myself the pleasure of dressing you
+like an American woman."
+
+She remonstrated politely but I urged so strongly that at last she
+yielded; and it seemed when she did so as if a great burden had rolled
+from off her pale little face.
+
+Immediately I went out to one of the great stores and ordered several
+costumes for her to "fit on"--I wasn't a child any longer. Grandmother's
+rich old skirt and shawl carried weight a second time (they could not
+see my face distinctly through the veil), for without hesitation a woman
+was despatched with the costumes.
+
+This woman expert worked over the little Mrs. Yet, pinching, and
+pulling, and puckering, after the manner of American dressmakers, until
+she had her resplendent in a rich maroon-coloured wool costume, which
+exactly suited her olive skin, and made her almost a beauty.
+
+At last the costume was satisfactorily settled and paid for. Oh, it is
+nice to have plenty of money to pay for all one wants. Father left me
+plenty (and although I do not control it until I come of a certain age,
+I get a liberal monthly instalment). I then went to a milliner's and
+bought a hat of a shade to harmonise with the costume. It was trimmed
+with ribbon, and deep, rich, maroon roses, and just looked _too sweet
+for anything_. "Youthful and stylish," as the milliner said. Why not?
+Mrs. Yet is young, and she has just as good a right to look stylish as
+any American woman!
+
+Happy? I should say I am! I never was happier in my life than I am
+to-night; even if I did steal out in grandmother's old clothes, and am a
+"sly, subtle Oriental."
+
+
+
+
+_May 10th, 1----_
+
+
+The Court met to-day, and there has appeared in the evening papers this
+notice:
+
+"A novelty in the shape of a Chinese woman witness appeared in the
+Sessions yesterday. Mrs. Lee Yet went into the box in behalf of her
+husband. Her trim little figure was becomingly attired in a dark-red,
+tailored costume, and a reddish trimmed hat set off to perfection her
+rich Oriental complexion and features, beautiful in their national type.
+She gave her evidence without an interpreter, and did much toward
+clearing her husband of the accusations falsely laid against him."
+
+Oh, isn't it delightful to think that I have been instrumental in
+bringing all this to a happy issue! I shall carry this newspaper down to
+Mrs. Yet's home, and read to her this pleasing paragraph.
+
+
+
+
+_May 11th, 1----_
+
+
+A "Windfall," as Uncle Theodore calls it, has come to the family;
+grandmother was quite a "well-to-do" woman before, now she is a _rich_
+woman. Some investments in mines that grandfather made years ago have
+turned out to be of marvellous value, and the result is that my
+grandmother, my Uncle Theodore, my Aunt Gwendolin have greatly increased
+in wealth.
+
+Aunt Gwendolin wanted to change the form of our living at once; she
+would introduce a page and a butler to our household staff. But
+grandmother said she was accustomed to a quiet life and preferred it.
+She insists, in spite of my aunt's protests, that a Chinese cook, a
+house-maid, a laundress, a gardener, and that lovely chauffeur ought to
+be enough to attend to the wants of four people.
+
+Aunt Gwendolin stormed, and said it was so _common_ to live as we did,
+that the English always kept a butler; but grandmother was firm. Another
+example that mothers in America can rule in the house if they wish.
+
+Grandmother seemed a good deal concerned about this sudden acquisition
+of wealth. "An addition of silver to bell-metal does not add to the
+sweetness of the tone," she said. "I fear an undue proportion of silver
+impairs more than bells."
+
+
+
+
+_May 13th, 1----_
+
+
+"BULLS AND BEARS IN A HARD STRUGGLE OVER WHEAT." Uncle Theodore read the
+great headline from his evening paper.
+
+"Wild scenes prevailed to-day at the Board of Trade," he continued,
+"when John Smith began taking in his profits on wheat. It is estimated
+that he made a profit of over three hundred thousand in less than half
+an hour. Altogether he has cleared more than five millions on his wheat
+deal, and that within six months."
+
+"Dear me! Dear me!" cried grandmother, "and people dying for want of
+bread!"
+
+"Well," returned Uncle Theodore, "Smith is only a highly sensitive
+product of our so-called civilisation; the civilisation we are rushing
+and straining to carry to the quiet, unassuming people whom _we_ call
+heathen. They have no millionaires, made so at the expense of their
+brothers. When we teach them all the graft, lynching, homicide,
+enormities of trusts, railroads, new religions, and quack remedies, we
+shall have them civilised."
+
+"Christianity has to blush for Christendom," sighed grandmother.
+
+I have been asking grandmother since how bulls and bears could struggle
+over wheat; and she tells me that the strugglers are not four-footed
+beasts at all, but _men_. I see how it is, bulls and bears are both
+cantankerous animals, which, if they come in conflict about anything,
+are sure to have a fight; and men who have given evidence of like
+natures have been called after those fierce animals. It must be that
+way. I have asked grandmother whether that is not the way they came by
+their names, and she said she supposed it must be.
+
+
+
+
+_May 21st, 1----_
+
+
+My poor despised people have fallen upon hard lines. Lee Yet met with an
+accident on the street and had to be taken to the hospital where he must
+remain for weeks, and the day following Mrs. Yet was stricken down with
+diphtheria.
+
+I was out in the automobile with grandmother and Aunt Gwendolin and
+chancing to pass the house of Lee Yet, I saw the awful word
+"Diphtheria." in black letters on a scarlet ground, tacked to the door.
+
+That night when all his day's work was done I gave Yick a coin and
+asked him to go down and learn who was stricken with the disease.
+
+He came back with the intelligence that it was poor little Mrs. Yet, and
+that there was no one waiting on her.
+
+Fortunately the next afternoon Aunt Gwendolin went to "bridge," and
+again donning grandmother's garments, I slipped out of the house and
+down to the home of Mrs. Yet.
+
+Meeting the doctor at the door, just as he was coming out, I ordered him
+to engage a nurse.
+
+He looked at me in surprise, but I paid in advance for a week's service,
+so he could do nothing but obey me.
+
+Opening the door I went into the front room of the little home and found
+the Celestial baby fretting away in its cradle just as any other baby
+would fret if left to itself. I began to call it all sorts of pet names
+in Chinese, and the little slant-eye cooed and smiled back at me as if
+he really liked it.
+
+A Chinese neighbour woman came in and told me that the baby was to be
+kept in the front room, while its mother was quarantined in a room
+upstairs. She further informed me that she came in twice a day to feed
+the baby, and the rest of the time he was alone.
+
+"I have it! I have it!" I cried exultingly to my own interior self, "I
+know now my _aptitude_! I know now what I can do that is impossible to
+any other; it surely is _impossible_ to any other--in this nation of an
+hour--to jabber the Chinese I can jabber to this eighteen months' old
+baby! I shall come here and take care of him, while the trained nurse
+is taking care of the mother upstairs. I'll come for awhile every day
+anyway, and will pay the Chinese woman, who cannot leave her
+laundry-minding in the daytime, to take care of him at night! He's just
+as much a dear human baby as any purple-and-fine-linen American baby!"
+
+How fortune favoured me that evening! Aunt Gwendolin announced that she
+was going in the morning on a month's visit to another city.
+
+She was not much more than out the door the following day when I asked
+grandmother's permission to go where I liked every afternoon of the
+week.
+
+Dear grandmother remonstrated a little--for fear I might tire myself too
+much--or might go where it was not wise to go, etc., etc. But I coaxed,
+and I won the day.
+
+A strange event happened the very first afternoon. Just as I had passed
+through the lane at the rear of the house, who should be standing there
+at the back gate but the chauffeur, beside the automobile. He knew me
+despite my grandmotherly garb (as I had commenced going to the house of
+Mrs. Yet in grandmother's black shawl, bonnet, and skirt, I thought it
+better to continue doing so), politely touched his cap, and said if I
+had far to go it would take him but a few minutes to whirl me there in
+the automobile.
+
+He is very good looking, and a gentleman. Uncle Theodore says he is a
+student who is taking this means to earn money further to pursue his
+medical studies. Sometimes Uncle Theodore familiarly calls him
+"Sawbones."
+
+Nodding my assent, I entered the car, gave my directions, and soon was
+down in front of Mrs. Yet's small house.
+
+I lifted the fretting little baby out of his cradle as soon as I
+entered, washed and dressed him, he kicking and squirming just as I
+suppose any other baby kicks and squirms. All the fear I had was that he
+would roll out of my hands, he was such a slippery little eel when his
+body was wet.
+
+Where did I learn how to wash and dress a baby? I must have known how by
+instinct, for I never did it, or saw it done before. The Chinese woman
+who keeps the little Oriental at night told me the articles that went
+next the skin, and I had no trouble guessing about where to put the
+others. After one or two attempts I did it as well as a mother of twenty
+babies.
+
+Every day I am being conveyed down to my duties in the automobile. The
+chauffeur seemed to divine that I would go out every afternoon (perhaps
+because Aunt Gwendolin was away) without my telling him, and is always
+waiting at the little rear gate in the back street to obey my commands.
+
+What a delightful time we are having! "When the cat's away the mice can
+play!"
+
+Dear grandmother has never seen me either leave or return to the house,
+but necessarily Yick and Betty are both into the secret.
+
+"'For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,' commend me to the
+Chinese."
+
+
+
+
+_May 22d, 1----_
+
+
+A most impressive occurrence has transpired, as Mrs. Paton would say.
+Just as I was coming out of Mrs. Yet's house this afternoon who should
+be passing but Professor Ballington!
+
+I had not yet dropped my black chiffon veil, and glancing down from his
+great height of six feet, he looked me full in the face.
+
+At the same instant he saw the word, "Diphtheria," in the great black
+letters on a scarlet ground, and stopping he exclaimed:
+
+"Why, Miss Pearl! This is a surprise! Do you know where you are--what
+risk you are running? Diphtheria is contagious--_very_!"
+
+"I know," I replied, "but some one has to mind a little Chinese baby in
+there. Its father is in the hospital, and its mother is shut in a room
+upstairs with diphtheria, and there is no one to stay all afternoon
+with the baby if I do not. He's a Chinese baby, and of no account in
+America," I added. (I came within one of telling him that I was the only
+one who could call him pet names in the language he could understand;
+wouldn't Aunt Gwendolin have taken a fit?) "I just _had_ to come," I
+pleaded, seeing his look of disapproval. "Each man and woman is born
+with an aptitude to do something impossible to any other, an aptitude
+that the world has no match for, Mrs. Paton says; and I have just found
+out that my aptitude, impossible to any other, is to mind this Chinese
+baby; no one else can _match_ me in this!"
+
+He looked less severe, almost kind, and half as if he could scarcely
+keep from laughing. Then he said, "Have you disinfectants? They are very
+necessary."
+
+I shook my head, and he said:
+
+"Come with me to a drug store and I will supply you with a stock."
+
+And I, decked in my grandmother's cast-off clothes, walked along the
+street, and into the "Palace Drug Store" with the elegantly dressed and
+caned professor.
+
+He didn't seem the least ashamed of me; indeed, he was so polite that I
+forgot for the moment that my dress was anything odd--forgot it until I
+saw a young man clerk looking at me in an amused way; then I dropped my
+thick veil.
+
+The professor insisted on my taking a certain kind of lozenge to hold in
+my mouth while I was in the infected house, and ordered quantities and
+quantities of disinfectants carried there, giving me instruction as to
+how they should be used.
+
+When we were walking back to the house of Mrs. Yet, the professor
+remarked that the Chinese were a people worth studying.
+
+"Have you heard any of their poetry, Miss Pearl?" he questioned. And
+before I had time to reply--perhaps he thought he had no right to make
+me give an answer to that question, he is a "great philologist"--he
+continued: "Could anything be more exquisite than those lines to a plum
+blossom?
+
+
+     "'One flower hath in itself the charms of two;
+     Draw nearer! and she breaks to wonders new;
+     And you would call her beauty of the rose--
+     She, too, is folded in a fleece of snows;
+     And you might call her pale--she doth display
+     The blush of dawn beneath the eye of day,
+     The lips of her the wine cup hath caressed,
+     The form of her that from some vision blest
+     Starts with the rose of sleep still glowing bright
+     Through limbs that ranged the dreamlands of the night;
+     The pencil falters and the song is naught,
+     Her beauty, like the sun, dispels my thought.'
+
+
+"A certain collection of Chinese lyrics," he continued, "'A Lute of
+Jade,' moved a London journal to observe that, the more we look into
+Chinese nature as revealed by this book of songs, the more we are
+convinced that our fathers were right in speaking of man's brotherhood.
+Here's another to a calycanthus flower:
+
+
+     "'Robed in pale yellow gown, she leans apart,
+     Guarding her secret trust inviolate;
+     With mouth that, scarce unclosed, but faintly breathes.
+     Its fragrance, like a tender grief, remains
+     Half-told, half-treasured still. See how she drops
+     From delicate stem; while her close petals keep
+     Their shy demeanour. Think not that the fear
+     Of great cold winds can hinder her from bloom,
+     Who hides the rarest wonders of the spring
+     To vie with all the flowers of Kiang Nan.'
+
+
+"This is Wang Seng-Ju's tiny poem," he added, "I presume a great many
+people in this greatly enlightened America never ascribe any sentiment
+to the Chinaman:
+
+
+     "'High o'er the hill the moon barque steers,
+     The lantern lights depart,
+     Dead springs are stirring in my heart,
+     And there are tears;
+     But that which makes my grief more deep
+     Is that you know not that I weep.'"
+
+
+The moon had appeared in all her full-orbed glory, although it was
+early twilight, and the professor looked at me so earnestly while
+quoting those words that I actually believe I blushed.
+
+
+           "'There yet is man--
+     Man, the divinest of all things, whose heart
+     Hath known the shipwreck of a thousand hopes,
+     Who bears a hundred wrinkled tragedies
+     Upon the parchment of his brow.'
+
+
+"Ou-Yang Hein penned those lines," he added, raising his hat in adieu.
+But before we parted I made him promise to write out for me the Chinese
+verses he had quoted; and it is his beautifully written lines I have
+copied. I am going to learn them off by heart. How I would love to
+recite them at one of Aunt Gwendolin's "Drawing-rooms!"
+
+The professor had gone but a few paces when he returned to inquire what
+hospital poor Lee Yet was in, saying that he would go around and see
+how he was faring.
+
+"This is such a very selfish world," he added, as if half to himself, "I
+sometimes fear those poor foreigners that come to our shores get
+woefully treated."
+
+That was lovely of him! After all, men are brothers under their skin.
+That was what their great man, Christ, taught--that all men are
+brothers; he did not except the Chinese, as some Americans want to do.
+
+
+
+
+_June 7th, 1----_
+
+
+Almost as soon as Mrs. Yet was pronounced well, and was allowed to go
+among people again and before Mr. Yet had left the hospital, Baby Yet
+fell seriously ill--his teeth.
+
+He grew worse, and worse. Yick told me about it one day in a few
+concise Chinese words, which he snatched an opportunity to drop to me
+in passing through the dining room. The wily Celestial seems to
+understand, without being told, that no one is to know that he and I can
+exchange thoughts in our native tongue.
+
+That afternoon I stole out again, and went down to the little Yet home.
+It was just as Yick had said, the baby was very ill.
+
+He lay on his little pallet, white and still, almost unconscious, and
+his mother stood over him wringing her hands, and shedding bitter tears.
+
+"Oh, my baby! My baby! He die and leave me! My heart break!" she cried
+in Chinese when she saw me. "Precious treasure! Precious treasure!" she
+continued, bending toward the almost inanimate form on the pallet.
+
+The latter is the almost universal term of endearment in China, and no
+American mother ever agonised more bitterly than did that Chinese mother
+over that atom of herself lying before her.
+
+I had to do something to comfort her, so I began to tell her about
+heaven. _I_, who was not sure that I could get to that blessed place
+myself (stealing out on the sly in a grandmother's clothes is not a very
+heavenly trick), said that whoever missed it, babies would be there.
+
+"Will Chinese babies be there? They do not want them in America," she
+asked rapidly and tremblingly in Chinese.
+
+"Certainly," I replied; and at that moment I seemed to have a vision of
+all the babies of this wide world that had died--black babies, brown
+babies, yellow babies, red babies (probably the colour of their skin
+was only the earth garb); I saw the whole throng, for grandmother had
+read to me from the Bible that of such was the kingdom of heaven.
+
+"His tooth not bother him there?" she added.
+
+"No," I returned, "there shall be no more pain there."
+
+"He like it," she continued, almost smiling through her tears.
+
+Then she grew very, very still, and a glow stole over her yellow face
+which made it beautiful.
+
+I stepped nearer, put my arm around her, and kissed her on the cheek.
+
+She looked at me in a startled way, then drawing a tiny handkerchief
+from her bosom, she carefully wiped the spot on her cheek where my lips
+had touched. The practice of kissing is unknown in China.
+
+On the way home, when but a few yards from the house of Mrs. Yet, I met
+Professor Ballington again, and told him the story about the sick baby.
+
+He asked me to go back with him, and take him in to see it, which I did.
+He looked scrutinisingly at the little hard pallet on which the baby
+lay; and what did that dear man do but go out to one of the great stores
+not far away, and buy the prettiest little cot, and the softest and best
+mattress that could be found in the market, and order them sent home
+without delay to that little yellow baby.
+
+Was it the soft mattress that did it? I do not know; but almost
+immediately the baby seemed to rest easier, and by degrees came back to
+life and strength.
+
+Oh, this would be a glorious country to live in!--if the people were
+all like Professor Ballington.
+
+
+
+
+_June 10th, 1----_
+
+
+I made my first visit to the theatre. Aunt Gwendolin said I should not
+go until I came _out_, but Uncle Theodore said he would take me himself,
+and defy all fashions and formalities.
+
+"I enjoy seeing the little girl absorbing our civilisation," he said to
+grandmother; "sometimes I fancy it seems rather uncivilised to her."
+
+Grandmother demurred a good deal; she said she did not know but I would
+be quite as well, or better, if I never went near a theatre. But Uncle
+Theodore said that was an old-fashioned idea that grandmother held to
+because of her Puritan ancestry; that it was generally conceded now
+that the theatre is a great educator, the greatest educator of the
+people extant to-day.
+
+"There is going to be a world-renowned actress to-night, a star of first
+magnitude in the theatrical world," he added, "and I want my niece to
+have the advantage of hearing her."
+
+I dressed my very prettiest for the occasion. Uncle Theodore always has
+an eye for the artistic in dress. I donned soft silks, soft ribbons, and
+soft feathers. It is one of my uncle's ideas that women should be softly
+clad; he absolutely hates anything hard, stiff, or masculine-looking on
+a woman.
+
+When we entered the theatre the orchestra was playing most ravishing
+music. I could have stayed there all night and listened to it without
+tiring, I believe. It must be the American half of me that is the
+music-lover, for the Chinese are not very musical.
+
+The boxes were full of wonderfully well-dressed men and women. How
+beautiful women can look in this great country, dressed in every colour
+of the rainbow! Men are of less account in America; but they looked well
+enough, too, in black coats and white shirt-bosoms.
+
+After awhile the heavenly music stopped, the curtain on the stage rolled
+up, and the play began.
+
+At first it was entrancing, magnificent--the stage-furnishings,
+gorgeously dressed women, clever-looking men, all acting a part--a
+lovely world without anything to mar it, right there in that small space
+of the stage before our eyes.
+
+Then a woman, the star actress, came in wearing a very décolleté gown
+(I am getting hardened to them now), and began to talk in a manner I
+never had imagined people in good society would talk--right before those
+hundreds of men and women. I'll not write it down; I do not wish to
+remember it. But the party of women on the stage, instead of being
+shocked or ashamed, all laughed little, rippling, merry laughs. My
+cheeks burned, and I did not dare to look at anybody, not even Uncle
+Theodore.
+
+After that I could not like the theatre any more and drawing away within
+myself, I looked and listened as if the actors had been hundreds of
+miles from me.
+
+When the play was over and we were on the way home Uncle Theodore said:
+"If I had known the nature of the play, I would not have taken you
+to-night, Pearl."
+
+"But _I_," I cried, "_I_ am only _one_! There were hundreds of people
+being _educated_ as well as _I_!"
+
+Uncle Theodore turned and looked at me quickly; then he said coldly:
+
+"My dear, you have a great deal yet to learn."
+
+When we reached home I went at once upstairs to my room, and Uncle
+Theodore retired to his den.
+
+Neither of us has ever mentioned the subject since.
+
+Cousin Ned is around morning, noon, and night now. He is walking with a
+crutch, having had his shin kicked at a foot-ball match.
+
+
+
+
+_June 20th, 1----_
+
+
+I went with grandmother to-day on her weekly visit to the "Home for
+Incurable Children." Grandmother goes to carry her presents, and "to
+cheer up the little folk," she says; I went prompted by curiosity.
+
+We were ushered in by a cheery, wholesome-looking maid who knew
+grandmother, and gave her the freedom of the house.
+
+We first entered the ward where the older children were kept, and there
+grandmother distributed her books and pictures.
+
+While she sat to rest I wandered from one cot to another, where white
+little faces looked up at me, pleasantly answering my questions, or
+volunteering information.
+
+"I am a _new_ patient," one midget said, with a placid air of
+importance.
+
+"I'm goin' to have an _operation_ to-morrow," said another exultingly.
+
+"That's one blessed fact about children," said the attending nurse,
+"they never fret in anticipation. They look forward with positive pride
+to a new experience--even if it is an operation."
+
+In one bright room three boys were playing a game of number-cards, one a
+hunchback, another with crippled lower limbs, and a third, seated on a
+long high bench, handling the cards with his toes, his arms and hands
+being useless.
+
+The top part of the foot of the socks belonging to this last lad had
+been cut off, and he was picking the cards off the table with his bare
+toes; passing them from foot to foot, and replacing a certain card on
+the table, quite as expertly as another boy might do it with his
+fingers.
+
+I walked into another room to see the little babies; blind,
+crooked-limbed, distorted, never going to be able to use their bodies
+properly.
+
+"Why does God leave them here?" I demanded of grandmother as soon as we
+had reached the open air again.
+
+"Perhaps," said grandmother quietly, "to give us the blessed privilege
+of acting the God toward them."
+
+"Christianity means brotherhood, Pearl, dear," she added, after we had
+walked several yards in silence.
+
+What a great country this America is! Caring for its ailing and crippled
+in such a beautiful way!
+
+"Oh, China!" I cried, when I was all alone in my own room, "_you_ would
+drown your blind, crooked-limbed, distorted babies, or throw them out on
+the hillsides to die! Oh, China! China! would you could come over here
+and see how America treats her 'weak and wounded, sick and sore?' These
+are the words of a church hymn."
+
+I said something to this effect the same evening to grandmother, and she
+replied:
+
+"Perhaps, my dear, it may be the duty of some of us to carry America to
+China."
+
+
+
+
+SEASIDE, _July 31st, 1----_
+
+
+We are at the seaside. It is the fashion in America for whole families
+to shut up their houses in hot weather and go off to some summer
+resort--the women of them--whether to be cool, or to be in the fashion I
+do not yet know. Grandmother wanted to go one place, Aunt Gwendolin to
+another, and Uncle Theodore, who said he might run over for a few
+Sundays, to yet another. At last a charming spot upon the Atlantic coast
+was decided upon. Uncle Theodore settled the question emphatically,
+because dear grandmother needed the revivifying influence of the sea
+air.
+
+Aunt Gwendolin fretted a little at first for fear it might be humdrum,
+and commonplace, and for fear none of "our set" would be there; but she
+recovered from her depression when she heard that Mrs. Delancy, Mrs.
+Deforest, Mrs. Austin, and others of the same clique had also chosen
+that particular part of the coast as their recuperating place.
+
+Mrs. Delancy dropped in one day to tell her that the whole fashionable
+tide had turned toward that coast this summer, and she knew we should
+have a "simply _grand_ season."
+
+Aunt Gwendolin's spirits rose after that, and she immediately went about
+ordering a most elaborate summer wardrobe--morning gowns, evening
+gowns, walking suits, yachting suits, bathing suits.
+
+Uncle Theodore went ahead of the rest of the party and engaged a suite
+of rooms in the most fashionable hotel on the Beach, from the broad
+balconies of which the view of the sea is grand, and the air delicious.
+
+Grandmother and I spend much time together. As I am not "out" Aunt
+Gwendolin says that I cannot attend any of the functions to which she is
+going daily--and nightly. I do not know what I miss by being obliged to
+stay away from the parties and balls, but I know it is very delightful
+wandering on the beach with grandmother, watching the lights, shades,
+and colours on the water, the dipping and skimming of the water birds,
+the movements of the lobster fishers, the going out and coming in of
+the tide, and all the many, many objects of interest around the great
+sea world; never caring whether I am fashionable or not fashionable,
+whether anybody is noticing me or not noticing me.
+
+The only objects that I do not like to look at on this sea beach are the
+human bathers. The sea-gulls taking their bath are graceful, but, oh!
+those grown-up women in skirts up to their knees, and bare arms,
+wandering over the beach like great ostriches! They mar the picture of
+beauty which the earth and sky and sea unite to make, and I would shut
+them up if I had the power--or add more length to their bathing suits.
+
+Perhaps the sea-gulls would not look graceful either if they had half
+their feathers off.
+
+We were here a week when Professor Ballington came. We were all a
+little surprised to see him because he is not a "society man," as Aunt
+Gwendolin says. He does not appear to care much for "functions," and
+spends much time wandering on the beach. Grandmother and I meet him
+frequently.
+
+One time when I went out for a little run before breakfast I found him
+staring at the great green sea that kept restlessly licking the sand at
+his feet. He looked lonesome, and I tried to say something to cheer him
+up. Then he asked permission to join me in my stroll, and we had a most
+delightful time, finding shells, and stones, the formations of various
+periods of time, Professor Ballington said. He seems to know everything.
+I do not wonder he cares so little for society, or the company of women
+in general. Strange how much more the men, the cultured men, the society
+men, of America know than the women! I suppose it is because the women
+have to spend so much time talking about the change of sleeves.
+
+There was a dance one night in the ballroom, which is around at the
+opposite side of the house from our apartments, and leaving grandmother
+absorbed in her book, I slipped around on the balcony and peeped through
+the slats of the closed shutters on the dancers within.
+
+All was in a whirl, and there I saw, with my own two eyes, men with
+their arms around the waists of women, whirling those same women around
+the great room in time to music played by an orchestra. It made me dizzy
+to look at them.
+
+"Wouldn't that shock China!" I cried. "Shall _I_ have to submit to that
+when I come _out_? Oh, why cannot I always stay _in_?"
+
+I was so excited I did not know I was talking aloud, until the voice of
+Professor Ballington over my head said:
+
+"You do not like the thought of coming out into society? You would like
+always to stay in domestic retirement?"
+
+"Yes, yes," I said; "what can save me from coming _out_?"
+
+"Marry some good man," he said, "and spend your energies making a quiet,
+happy home for _him_."
+
+He was looking at me in a very peculiar way, and I felt frightened, I
+don't know why, and skipped along the balcony back to grandmother's
+sitting-room.
+
+When I entered who should be there talking to grandmother but Mrs.
+Paton. She said she had felt lonesome without grandmother in the city,
+and had made up her mind to spend a week at the seaside.
+
+"Oh, grandmother!" I cried, as soon as I had greeted Mrs. Paton, "shall
+I _have_ to come _out_? Cannot I always stay _in_?"
+
+Grandmother clasped my hand in hers, in the old way she had of quieting
+me, and explained to Mrs. Paton that I did not incline to the ways of
+society people, and had a dread of entering the world which Aunt
+Gwendolin loved so well.
+
+"Give your life to some noble cause, my dear," said Mrs. Paton
+earnestly, turning her eyes upon me. "The world is in sore need of
+consecrated women. You could be a foreign missionary, or a home
+missionary. Oh, don't waste your life on the frivolity called Society!"
+
+This is not Professor Ballington's advice. Which is right? How glad I
+am that in this "land of the free," I am not compelled to follow any
+will but my own!
+
+
+
+
+_August_ SEASIDE.
+
+
+Well, I did get a surprise last evening while out strolling on the
+beach, for whom should I meet but "Sawbones," otherwise Chauffeur
+Graham. He is having summer holidays now, and before settling down to
+some work to make money for his autumn college expenses, he snatched a
+day to get a whiff of sea air, he said.
+
+He seemed very pleased to see me, and I was _delighted_ to see him, and
+extended my hand to him in cordial greeting.
+
+I know Aunt Gwendolin would object to her niece shaking hands with the
+chauffeur--it was the medical man I shook hands with.
+
+I stayed out there as long as I dared, and we had a lovely stroll along
+the beach in the moonlight, the waves whispering at our feet as we
+walked and talked. Chauffeur Graham said that it always seemed to him
+that the waves were coming from the many far-off lands with their
+incessant pleadings that we carry our enlightenment and advantages to
+the suffering places of the earth.
+
+That was the medical man speaking in him. He must be noble or he would
+never hear those voices in the waves.
+
+How I wish it were proper for me to give him some of the money I do not
+know what to do with, so that he could go on with his studies and not
+need to work between times to earn a pittance.
+
+Grandmother says she is going to engage him again in the autumn, when we
+all return to the city; she knows him now, and feels safe in his hands,
+he is so careful.
+
+"It is such a nuisance to have a man that you cannot command at any hour
+of the day--or night," said Aunt Gwendolin. "Make him understand, if you
+engage him again, that all his time belongs to _us_. These gentlemen
+chauffeurs who are straining after a university education are
+unendurable!"
+
+"He shall have whatever time he wants for his studies or examinations.
+It is the least I can do to show my sympathy with his life work,"
+returned my grandmother.
+
+
+
+
+_Another Stroll_.
+
+
+I had another stroll this evening on the beach with Chauffeur
+Graham--while Aunt Gwendolin was getting ready for the dance--and he
+told me something.
+
+"When I am through with my medical course," he said, "I intend to go to
+China to practise what I have learned."
+
+I stopped suddenly in my walk and faced him. "Why are you going to
+China?" I demanded.
+
+It makes me indignant to have this nation, an infant in years,
+patronising my hoary-headed Empire!
+
+"If a man is going to do his duty by the world," he returned, "he will
+go where his work is most needed. They have no native medical school in
+China.
+
+"They are a great people," he added after a short pause, "likely to be
+in the van of the world's march in the ages to come; and I want to have
+a hand in getting them ready. Napoleon said, 'When China moves she will
+move the world.' All the broken legs will be set in this country whether
+I am here to set them or not; I want to go where they will not be set
+unless I do it."
+
+
+     "Go where the vineyard demandeth
+     Vinedresser's nurture and care."
+
+
+I repeated the lines which I had heard them sing in the church.
+
+"That's about the way it is," he returned, looking at me in pleased
+surprise.
+
+He left this morning on an early train, to go back to the peg and grind,
+and now the place is slow and lonesome. After all I think it is better
+to have to peg and grind; it surely must be the spice of life which rich
+people miss. I do not care how quickly the hot months pass, and we can
+go back to the city again.
+
+
+
+
+_Sept. 30th, 1----_
+
+
+We are all back in the city again, and settled into the old routine; but
+there is a new excitement in the air. Aunt Gwendolin insists that I
+require to go to some fashionable "Young Ladies' Boarding School," to be
+"_finished_." She says (but not in grandmother's hearing) that I do not
+talk as I should, that my voice is quite ordinary, and I must learn the
+tone of society ladies before I can be brought _out_.
+
+"You mean the _artificial_ tone?" said Uncle Theodore, who was present
+when I was getting my lecture.
+
+"Call it what you like, Theodore," snapped Aunt Gwendolin, "it is the
+tone used by an American society woman; the girl talks yet in the
+natural voice of a child."
+
+"Would that she could always keep it," returned Uncle Theodore.
+
+After much talking my aunt persuaded my grandmother that I should go to
+some such school.
+
+"My dear," said grandmother timidly, "your aunt seems to think you may
+gain much by a period spent in some good school. She may be right. It
+certainly cannot hurt you, and if it can be of any benefit there is
+nothing to prevent your having it."
+
+To comfort dear grandmother I raised no objection, and it is settled
+that I go in the fall term. The choice of a school was left entirely to
+Aunt Gwendolin, and she has decided upon the most expensive and most
+fashionable one in the country. She has been corresponding with the
+lady principal; my rooms have been ordered; and everything is complete.
+
+One day my aunt placed in my hand one of her monogrammed sheets of
+writing-paper, pointing to the following paragraph:
+
+"It is the family's wish that much attention be given to preparing the
+young girl whom I am sending to you, for Society; heavy or arduous work
+in any other line is of secondary consideration. The prestige of your
+school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of a Spanish girl
+of good family."
+
+"I am not a Spanish girl, Aunt Gwendolin!" I said.
+
+"I did not say you were," returned my aunt, "I simply said the prestige
+of her school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of one."
+
+Have I got to live up to _that_?
+
+
+
+
+BOARDING SCHOOL, _October 10th, 1----_
+
+
+I am here at last, accompanied by two large leather trunks, which Aunt
+Gwendolin has filled with all sorts of costumes, for all sorts of
+occasions.
+
+A page opened the door in response to the hackman's ring, when after
+some hours' journey by rail, I arrived at the fashionable "Boarding
+School," and a maid conducted me up a flight of softly carpeted steps to
+my appointed rooms.
+
+I had not more than taken off my wraps, when Madam Demill (she has
+declared that her name should be spelled De Mille, but it has become
+corrupted in this democratic America) the head of the establishment,
+called upon me. She was cold, hard, stately; a creature of whalebone and
+steel as to body, and of pompadours and artificial braids as to head.
+
+She announced after her first greeting that there was going to be a
+party that evening, and she wished me to be dressed in evening costume,
+and appear in the drawing-room at half past eight o'clock.
+
+"If you would wear some of your distinctly Spanish costumes it would be
+very _apropos_," she added. "I see you have the decided Spanish
+complexion. I am glad you are pronounced in your nationality; it is so
+much more interesting. As you did not arrive in time for dinner, a tray
+shall be brought to your room with sufficient refreshment to keep you in
+good feature until you partake of the refreshment offered at the party,"
+she added as she swept from the room.
+
+How helpless I felt! I was to dress in evening costume for the "party."
+What was I to put on? For the first time in my life I wished that Aunt
+Gwendolin were near me. How I longed for my yellow silk gown that my
+governess in China had designed with flowing sleeves trimmed with
+"sprawling dragons!" I knew I looked better in that than in anything
+else, and I knew how to put it on; no infinitesimal hooks and eyes, pins
+and buttons, to be found, and put in exact places; which if one fails to
+do in the American gown the whole thing goes awry.
+
+My worry was dispelled by the arrival of the maid with the promised
+tray. It was not too heavily laden to prevent me from completely
+emptying it, with the exception of the dishes.
+
+While I was eating the maid unpacked my trunks,--you have not got to do
+much for yourself in a fashionable boarding school--hanging the articles
+in an adjoining clothes closet. During the same period of time a happy
+thought occurred to me.
+
+"I will call Aunt Gwendolin over the long distance telephone and ask her
+what I shall wear at the party to-night!" was the happy inspiration.
+
+In response to my request the maid conducted me to the telephone, and
+when the connection was made, I called:
+
+"Hello, Aunt Gwendolin! This is the Yellow Pearl speaking!"
+
+"How does that little minx know that she is the yellow peril?" I heard
+my aunt say, probably to Uncle Theodore in the room beside her. Then she
+turned to me and replied:
+
+"Well."
+
+"What gown shall I wear to-night at the party?"
+
+Back over the two hundred miles of field, forest, lake, came Aunt
+Gwendolin's thin, squeaky voice:
+
+"Wear your cream-coloured Oriental lace."
+
+"Does it fasten in the front or back? If in the back I cannot put it on
+myself!" I returned, over the fields and trees and waters.
+
+"Yes, you _can_, get some of the girls to fasten it for you," cried the
+voice through the phone. "Be sure and wear _that_; it so emphasises your
+Spanish style of beau----"
+
+I hung up the receiver.
+
+At my request the maid helped me to get into the cream Oriental lace;
+and at half past eight I made my appearance in the drawing-room, as to
+dress, looking like a Spanish grande dame, and as to face, looking as
+yellow, and lonesome, and sour as the fiercest Spanish brigand.
+
+I was introduced to Mr. This-One, and Mr. That-One and Mr.
+The-Other-One. They all looked alike to me, with high collars, and
+patent-leather shoes. After awhile there was a little dance, but as I
+did not know how I had to sit against the wall, and Madam Demill said I
+must be put under a dancing master at once.
+
+The day following, in the afternoon (all the so-called lessons are gone
+through in the forenoon, and we have nothing to do but amuse ourselves
+the rest of the day) a number of the girls came to call on me in my
+apartments. There were a dozen or more of them present when an
+arrogant-looking one, with her hair arranged in an immense pompadour
+over her forehead, from ear to ear, drawled through her nose.
+
+"I suppose you do not love Americans since we beat your country at the
+battle of Manila?"
+
+"No," I said truthfully, "I do not love Americans." (Of course I
+mentally excepted grandmother, Professor Ballington, Chauffeur
+Graham--and Uncle Theodore when he acts nice.)
+
+The girls threw their chins into the air, their eyes shot fire, and I
+heard several faint sniffs.
+
+Then a slim, golden-haired, blue-eyed girl stepped out from the group,
+and coming quickly to my side, she put her arm around me and said:
+
+"We'll _make_ her love us!" and she actually touched her rosebud lips to
+my yellow cheek.
+
+Since that I have not hated Americans quite so savagely.
+
+The act seemed to have a softening effect on the others, too, for from
+that time they all have treated me very decently, even the girl with
+the pompadour.
+
+Golden Hair seems to have a great deal of influence in the school. There
+are _some_ nice girls in America.
+
+
+
+
+_Oct. 15th, 1----_
+
+
+Life in this "Fashionable Boarding School" is just about a repetition,
+daily, of what transpired the evening of my arrival. It is not worth
+recording, so I am closing up my diary until I return to grandmother's.
+It takes Yick, and Mrs. Yet, and Chauffeur Graham, and Professor
+Ballington, and even a pinch of Aunt Gwendolin to give a little spice to
+life.
+
+
+
+
+_Thanksgiving_
+
+
+I took a run back to grandmother's for what those Americans call
+Thanksgiving--It is most amusing to foreigners like me--and Yick.
+
+On grandmother's table there was what they tell me is the regulation
+dinner for the day--roast turkey and pumpkin pie.
+
+When Yick, in his best costume, had walked proudly into the dining room
+with the immense turkey on a platter, and deposited it on the table, he
+returned to the kitchen convulsed with laughter, Betty has told me
+since.
+
+"Christians queer people! Christians queer people!" he sputtered
+merrily. "Thank God eat turkey, thank God eat turkey!"
+
+I knew what Yick meant, the Oriental idea of thanking God would have
+been some act of self-denial. It was hard for the poor "heathen Chinee"
+to construe the American self-indulgence into an act of thanksgiving.
+Poor Yick, and poor Yellow Pearl! How far both of you are from
+comprehending civilisation.
+
+
+
+
+_Holidays, Dec. 20th, 1----_
+
+
+I am back again at grandmother's for the holidays. Grandmother and Uncle
+Theodore seemed so glad to see me that I am beginning to feel quite as
+if this were home. Yick and Betty are still here, Chauffeur Graham still
+manipulates the automobile.
+
+Mrs. Delancy gave a "little Christmas dance," as she calls it, last
+night, and the description has come out in the morning paper:
+
+"The home of Mrs. Delancy was transformed into a bower of flowers, ferns
+and softly shaded lights, on the night of her Christmas dance. The hall
+and staircase were decorated with Southern smilax entwined with white
+flowers, and the dressing-rooms with mauve orchids; while in the
+drawing-room the mantelpiece was banked with Richmond roses and
+maidenhair ferns, and that in the dining room with lily-of-the-valley
+and single daffodils. Passing through the dining room, where an
+orchestra was stationed behind a screen of bamboo, twined with flowers,
+the guests entered the Japanese tea pavilion, which had been erected for
+the occasion. The entrance was formed of bamboo trellis work covered
+with Southern smilax, flowers, and innumerable tiny electric lights. The
+walls were covered with fluted yellow silk, and from the ceiling
+depended dozens of baskets filled with flowers interspersed with
+Japanese lanterns and parasols. Huge bouquets of chrysanthemums were
+fastened against the wall. The table was exquisitely decorated with
+enormous baskets of flowers; in the centre was one with large mauve
+orchids over which was tilted a large pink Japanese umbrella, trimmed
+with violets, while from each basket sprang bamboo wands suspended from
+which were Japanese lanterns filled with lily-of-the-valley and violets,
+the whole forming the most beautiful scheme of decoration seen this
+season."
+
+How tired I am writing it all! I wonder if any one felt tired looking at
+it.
+
+Then followed a description of the ladies' gowns:
+
+"The ladies were simply stunning in their smartest gowns, Mrs. Delancy
+queening it in an exquisite apple-green satin, with pearls and diamonds;
+Miss Morgan (which means my respected aunt), whose sparkling blonde
+beauty always charms her friends, in maize chiffon, through which
+sparkled a gold-sequined bodice and underskirt, and Mrs. Deforest, dark
+and graceful, in a rich white satin gown. Mrs. Austin looked extremely
+handsome in a most becoming orchid gown, with ribbon of the same shade
+twisted in her dark hair."
+
+There was a lot more of the same, but my hand refuses to write it. One
+would think it was a number of half-grown children the newspaper
+reporter was trying to please by saying nice things about them. Strange
+that in this America nothing is ever said about what the women _say_ or
+_do_ at those social functions; nothing seems worth noticing about them
+but the kind of clothes they have on. The men do not count for anything
+at all.
+
+I wonder was Professor Ballington there. I wonder did he look at any
+one with that smile away back in his eyes which was there when he looked
+at me the time I sang my _one_ Spanish song.
+
+
+
+
+_December 21st, 1----_
+
+
+Yick has given us a new diversion. Aunt Gwendolin gave him orders to
+make a _particularly_ nice layer-cake for an afternoon "tea."
+
+Yick is quite proud of his cakes, and this day he wished to outdo
+anything he had previously done, so he made a layer cake, icing it with
+red and white trimmings. He delights to get a new recipe, or find some
+new way of decoration. The daily paper, which always in the end finds
+its way into the kitchen, had evidently attracted his attention. He saw
+in the advertisement pages a round box with an inscription on top.
+Taking the box for a cake, he decorated his culinary effort in imitation
+of the picture. Aunt Gwendolin never saw it until it was carried in to
+the table, before all the finest ladies of the city, and this was what
+they all read, in three rows of red letters across the white icing:
+
+
+     Dodd's
+     Kidney
+     Pills
+
+
+Who says my people are not clever and original?
+
+
+
+
+_Dec. 23d, 1----_
+
+
+It is drawing near the festive season in this remarkable land, and there
+is a great bustle everywhere. Some people are concerned about providing
+luxuries for themselves, and some are concerned about providing for
+those poorer than themselves.
+
+Mrs. Delancy came in all fagged out from her arduous work of shopping.
+
+"I have just been treating myself to a few little Christmas presents,"
+she gasped, as she carried a great, fat, pug dog and deposited him on
+grandmother's best white satin sofa pillow. She called the dog many
+endearing names, such as "darling," "little baby boy," "sweet one," and
+"tootsy-wootsy."
+
+Dogs are thought as much of as babies in America; those are the very
+same terms of endearment that the women address to their babies.
+
+"I had to leave this little darling in a restaurant to be fed and cared
+for while I did my shopping," she explained. "He _would_ come with me,
+the pet."
+
+She then informed Aunt Gwendolin that she had been to the milliner's
+and ordered five hats, and had just completed the purchase of a three
+thousand dollar jacket at the furrier's.
+
+The dog on the pillow whined in the midst of her recital, and she
+stopped long enough to go over and give him a kiss.
+
+She was still enlarging on the beauty of the fur coat, when the
+housemaid tapped on the door, and ushered Mrs. Paton into the
+sitting-room.
+
+"I heard that you ladies were here," she said, "and I thought you might
+like to have the privilege of helping a little in those charities," and
+she began to unfold some papers which she held in her hand.
+
+"Oh, my dear Mrs. Paton, do not ask me to-day, _really_," exclaimed Mrs.
+Delancy, holding up her hands. "I am among the poor myself to-day, and
+you know charity begins at home. I really haven't a cent to give to any
+one else. I'm stony broke, as the boys say. I have laid out so much
+money to-day for necessities!"
+
+Mrs. Paton then turned to my aunt and said, "Gwendolin, _do_ give
+something out of the thousands you are expending on self-indulgence to
+help those who have not the necessities of life!"
+
+Taking the paper into her hand with an ungracious air, my aunt wrote
+down a certain amount, and then passed it back.
+
+"Dear me!" sighed Mrs. Delancy, as soon as Mrs. Paton had left the
+place, "how tired I get of those people with their solicitations for
+some Y. M. C. A., or Y. W. C. A., or something else _eternally_. They'd
+keep a person poor if one paid any heed to them, _really_! Some one
+starving or unclothed every time! It does annoy me so to hear harrowing
+tales!"
+
+
+
+
+_January 1st, 1----_
+
+
+Last night there was a sound of revelry in this great land. At the
+solemn hour of midnight, when the old year was dying, and the new year
+was just being born, one class of people in this American city rushed
+out into the open streets, cheering, blowing horns, ringing bells, and
+making all possible noises on all sorts of musical instruments. Another
+class celebrated the birth of the new year by eating an elaborate meal.
+This is what appeared in the morning paper regarding the latter:
+
+
+     "One million dollars was spent last night in this city celebrating
+     the birth of another year. More than twenty-five thousand persons
+     engaged tables at from three to ten dollars a plate in the leading
+     hotels and cafés."
+
+
+How fond of eating Americans are!
+
+This is the first time I have seen the birth of a new year in any but my
+native land, and my mind goes back to the celebration on a similar
+occasion in China. It is a solemn event there. For weeks the people are
+preparing for it; houses are cleaned, and debts are paid, for a
+Chinaman, if he has any self-respect, will be sure to pay his debts
+before the new year.
+
+I told this to Uncle Theodore a few days ago, and he said, "I wish that
+Americans would rise to that state of grace."
+
+Nobody goes to bed that night, but all sit up waiting for the first hour
+of the new year, when the father of the home, his wife and children all
+worship before the spirit tablets of their ancestors, and then at the
+shrine of the household gods.
+
+Then the door is opened, and the whole family with the servants go
+outside and bow down to a certain part of the heavens, and so worship
+heaven and earth, and receive the spirit of gladness and good fortune,
+which they say comes from that quarter.
+
+At the same hour, when the old year is dying, China's Emperor, as High
+Priest of his people, goes in state to worship. Kneeling alone under the
+silent stars he renders homage to the Superior Powers. He on his
+imperial throne makes the third in the great Trinity, Heaven, Earth, and
+Man. Should there come a famine or pestilence, upon him rests the blame,
+and he must by sacrifice and prayer atone for the imperfections of
+which heaven has seen him guilty.
+
+Oh, China! I would prefer kneeling with you under the silent stars on
+New Year's eve, to feasting at the groaning tables, or ringing the bells
+and blowing the horns of this great, civilised, noisy America!
+
+
+
+
+_January 7th, 1----_
+
+
+Oh, glorious! Grandmother says I need not go back to boarding school for
+the winter term; she says the family always go South during the cold
+weather, and she wants me to go with them. Wants me, think of it,
+_wants_ me. Isn't it nice to have somebody want one along with her! I
+believe grandmother really loves me. Aunt Gwendolin doesn't; she wanted
+me sent back to school. She said I would never be fit to be brought
+_out_ with that kind of carrying on. I love those that love me, but as
+for loving those that _hate_ me, as grandmother had been teaching me
+from the Bible, I haven't come to that yet.
+
+That reminds me, I wish Aunt Gwendolin would stop snapping at Yick; I am
+afraid some day he will kill himself on the doorstep, so his ghost may
+haunt her the rest of her life. But I think he likes grandmother and the
+other members of the family sufficiently well to cause him to refrain
+from that act of Chinese revenge.
+
+
+
+
+MEXICO, _February 1st, 1----_
+
+
+A great migratory movement has taken place in our family--we are now in
+the warm, sunny country called Mexico.
+
+Aunt Gwendolin was the cause of it. She said she was tired of going to
+Florida, that it was so _common_ to go there now, everybody was going
+there, that the latest thing was to winter in Mexico, and she thought we
+all ought to follow suit. She talked and argued so much about it that
+she persuaded grandmother and Uncle Theodore to her way of thinking, and
+after travelling hundreds of miles in Pullman and sleeper cars, here we
+are in this land of cactus fences, tortillas, great snakes, and parrots;
+this land where roses and strawberries grow all the year round; where in
+some parts are luscious tropical fruits, flowers, and palms.
+
+Mrs. Delancy has come along with us, and Professor Ballington says he
+may join our party later. There are many Americans around us in the
+various towns--it is so fashionable at present to winter in Mexico.
+
+Uncle Theodore takes me out for long walks with him in this land of
+perpetual summer, and we see many strange and interesting sights. The
+rich are so _very_ rich, and the poor are so _very_ poor. There is one
+drawback--we had to leave behind us our automobile. Of course we can
+hire one here, but we can not have our own lovely chauffeur, and
+grandmother says she is afraid to trust any of those Mexicans. I suppose
+our poor chauffeur is pegging away hard over his medical lore now, while
+I am lounging around doing nothing. The granddaughter of a
+millionairess, with money to get anything I want, and yet I am beginning
+to think there is nothing worth getting. It is lovely to be poor like
+the chauffeur and have to work hard for something. My life is so small
+and worthless that I am oppressed with it.
+
+One of the sights that interest us the most when we are out in the
+country are the cactus hedges. There are great palisades of the
+organ-cactus lining the railways, and there are ragged, loose-jointed
+varieties used for corralling cattle. Great plantations of a species of
+cactus called maguey with stiff, prickly leaves a dull, bluish-green,
+are seen in abundance. From this plant the Mexicans get not only thread,
+pins, and needles, but pulque, the juice or sap of the plant, which they
+ferment and make into a national beverage. Pulque is used by the
+Mexicans as whisky is used by Americans, and opium by Chinamen.
+
+Great fields of maize are cultivated, of which there are two or three
+crops a year. The food of the people is tortillas, made out of this
+maize mashed into a paste and baked into flat cakes.
+
+I ate those tortillas when I first came, as a curiosity, a native
+production, but I am not going to eat any more. While Uncle Theodore and
+I were watching a woman making them, great drops of perspiration fell
+from her brow into the paste. She pounded away, poor tired creature, and
+paid no heed to the drops. Poor women of Mexico, they have to work so
+hard, preparing the paste, and making those little cakes to be eaten hot
+at every meal! But no more tortillas for me.
+
+We visited the old churches which are beautifully decorated with veined
+marble and alabaster. Precious stones seem to grow in this remarkable
+land.
+
+"Keep your eyes open, Pearl," said my uncle, "and you may pick up some
+opals, or amethysts. They grow in this country, and I have heard they
+can be had for the picking."
+
+
+
+
+MEXICO, _February 12th, 1----_
+
+
+I have made a discovery--I have found out America's Princely Man! It is
+Abraham Lincoln, and this is his Birthday!
+
+Magazines have been coming down from the North telling us all about this
+Princely Man, and I have asked grandmother and Uncle Theodore hundreds
+of questions, it seems to me, about him. And I can see that they never
+get tired answering those questions, but seem as if they could talk
+about him forever.
+
+Scarcely a political debate occurs, either in Congress or in the Press
+of the country, but the possible views or actual example of Abraham
+Lincoln are quoted as the strongest argument, Uncle Theodore says.
+
+The magazines find it impossible to publish too much about him. Mention
+of his name in an incidental fashion from a stage or forum draws a burst
+of cheering; or if the reference is of a humorous nature the laughter is
+close to tears.
+
+"With love and reverence his memory is cherished by the American people
+as is the memory of no other man," said dear grandmother. "Quoting a
+'Decoration Day' orator," she added, "'He was called to go by the
+sorrowful way, bearing the awful burden of his people's woe, the cry of
+the uncomforted in his ears, the bitterness of their passion on his
+heart. Misunderstood, misjudged, he was the most solitary of men. He had
+to tread the wine-press alone, and of the people none went with him.
+But he turned not back. He never faltered. As one upheld, sustained by
+the Unseen Hand, he set his face steadfastly, undaunted, unafraid, until
+in Death's black minute he paid glad life's arrears: the slaves free!
+Himself immortal!'"
+
+Yes, it is quite certain that Abraham Lincoln is America's Princely Man!
+
+_I_ would like to make something happen in the world that would be
+talked about after I am dead. Grandmother says that it is only something
+that one does for the _good_ of the world that is remembered after he is
+dead. "If a man has money, people will lionize him as long as he is
+living for the sake of it," she says, "but money counts for nothing when
+a man is dead."
+
+"Money!" said Uncle Theodore, who had been listening to our talk. "I
+doubt whether Abe ever owned enough to buy a farm."
+
+
+
+
+_February 15th, 1----_
+
+
+One comfort, I am not bothered much with Aunt Gwendolin--she has become
+acquainted with a French nobleman, Count de Pensier, and he is
+attracting all her attention, thanks be to goodness! Mrs. Delancy is
+delighted, and is doing all she can to further the acquaintance. "It is
+not every day that one has the privilege of associating daily and hourly
+with one of the _titled aristocracy_ of the old world," she has said
+several times in my hearing.
+
+When we first arrived Aunt Gwendolin saw some of the Spanish ladies
+wearing mantillas on their heads, and she immediately bought one for me.
+
+"There!" she said when I put it on, "isn't that simply perfect? Doesn't
+that make her Spanish through and through?" She says that when I become
+a thorough Spanish-American she is going to give a "coming out party"
+for me.
+
+The scarf is really quite becoming. Uncle Theodore admired it, or
+admired me with it on, so I wear it wound around my head when I go on my
+rambles through the country with him. I really much prefer it to the
+bristling hats of the American women, and it is quite pleasant to be
+called "señorita," and to be thought Spanish.
+
+These long head scarfs are also worn by the poor women, but theirs are
+made of cotton. On the street they carry their babies strapped to their
+backs with it, the little heads and legs bobbing up and down until one
+would think they might snap off. Sometimes the scarf ties the baby to
+the mother's bosom, thus leaving her hands free for other work.
+
+"Our American sensibilities" (quoting Aunt Gwendolin) "are sometimes
+shocked by Mexican doings."
+
+One day we saw a procession headed by the father carrying a tiny coffin
+on his head. Behind him walked the mother dragging by the hand a little
+bare-foot girl, of two or three; and behind them again trotted a dog.
+The father was drunk, and staggered as he walked.
+
+As we watched the little procession on the way to the graveyard they
+passed in front of a saloon where they sold pulque. The father wanted
+another drink, so he started to enter the saloon taking the little
+coffin under his arm. He stumbled on the threshold, and the little pine
+box fell out of his hands down onto the flag-stones, the cover coming
+off. And we saw a little dead baby within the coffin, with a crown of
+gilt paper on its head, and a cross of gilt paper on its brow. In its
+little hands were a bunch of flowers. The man laughed awkwardly, put the
+lid on the coffin and placed it on his head again, proceeding toward the
+graveyard without his drink, followed by the mother, the girl, and the
+dog.
+
+"Why do not the American missionaries who are crossing oceans to find
+heathen, look for them at their own doorstep?" said Uncle Theodore
+afterwards, when he was telling the story to grandmother.
+
+"Sure enough," returned grandmother, "it does look as if the
+unenlightened of its own continent is America's first duty."
+
+Aunt Gwendolin is having moonlight walks and talks innumerable with
+Count de Pensier--and--oh, I am having LIBERTY!
+
+
+
+
+_February 21st, 1----_
+
+
+We have had some unusual excitement lately--a bull and tiger fight. The
+day following, the description came out in a morning paper:
+
+
+     "A fight between a Tiagua bull and a Bengal tiger in the bull ring
+     this afternoon was most ferocious, and will result in the death of
+     both animals. The sickening spectacle was witnessed by 5,500
+     people, largely Americans, and many of them tourists, who stopped
+     over here especially to witness the barbaric spectacle. After three
+     bulls had been despatched in the regulation manner, the star
+     performance was pulled off. The two animals, enclosed in an iron
+     cage, about thirty feet square, were brought together, and the
+     battle between the enraged brutes commenced. The bull was first
+     taken into the enclosure and given the usual bull fight tortures to
+     arouse his ire, and then the iron cage containing the tiger was
+     wheeled up to the entrance; but the tiger refused to get out and
+     open the battle, and the bull attempted to get into the small cage
+     and get at his adversary. The bull was badly scratched about the
+     face. Finally the tiger came from his cage, and the bull gored the
+     cat with a long, sharp horn as he emerged. With a screech of pain,
+     the cat, with a powerful lunge, broke the bull's right leg, and
+     then the two animals went into the fight for their lives. The tiger
+     was able to spring out of the way of the bull in a number of
+     instances, but when the big, heavy animal caught his adversary it
+     went hard with the tiger. The bull stepped upon the tiger in one
+     instance and there was a crunching of ribs audible in the seats of
+     the amphitheatre.
+
+     "The bull disabled the tiger in the back, and after that the
+     fighting was tame, and the Americans cried for pity, while the
+     Mexicans cheered and wanted the performance to continue."
+
+
+Mrs. Delancy, and Aunt Gwendolin, along with Uncle Theodore and Count de
+Pensier, attended the fight. Grandmother would not go, and I stayed with
+her.
+
+"A _Christian lady_ going to a bull fight," I said to grandmother under
+my breath.
+
+"Yes, my dear," returned grandmother looking really pale, "it shocks me
+quite as much as _you_. It was not so when I was young. American women
+of the present day must see everything. It is deplorable!"
+
+When the scene was the most harrowing, and the Americans were calling
+for the fight to be stopped, Aunt Gwendolin, and I believe several other
+American women, fainted, and had to be carried out.
+
+"Dear me, dear me," said grandmother again, when she heard the harrowing
+details. "That is just the way with Americans of the present day; they
+must see everything. It was not so when I was young."
+
+Who should walk into our presence at that very moment but Professor
+Ballington. He had heard grandmother's remark, without knowing the
+cause for her words, and as he was shaking hands with us he said:
+
+"You believe the poet Watson diagnosed Uncle Sam's case when he said:
+
+
+            "'But when Fate
+     Was at thy making, and endowed thy soul
+     With many gifts and costly, she forgot
+     To mix with those a genius for repose;
+     And therefore a sting is ever in thy blood,
+     And in thy marrow a sublime unrest.'"
+
+
+"It was not so when I was young," said grandmother. "How can we lay the
+shortcoming at the door of Fate?"
+
+"Chinese women would never attend a bull and tiger fight, grandmother,"
+I whispered into her ear when the professor was looking the other way,
+"nor Chinese gentlemen."
+
+"I hope not, my dear," is all the reply dear grandmother made.
+
+Professor Ballington only stayed with us a day or two; he was just on a
+tour, he said, and had to cover a certain amount of space within a
+certain period of time. Grandmother and I were very desirous that he
+should remain longer; but I really believe Aunt Gwendolin felt relieved
+when he was gone. She did not appear to feel comfortable with his
+comprehending eyes upon her when she was entertaining Count de Pensier.
+
+
+
+
+_February 28th, 1----_
+
+
+The Count has proposed to my Aunt Gwendolin, and she has accepted him.
+Grandmother is in tears ever since, and Uncle Theodore is furious. I
+heard the latter talking to my grandmother--in his excitement he seemed
+to forget my presence--and he said:
+
+"That Frenchman is just a fortune-hunter, one of those penniless,
+titled gentry that swarm in Europe. He wants Gwendolin's money to regild
+a tarnished title, and Gwendolin wants the title! He has found out from
+Arabella Delancy the size of Gwendolin's fortune, in possession and in
+prospective, and he has offered his title in exchange for it! That's the
+size of the whole affair!"
+
+"That's what grieves me most," said grandmother, with quivering lips;
+"it is not holy matrimony."
+
+"I look for a divorce within five years!" continued my uncle.
+
+"I had always hoped that Gwendolin and Professor Ballington would make
+up some time," added grandmother.
+
+"Oh, Gwendolin would never suit Ballington," returned Uncle Theodore.
+"Your granddaughter--the little Celestial--is the making of a woman much
+more to his taste--" He looked up suddenly, and seemed to remember for
+the first time that I was in the room.
+
+I, sly, subtle Oriental that I am, worked away on my shadow embroidery
+and never by the wink of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle showed
+that I heard a word.
+
+
+
+
+_April 5th, 1----_
+
+
+We are home again, and all is bustle and confusion--Aunt Gwendolin is
+going to be married. She pays no attention to me now at all; and you
+know, dear diary, how that grieves me. Dressmakers, milliners, caterers,
+florists, decorators, throng the house. Count de Pensier is staying in a
+hotel downtown. He calls every forenoon, and every afternoon; and
+declares, with his hand on his heart, that he cannot return to his own
+country without his bride.
+
+Cousin Ned has asked me to marry him. He is down in his luck, and
+blue--missed in his examinations--and he says he believes he might
+settle down and do something if he were only married. He says the
+relationship is so far out that there is nothing to hinder him and me
+from being married.
+
+Get married, indeed! There's nothing farther from my thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+_May 25th, 1----_
+
+
+Well the fuss and flurry are all over--they are married, Aunt Gwendolin
+and Count de Pensier. I cannot do better than copy a paragraph out of
+the newspaper to describe the doings:
+
+"The church was beautifully decorated with azaleas, palms, orchids;
+tall white wands supporting sheaves of palms stood at each aisle. The
+walls of the church were festooned with green wreathing. The bride was
+given away by her brother, Theodore Morgan, Esq. She looked exceedingly
+handsome in an exquisite gown of heavy, ivory-white satin, with panel of
+filet lace, seeded with pearls. The long train was trimmed with lace and
+pearl seeding. With this was worn a costly lace veil, caught to her
+Titian hair with a chaplet of orange blossoms, and she carried a shower
+bouquet of Bridal roses.
+
+"The six bridesmaids were gowned in ivory taffeta silk, wearing picture
+hats; and each carried an immense bouquet of Bride's-maid's roses."
+
+As is usual at American functions, the men did not seem to be of enough
+importance to mention anything more than their bare names.
+
+It all took place in _Christ's_ Church. Was He there? Grandmother says
+He is back in this world now in spirit. What did He think of it all?
+
+"Grandmother," I said when it was all over--the church display, the
+reception, the eating and drinking, the dressing--"if I am ever married
+let it be in China."
+
+"My dear child," said grandmother in alarm, "why do you make such a wild
+request as that?"
+
+"Seated at a table the bride is offered a tiny cup of wine," I replied,
+"of which she takes a sip, while the bridegroom in a seat opposite her
+also sips from a similar cup of wine. The cups are then exchanged, and
+again tasted, and the marriage service is completed. They have time to
+think about each other, instead of thinking of what a grand show they
+are making for the world."
+
+Grandmother looked at me in silence a few moments, then she said:
+
+"Your grandfather and I were married quietly in our own little home
+parlour. I was dressed in white muslin, and your grandfather in
+corduroy. We were thinking more about each other than anything else, my
+dear."
+
+The bride and groom, Count and Countess de Pensier, started at once for
+the ancestral home in sunny France, I suppose to begin regilding the
+tarnished title Uncle Theodore spoke about.
+
+Oh, be joyful! I shall not have to go to the "Fashionable Boarding
+School" any more! I shall not have to appear at a "coming out party!" I
+shall never come _out_ now; I shall always stay _in_! Grandmother says I
+may stay in if I want to, and I _do_ want to. I shall never have to
+steal out the back door in grandmother's clothes any more, sing any more
+foreign songs, or pretend I am Spanish! It is lovely to be able to act
+the truth! "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good." (This last is one
+of grandmother's familiar sayings.)
+
+Cousin Ned has lost one of his eyes! Got it knocked out at the last
+"Play."
+
+
+
+
+_May 30th, 1----_
+
+
+I have made a most astounding discovery. Walking down the street
+yesterday I saw a great placard on a wall announcing a lecture; subject,
+"_The Yellow Peril_." What did it mean? I thought _I_ was the Yellow
+Pearl, and that nobody outside of the family knew it. But this was
+spelled p-e-r-i-l instead of P-e-a-r-l. What could it mean? I could go
+no farther, but returned at once to question grandmother.
+
+"Grandmother!" I cried, entering her room, "what is the yellow peril?"
+
+Dear grandmother's cheeks flushed, and she said, "My dear child, why
+bother yourself about that?"
+
+"Why, grandmother, I thought when I overheard Aunt Gwendolin talk, that
+_I_ was the Yellow Pearl; she called me such the first day I came," I
+said. "But on the placard it is spelled p-e-r-i-l. What does it mean?"
+
+"I am sorry you saw it," said grandmother hesitatingly. "There is too
+much being said on that subject by a certain class of people--It is the
+_world_ God loves," she added as if talking to herself, "not the United
+States, Great Britain, Germany; the yellow people are just as dear to
+God as we are. The gentle Christ looked widely over the world, shed
+tears for it, shed blood for it."
+
+"What does the yellow peril mean, grandmother?" I repeated anxiously.
+
+"The Mongolian races are more yellow than the Caucasian races," said
+grandmother, when forced to answer. "They are also more numerous, and
+some people fear that if we allow them in the country they may get the
+upper hand, and become a menace to our people. Do not think any more
+about it, Pearl. Our dear late Phillips Brooks," she added after a short
+pause, "said, 'No nation, as no man, has a right to take possession of a
+choice bit of God's earth, to exclude the foreigner from its territory,
+that it may live more comfortably and be a little more at peace. But if
+this particular nation has been given the development of a certain part
+of God's earth for universal purposes, if the world in the great march
+of centuries is going to be richer for the development of a certain
+national character, built up by a larger type of manhood here, then for
+the world's sake, for the sake of every nation that would pour in upon
+it that which would disturb that development, we have a right to stand
+guard over it.'"
+
+This was a long speech for dear grandmother, who is not given to
+speechifying, and I know the subject must have given her serious
+thought, or she would never have remembered it.
+
+"Is America being built up by a larger type of manhood, grandmother?" I
+asked.
+
+"Oh, my dear, I do not know, I do not know," returned grandmother.
+
+I stopped talking to grandmother, because she looked worried, but I
+could not stop _thinking_, I am both the Yellow Pearl, and the yellow
+peril! Why am I here? What were four hundred millions of us born into
+the world for? Is yellow badness any worse than white badness?
+
+
+
+
+_June 20th, 1----_
+
+
+What a heavenly time we are having, grandmother, Uncle Theodore, and
+myself, living our nice, quiet lives without distraction! Sometimes we
+have Professor Ballington in to dinner, then he drops in evenings quite
+often when he is not formally invited. Other old friends come too,
+enough to break the monotony.
+
+Chauffeur Graham was obliged to leave grandmother's employ some time
+ago; indeed he has never come back since we returned from Mexico. He
+says it is his last term in the Medical College, and he has to give all
+the time to his studies. It would be nicer if he were around. I do not
+seem to care about going out in the automobile now at all.--How is one
+to know whether this new chauffeur may not run the automobile into a
+telegraph pole, or something, and kill us all?
+
+
+
+
+_June 13th, 1----_
+
+
+Chauffeur Graham has graduated. He is now Doctor Graham. Isn't that
+lovely! Just like a story book! Uncle Theodore and I went up to see him
+take his degree. My! wasn't he fine looking! Tall, beautiful figure,
+and, as I said before, a handsome face. Uncle Theodore is quite
+interested in him, as well as grandmother.
+
+On the evening of the day on which he received his degree, he overtook
+me as I was walking through the park, and told me that he had noticed me
+in the audience.
+
+He says he is going to put in a year's practice in the hospital before
+going to China. I was glad to hear that; it would seem rather lonesome
+in this big America without him, I really believe.
+
+Poor Cousin Ned is standing behind a counter downtown, selling tacks and
+shingle nails. He had to give up his studies on account of his eyes--the
+one eye could not stand the strain. Unluckily about that time his father
+lost his money in some speculation, and there was nothing for it but
+poor Ned must go to work.
+
+
+
+
+_Another June._
+
+
+I have been so happy, and life has been so satisfactory that I have not
+written in my diary for many months. I believe it is only when one's
+heart is so sorrowful and distracted that it must overflow somewhere,
+that one pours it into a diary. I have so much to say now that I
+scarcely know where to begin.
+
+Well, to begin at the beginning, one night Uncle Theodore asked Doctor
+Graham to dinner, along with Professor Ballington, and another
+gentleman. After that Doctor Graham began to call quite frequently
+evenings--he seemed to enjoy grandmother's company so much, and I am
+sure she enjoyed his.
+
+Well--Oh, I never can tell how it all came about, but I have promised
+to go to China with Dr. Graham, to help him learn the Chinese language.
+It is an _awful_ language for a foreigner to learn, and I just could not
+bear the thought of the poor fellow having to wrestle with it alone.
+
+It was one evening we were alone in the drawing-room, grandmother having
+been unable to appear owing to a headache, that we came to the final
+arrangement.
+
+But suddenly I thought of something that was going to upset it all, I
+believed,--he didn't know who I was!
+
+"Oh!" I cried, "I cannot go with you--you will not want me--you do not
+know--that--I--am the Yellow Peril!"
+
+He smiled down at me, and raised my chin in the palm of his left
+hand--for he had not let me go from his right, although I had tried to
+get away--and said, "I expect to be very proud of my Yellow Pearl."
+
+Now I am receiving congratulations which are making me feel very happy
+and proud, with the exception of Professor Ballington's. I cannot help
+feeling sorry for that poor old bachelor. He came up to me and said:
+
+"My dear Miss Pearl, I had been vain enough to hope once that I might
+sometime call this pearl mine, but if I cannot do so, I do not know of
+any one that I would sooner see claim it than Doctor Graham. And so I
+say, God bless you! God bless you! You shall always have the love of an
+old bachelor. And in this world, obsessed with fever and noise, with the
+sham and superficial, may you always remain the genuine pearl you are."
+
+There were tears in his voice. Why must every rose have a thorn?
+
+We are going to China, Doctor Graham and I, my native land; the land of
+flashing poppy-blossoms, red azaleas, purple wistarias, blue larkspur,
+yellow jasmine, oleanders, begonias, and flowering bamboos--the Flowery
+Kingdom. Dr. Graham is going to establish a hospital, to set broken legs
+and bind up broken heads; and I am going to try and prevent any more of
+those little Chinese babies from being thrown out on the hillsides to
+die.
+
+Grandmother says if we go to China it ought to be to tell the
+Confucionists and Buddhists about the great Christ. But I believe if He
+went there Himself He would be mending broken legs, binding up broken
+heads and hearts, and saving the little babies from being thrown out on
+the hillsides to die. Dear grandmother is a standing proof to me that
+the Christ means much more to the world than China's Confucius or
+Buddha. One day when she was seated in her rocking-chair I threw my arm
+around her and told her so. The dear old lady never seemed to accept my
+words as a personal compliment at all, but began, as once before, to
+sing in a low, quavering voice:
+
+
+     "Let every kindred every tribe
+     On this terrestrial ball,
+     To Him all majesty ascribe,
+     And crown Him Lord of all."
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57473 ***