I heard a captain of a steamer address his man-servant thus, when
sending him from the cabin to his stateroom on deck for a box of
writing paper: “Boy, you go topside my room. You see two piecee box
belong all same, (look just alike.) One piecee have pens; my no wanchee
that. Other piecee have paper. My wanchee. You makee pay my, (bring
that to me.) Savez? (do you understand?”) The waiter nodded assent, and
brought the right box.
A lady was giving a dinner party to several gentleman and ladies. She
told her butler to “set the table for sixteen piecee man.”
A sampan man whom our captain wished to hire, was asked by him how many
there were to row his sampan. He replied, “Seven piecee man,” meaning,
as it proved, himself, several sons, most of them young boys, and the
mother who rowed with her infant tied round her neck; making seven
hands, not counting the babe.
A gentleman who was joking with one of his sedan bearers, talking
nonsense, was answered, “Massa C., you belong too much culio, (too
funny.) My never have see one man all same culio.”
The American Eagle, that fierce gray bird with a bending beak, is known
even in China by that celebrated feature. A Chinese servant told his
master that while he was out a gentleman called. On being asked who it
was, the servant said: “My no savee; but my can speakee what fashion he
makee look see;” (what his appearance was.) “He belong one smallee man;
no too muchee stout; had got one nose all same that Melican chickey.”
The mysteries of human speech are impressively illustrated in the ease
with which the children of foreign extraction, brought up from infancy
in China, learn and skilfully use the slight tones and the other
niceties of the language. An ear accustomed to music of course is a
great help in learning this language; but when a person is in the least
dull of hearing, it is not easy to distinguish between some of the
words, and especially the intonations, which in the Cantonese dialect,
for example, so largely determine the meaning. One thought impressed me
in thinking of the language as a barrier against the rest of the world:
If the Chinese nature is naturally upright, and if sin is owing wholly
to contamination by intercourse with depraved people, how happens it
that China does not present us with a people of saints? having been
kept by their language, as they have been, from mixing with men. That
language has done more than their great wall in separating them from
the rest of mankind.