FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN
All the "Peck's Bad Boys" of the world are not confined to American
soil.
I found them all over the Far East; especially in China.
I was annexed by one of them who became a sort of a guide de luxe when
we were going through the ruined Palaces of the romantic regions of
Peking.
He annexed himself to us in somewhat the same fashion as a thistle or a
burr annexes itself to you as you walk through the field where thistles
are thick.
He was an acquired asset of questionable value. With him were a lot of
followers but it was plain to be seen that he was the leader of the
gang; which was, for all the world, like a typical street gang in an
American city.
Who could pass up that group of a dozen little rascals who followed us
through the ruins of the old Summer Palace? Who could resist their
imitations of everything one did? I sneezed and the little rascals
sneezed also. I counted one, two, three, four, as I adjusted my Graflex
for a picture and I heard a chorus of laughing "One, two, three, fours."
I yelled ahead to an American member of the party and said "Wait!" and a
dozen boys yelled "Wait!"
We fell in love with the dirty-faced rascals. They looked to be a
nuisance when we started and I wanted them driven back, but before we
were through they had become the most interesting part of the whole
trip. Sure enough we emptied our purses of pennies and some white money.
The little fellow who was in his bare feet and who said, with a real
touch of seven year old Chinese humor, "These are leather shoes that I
have on and they will last all my life," won our hearts. That was humor
with a vengeance.
This lad was happy. No wonder then that when one of the party passed him
an extra penny early in the morning he winked knowingly as one who had
been taken into the inner councils of affection.
And no wonder that he followed the man who gave him that penny to the
end of the morning, and no wonder when we told him through the
interpreter that we liked the boys because they were good boys; he said
in return, "Some boys would have followed you around, pulling your coats
and being rude and yelling at you."
The nonchalant way in which they admitted that they were good boys won
our hearts and we came back penniless.
Then who can forget the little rascals who smiled and winked back in the
midst of the dignified Lama ceremonies over at the Lama Temple, proving
that they were, after all, real human boys with a laugh and the spirit
of fun in their little souls in spite of their having to take part in
this dignified chanting service.
It was fun when the service was over to see them tumble out of the
Temple so fast that one boy fell and about six fell on top of him just
as American boys do pouring out of school. I even saw one lad whack
another one on the back of his little bald head and a scuffle ensued.
They laughed, fought, tumbled pell-mell, got up again grinning, winked
and laughed back at the good natured Americans for all the world like
American boys.
The Chinese have a distinct sense of humor and it is very much like that
which is found in our own America. Indeed the Chinese are like us in
many respects.
The Filipino enjoys a good joke but his humor is more cruel than is
American humor.
The Dyak of Borneo has a sense of play and fun that would not exactly
appeal to an American mind; although there are those who claim that
American football is a near kin to the delightful game of Head-hunting
indulged in by the Dyaks of Borneo.
The Dyaks have for centuries been known as the head-hunters of the Far
East. They, in common with the Igorotes of the Philippines, have had the
playful custom of going out when the mood took them and bringing in a
few heads just as our Indians used to get scalps. When a Dyak youth
wanted to marry a nice young Dyak girl to whom he had taken a fancy (and
I can assure the reader that some of them are as beautiful as Rodin's
bronze statues), he didn't even dare mention his desire for that young
bronze beauty until he had brought in five or six heads. After that he
had some standing in the lady's sight. Without the heads he had no more
chance of winning either the girl herself or her pa or ma or any of the
Dyak family than the proverbial snowball has of getting through Borneo
without melting. It just simply couldn't be done according to Dyak
etiquette.
Head-hunting was a game between tribes also. When two tribes of Dyaks
felt a playful mood coming on, they would challenge each other to a
head-hunting game. The game would last for a week or so and the tribe
that took the most heads won. It was nothing like "Tag you're it." If
so, some of the skulls that I have seen at Dyak Compounds would not be
grinning so hideously these days as they ornament the poles of certain
vain and proud Dyak hunters.
The Battaks of Sumatra also have a playful custom of getting rid of
their old men. When a man gets so old that they think it is about time
for him to tell his last tale, they put him up a Cocoanut tree. Then all
of the young bucks of the village get together and try to shake him
down. If he is too feeble to hold on, and comes down, that is a sign of
heaven that his days are through and they cook him and eat him.
* * * * *
The Japanese claim to have a great sense of humor. Japanese students
speaking in America, insist that this is true. But travelers in Japan do
not find it so. Indeed if Japan had a sense of humor, it would keep her
out of many an international tangle. She does not know how to laugh. Her
sense of dignity is so exaggerated that she does not know the fine art
of smiling and laughing at herself.
"What does Japan most need to learn?" a student asked me.
"To laugh," I replied.
"I think that you are right! Your Lincoln knew how to laugh!" was his
response as he went off thoughtfully.
I was advertised to speak in a northern college in Japan. The Dean of
the school wanted to advertise me so that the students would all come
out to hear me. This is the way he did it:
"Dr. Stidger is a college student who played with the foot-ball
in America. He is a man with the bigness of the head! He
reaches the six feet tall; the four feet around; has an arm
like an ox and a head like a board!"
I was not certain as to just what he meant by many of those references,
but I was assured that they were intended to be highly complimentary to
me. I am not yet sure of that but I had a good laugh just the same.
The story is told of a ruthless American humorist Hotel-keeper in
Singapore who was entertaining a group of Japanese Officers from the
Japanese Navy. This American had no love for Japan. He also knew of
their lack of humor; so when the Japanese Captain arrived at the hotel
the American Manager made quite an extended speech of welcome, as his
American friends listened, greatly amused.
He said in part: "The hotel is yours! During your stay the entire force
of servants is at your disposal. If there is anything that you want that
you do not see, please ask for it."
[Illustration: OLD BROMO VOLCANO, JAVA.
"The way it effervesces Bromo is a fitting name," said the author when
he saw it in action.]
[Illustration: A SIDE VIEW OF BEAUTIFUL BOROBOEDOER IN JAVA.
Said by travelers to make the Pyramids look like child's play as a
tremendous piece of construction; and as a work of art to have no rival
in the whole world.]
[Illustration: NAKED AND OTHERWISE.
This curious conglomeration of Mongrel children watching the
photographer in Borneo where Dyaks, Chinese, Malay and others mix
indiscriminately.]
[Illustration: A DOG MARKET AMONG THE IGGOROTEES OF THE PHILIPPINES.]
The Japanese Captain bowed continuously and smiled; sucking in his
breath with a characteristic national custom; the same sound they made
as they eat fried eggs in a Japanese dining car; a sound similar to the
old-fashioned but now obsolete method of drinking coffee from a saucer.
"There is just one request however that we will have to make of you,
while you are here with us in the hotel," continued the American hotel
manager.
"And what is that may I ask?" inquired the Japanese Captain, still
bowing and sucking in air through his teeth.
"That you do not climb around in the trees!"
The Japanese officers did not see the joke and did not even smile but
the Americans in the Far East have laughed over it for years.
Which reminds one of the night on the Sambas River when a hundred little
monkeys were silhouetted against a crimson sunset.
Red, brown, yellow, golden, blue orchids flashed in the sunlight; and
flowers of every hue under God's blue skies made brilliant the river
banks. At times the ship went so close that I could reach out and grab a
limb of a tree, much to the indignation of the monkeys who chattered at
me as if I had stolen something. Now and then a big lazy alligator slid
into the water from the muddy banks as the wave-wash from our propeller
frightened him.
Coming back down the Sambas River, along its winding, beautiful way we
sat one evening and watched a crimson sunset from the deck of the ship.
At one point in the river there was a row of dead, bare trees. There
were no leaves on the branches--only monkeys: big red monkeys, which
they call "Beroks," and little gray fellows, which they call "Wahwahs."
These monkeys were strikingly silhouetted against the crimson sunset in
strange tropical fashion. From the tips of those dead trees down to the
lowest branches dozens of monkeys stood like sentinels, or romped like
children, or chattered like magpies. Their long curling tails
silhouetted below the branches against the light of evening.
* * * * *
Most Americans who go in and out of Japan get disgusted with the
regulations that policemen impose upon them.
This is especially true of those Americans living in China who are
compelled, for business reasons, to go in and out of Japan, for at every
trip they are required to answer the same list of questions. I traveled
from Korea into Japan with the Military Attaché of the Spanish Legation.
When we landed a Japanese officer who had known him for many years
insisted upon his answering the usual questions.
"I've been in this country for ten years and yet I never go out or in
that they do not compel me to go through the same foolish police
regulations which they have copied from Germany and haven't sense
enough to give up!" he said indignantly.
I also traveled with a party in which there was a Methodist Bishop's
wife. This Bishop's wife absolutely refused to give the Japanese
policeman her age. Not that she had any reason to be ashamed of her age.
In fact she could easily have passed for twenty years younger than she
probably was, but she just had the average American woman's spunk and
refused to give it.
For a few minutes it looked as if diplomatic relations between Japan and
America might be seriously cracked, if not broken; for the Japanese
officer had no sense of humor. That is one of the chief defects of the
Japanese police and military system. It has no sense of humor. It takes
itself too seriously. It does not know how to laugh.
To the eight or ten Americans in the party the whole matter was a huge
joke and we admired the spunk of the Bishop's wife, but the poor
Japanese police officer was facing what he thought was an international
problem.
Need it be said that the whole matter was finally settled to the entire
satisfaction; not of the Japanese officer, but to the entire
satisfaction of the Bishop's wife.
* * * * *
A friend of mine who happens to be in business in the Orient got so
tried of being interviewed, trailed, and made to answer innumerable
questions about his mother, grandmother, etc., that one day on landing
in Yokohama, in a spirit of fun, he answered the officer's questions in
this manner:
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-six."
"Have you a family?"
"Yes."
"How many children?"
"Three."
"How old are they?"
"One is thirty-eight, one forty, and one forty-five."
"What is your occupation?"
"Commander-in-Chief of the Greenland Navy."
"What are you doing in Japan?"
"Getting a cargo of ice to take back to Greenland."
After satisfying his appetite for information, the Japanese police
officer departed to make his reports, while the young American went to
his hotel with a grin all over his face.
While he was eating his dinner that evening suddenly the Japanese
officer appeared in the dining room with a big smile on his face and
walked over to where the American sat with a group of friends.
As he approached the American's table he said with a grin, "You
American! I know! You American!"
"How did you guess it, my friend?"
"You make me one tam fool!" he said holding out the report.
* * * * *
Some of the most laughable things that one sees in the Orient are the
Japanese signs translated into English by some Japanese merchant who has
picked up a dash of English here and there.
One such sign which caused a lot of amusement was that of a tailor who
was trying to cater to American Tourist trade. He had, evidently, also
had some contact with the spiritual phraseology of the missionaries. He
had painted on a big sign:
"BUY OUR PANCE!
THEY FIT YOU BETTER AND
THEY WARM YOUR LEGS LIKE THE
LOVE OF GOD!"
Perhaps the most exhilaratingly humorous thing that the Japanese have
perpetrated on the Koreans was a list of advices printed and posted all
over Korea by the Police Department as to the regulation of Fords:
RULES!
1. At the rise of hand of policeman, stop rapidly. Do not pass
him by or otherwise disrespect him.
2. When a passenger of the foot hove in sight, tootle the horn
trumpet to him melodiously at first. If he still obstacles your
passage, tootle him with vigor and express by word of the mouth
the warning, "hi, hi."
3. Beware of the wandering horse that he shall not take fright
as you pass him. Do not explode the exhaust box at him. Go
soothingly by, or stop by the roadside till he gently pass
away.
4. Give big space to the festive dog that make sport in the
roadway. Avoid entanglement of dog with your wheel spokes.
5. Go soothingly on the grease-mud, as there lurk the
skid-demon. Press the brake of the foot as you roll around the
corners to save the collapse and tie-up.
6. Number of people you put in the Ford: You put two in the
front house and three in the back house.
There were other rules but this list will be sufficient as a Flash-light
of Fun to give some idea of the ridiculous way in which the average
Japanese twists the ideas and phraseology of English in the
translations.
I saw one great sign which brought a smile. It was up on the island of
Hokkaido. It had printed in large English letters:
"GET YOUR MOTHER'S MILK HERE!"
Below that sentence there was a picture of a cow which looked as much
like a combination of an Elephant and a Camel as anything I know. The
artist must have been a wonder. Attached to each of the cow's udders
were long lines of hose that ran for about ten feet across a big
bill-board. At the end of each line of hose was a nipple, like our
American baby-nipples. At the end of each nipple there was a man-sized
baby pulling away at the nipple. It was one of the funniest advertising
signs I ever saw. I watched several Americans look up at it and every
one of them laughed aloud. And the funny thing about it was that it was
intended to be a serious advertising sign.
* * * * *
At a banquet given in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo one of the most
side-splitting incidents happened unintentionally that ever happened at
any banquet anywhere.
One of the sons of a great Japanese business man was speaking. The
banquet was in honor of a well-known College President from America who
had come to take up work in the Orient. This banquet was to welcome him
officially to Japan.
One of the speakers, sitting beside Mr. Uchida, the Foreign Minister,
had been a student in America where this man was formerly the college
president and he was trying to make the crowd see how happy he was to
welcome the president to Japan. He did it in the following language as
nearly as I can remember it:
"I feel like a cartoon I see in your peculiar paper--what you call
him--_Puck_? _Judge_? No--he bin in that peculiar paper, _Life_? That
was he.
"This picture; he shows two dogs talking to each other.
"One dog he a great, what you call him--Coolie? Pug? Yes, he was a
Scottish Coolie. The other was a little wee dog; a Pugnacious Dog, I
think you call him.
"The little dog he have his tail all done up in the bandages.
"The big dog say, 'Little dog, for why you have your tail all bandaged
up like that? You have an accident?'
"'No,' say the little dog, 'but my master, he just come home from
France, and I am so glad to see him I bin wagging my tail all day long
until it get broke and I have to have him wrapped up like this.'"
Then the speaker turned dramatically--with the deepest sense of
seriousness; without a trace of a smile on his face, without a glimmer
of consciousness of the fact that the Americans at that banquet were
biting their teeth to keep from bursting into laughter; and with a grand
flourish, pointed to the American dignitary and said, "I feel just like
that little dog. I so glad to see Dr. ---- come to Japan that I have
been wagging my tail all day long."
But he got no further. The American crowd; full-dressed, and full of
dignity as it was; exploded. That speech was too much, even for the sake
of international courtesy, to expect such a crowd to hold in.
Fortunately most of the educated Japanese there saw the joke and joined
in the laugh.
* * * * *
We had a funny experience in a dining car on a Japanese train coming
from northern Japan down to Tokyo one evening.
A well-dressed Japanese in a rich Kimono sat drinking heavily at a table
a few feet from us.
Suddenly he looked up and yelled "Silence!" looking directly at us.
It was so sudden and so funny that I laughed. This made the Japanese
gentleman angry.
Then he let forth a more extended English sentence. Later we figured
that it was the only sentence in English that he knew, and that he had
learned that sentence by sitting at the feet of some stern, English
teacher who had occasion to reiterate that sentence frequently.
This drunken Japanese looked at me sternly for laughing and said,
"Silence! All gentlemen must be silent!"
This was too much for my sense of humor and I laughed again.
"Silence! All gentlemen must be silent!" he yelled a third time.
"We must get away from him; or we'll get into trouble. I can't keep from
laughing when he repeats that," I said to Dr. Goucher.
We all moved back to another table, but Dr. Goucher sat by himself at a
little table. This moving, insulted the drunken Japanese and he came
back to where Dr. Goucher sat and leered into his face yelling once
again, "All gentlemen must be silent!"
At this one of the party jumped to the side of Dr. Goucher and took the
Japanese by the shoulder and turned him around and said, "Go! Sit down,
fool!"
The train was whirling through the night. There were mutterings and
imprecations among the Japanese and we thought that they were directed
toward us; but a missionary who could understand the language, said that
the whole crowd of Japanese was severely reprimanding the drunken
Japanese for insulting foreigners. They told him in Japanese phrases
that he ought to be ashamed of insulting foreigners in his own country.
About five minutes after this he suddenly left his seat, came staggering
down the aisle of the car with a plate full of big red apples and
offered an apple to each one of us as a peace offering.
We got to calling him, in our party "Old Mr. 'All gentlemen must be
silent!'" and he came to be a real character in our fun.
But one morning a month later as we were all boarding a train in Fusan,
Korea, bound for Seoul, who should be sitting in the car but "Old Mr.
'All gentlemen must be silent.'"
This time he was in American clothes. We had a Japanese friend with us.
We told this friend about the incident on the train in northern Japan
and asked him who the man was.
"Why that is a member of the House of Lords and he is going up to Korea
representing the Diet to make a report on the Korean outrages," we were
told.
Another month passed and I was coming back from Seoul, Korea, to Tokio,
Japan, when I suddenly ran into our old friend "All gentlemen must be
silent!" This time he was drunk again, and sitting in a Japanese dining
car with the same Kimono on that he had worn the first time we saw him.
He saw me enter the car.
I tried to avoid him, but he was not to let this opportunity for
international courtesy go by unnoticed and unimproved. So, much to my
delight and surprise, he arose, and made a low bow.
I bowed back. He made another bow until his nose almost touched the car.
I made a return bow. He made a third one. I followed suit. He made a
fourth. I made a fourth, although I was beginning to feel dizzy and my
insides were beginning to complain.
I wondered when the thing would stop. I thought of a hundred fat men I
had seen on a Gymnasium floor trying to do the same thing and touch the
floor with their hands. I knew that there was a limit to my endurance in
a test of this kind. He bowed five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times,
and I bowed back. I could see things whirling around me.
"Blame it, why doesn't he stop some time!" I said to myself.
I was desperate. Then suddenly I looked at him and he looked at me and
he said, with great dignity, "All gentlemen must be silent!" and sat
down, with his friends and his wines.
I don't know whether he realized how funny it was or not. I don't know
whether he even knew what he was saying in his drunken condition, but I
do know that when I got out of that car into the vestibule I had the
laugh of my life. A Japanese woman came by, smiled at me and I am sure
said to herself:
"Ah, these Americans they are all crazy!"
* * * * *
The last Flash-light of Fun is a picture from the Philippines.
I have spoken in the chapter on "Flash-lights of Faith" of the trip to
the Negrito tribe, but in that chapter I did not speak of the desperate
adventure of the trip back down the jungle trail to civilization after
the experience with the old man.
For the second time on that memorable day I dropped in my tracks with a
sunstroke. My legs refused to move. My muscles were congested with waste
matter and evidently my brain was also. When I returned to consciousness
I saw lying beside me Mr. Huddleston, an old missionary who had been in
the Philippines for many years. Across from, him was a naked Negrito who
was acting as our guide.
I looked up in a tree above us and saw what I thought was a group of
monkeys.
"Look at the monkeys!" I said to the missionary.
"There are no monkeys in that tree!" he said.
That made me angry. My mind was affected by the sun to such an extent
that I had an insane desire to grab the Bolo of the Negrito guide out of
his belt and run it through the missionary. I made a determined mental
effort to do so, but my arm would not work. I strove as one strives in a
dream when he is trying to run away from some imagined danger and his
feet are tied down. If I could have gotten my hands on that bolo I
would have run it through the missionary without a minute's hesitation.
But my mind was detracted from this thought by two large elephants which
I suddenly saw running down the path on which we were lying. I yelled
aloud!
"The elephants! They will trample us man! Look! There they come!" I
cried pointing up the trail on which we were lying.
"Why you're plumb crazy man! You've missed too many boats! That sun's
got you! There are no elephants on this trail!"
"But I know elephants when I see them!" I cried and tried to roll out of
the trail but again found it impossible to make my brain and my muscles
coordinate. It was a terrible moment to me.
"My God man! Are you crazy! I know elephants when I see them. They're
right on us now! Help me out of here! I can't move!"
"I tell you there are no elephants and there are no monkeys in these
islands. I've been here twenty years or more!"
"But I know elephants when I see them!"
But just at that moment a much greater danger confronted us, for I saw
three tigers leap out of the jungle and start after the two elephants;
right down the trail toward us. Then I knew that we were as good as
dead.
I yelled: "Tigers! Tigers! They are running after the elephants! They
are on top of us!"
The fool of a missionary laughed aloud, as he lay on the trail and said,
"Plumb crazy! Plumb crazy! Sun's got him! Sun's got him!"
"Sun's got who, fool? The elephants and tigers will kill us in about a
minute!"
But just then something happened which upset my calculations and made me
have a feeling that--after all--perhaps the old missionary was
right--for suddenly those two elephants; being too closely pursued by
the tigers; nonchalantly flew into the air like two great birds, and
lighted in the tree over our heads where I thought the monkeys were. If
those elephants hadn't started to fly; I should still be arguing with
the missionary; but as it turned out; I shut my fool mouth and decided
that the missionary was right and that I had "Missed too many boats."