{056}
_A forgotten tragedy--The troops--“Lest We Forget”--The fortified
wall--“No low-class Chinese”--The last thing in the way of insults--A
respecter of power--Racing stables--Pekin s'amuse--Chinese gentleman
on a waltz--Musical comedy--The French of the Far East--Chances of an
outbreak--No wounded._
|At Canton a few years since,” wrote Sir George Staunton, recording the
visit of the first British Ambassador to the Emperor of China in 1798,
“an accident happened which had well-nigh put a stop to our foreign
trade. Evils of every kind fraught with this tendency are to be
apprehended, and ought to be particularly guarded against, especially by
a commercial nation. On some day by rejoicing in firing the guns of
one of those vessels which navigates between the British settlements in
India and Canton, but not in the employment of the East India Company,
two Chinese, in a boat lying near the vessel, were accidentally killed
by the gunner. The crime of murder is never pardoned in China. The
Viceroy of the Province, fired with indignation at the supposed
atrocity, demanded the perpetrator of the deed, or the person of him who
ordered it. The event was stated in remonstrance to be purely
accidental but the Viceroy, supposing it to have been done from a wicked
disposition, still persisted in his {057}demand, and to assure himself
of that object, he seized one of the principal supercargoes. The other
factories being alarmed, united themselves with the English as in
a common cause, and seemed disposed to resist the intentions of the
Viceroy who on his part arranged his troops on the banks of the river
to force a compliance. It was at last deemed expedient on principles of
policy, to give up the gunner with scarce a glimmering of hope that his
life would be spared.”
Later on in a casual footnote he records that their worst fears had been
realised, and the unfortunate gunner, given up, let us hope, not so
much from motives of policy as to save the supercargo, had been done to
death.
That incident, to my mind, explains the Legation Quarter of Peking
to-day. Of course the Legation, in its present form, dates only from
the Boxer rising, but the germ of it was there when the merchants of the
assembled nations felt themselves compelled to sacrifice the careless
gunner “from motives of policy.” One hundred and twenty years ago the
Western nations were only a stage removed from the barbaric civilisation
the Chinese had reached two or three thousand years before, but still
they were moving onward, and they felt they must combine if they would
trade with this rich land, and yet protect their subjects and their
goods. And so they did combine, and there arose that curious state of
affairs between the foreigners and the people of the land that has held
for many years, that holds in no other land, and that has crystallised
in the Legation Quarter of Peking.
Suppose in London all the great nations of the {058}earth took a strip
of the town, extending say from Marble Arch to Hyde Park Corner, and
from Park Lane to Bond Street, held it and fortified it heavily,
barring out the inhabitants, not wholly, but by certain regulations that
prevented them having the upper hand. The thing is unthinkable, yet that
is exactly what has happened in Peking. Against the Tartar wall, from
the Chien Men to the Ha Ta Men, the nations have taken a parallelogram
of ground all but a mile square, they have heavily fortified it, on
three sides they have cleared a broad glacis on which no houses may
be built, and they have there a body of troops with which they could
overawe if not hold all the town.
[Illustration: 0102]
No man knows exactly how many men the Japanese have, but supposing they
are on a par with the other nations, there are at least two thousand
five hundred men armed to the teeth and kept at the highest pitch of
perfection in the Legation Quarter. Living there is like living in an
armed camp. You cannot go in or out without passing forts or guns,
in the streets you meet ammunition wagons, baggage wagons, Red Cross
wagons, and at every turn are soldiers, soldiers of all the European
nations that have any standing at all, soldiers from America, soldiers
from Japan; they are doing sentry-go at the various Legations, they
are drilling, they are marching, they are shooting all day long. In one
corner of the British Legation they keep untouched a piece of the old
shot-torn wall of 1900 and painted on it, in big black letters, is the
legend, “Lest We Forget,” a reminder always, if the nations needed a
reminder, of the days of 1900, of the terrible days that may be repeated
any time this {059}peace-loving nation drifts into an anti-foreign
outbreak. I was going to write it is almost insulting; but it is
insulting, and this armed Legation Quarter must be in truth cruelly
galling to the better-class, educated Chinese. They must long to oust
these arrogant men from the West and their neighbour from the East, who
thus lord it over them in the very heart of their own city. Even the
wall, the great Tartar wall built first by Kublai Khan, and finished by
the Ming conquerors, comes under foreign domination from the Ha Ta Men
to the Chien Men. The watch-tower over the Ha Ta Men is still in the
hands of the Chinese, and like most things Chinese is all out of repair.
The red lacquer is cracked, the gold is faded, the grass grows on the
tiled roofs, in the winter dried-up and faded, in the summer lush and
green, and for all the Chinese soldiers hold it, it is desolate and a
thing of the past But a hundred yards or so to the west, is the German
post. Always are armed men there with the eagle on their helmets, always
an armed sentry marches up and down, keeping watch and ward. No great
need for them to hold the Ha Ta Men, their guns dominate it, and below
in the town the French hold carefully the fortified eastern side of
the Legation Quarter. The centre of that strip of wall, held by the
Japanese, is marked by an iron fence called, I am told, a “traverse.”
There is a gate in it, and across the path to that gate, so that it may
not be so easily got through, is built up a little wall of brick the
height of a man. In the summertime the grass grows on it green and
fresh, and all the iron bars of that fence and gate are wreathed
in morning glory. The Japanese are not so much in evidence as the
{060}efficient Germans or the smart Americans, but I am told they are
more than keen, and would gladly and effectually hold the whole wall
would the other nations allow them. At the Chien Men, the western end
of the mile-long strip of wall are the Americans, tall, lean, smart,
capable men in khaki, with slouch hats turned up at the sides,
clean-shaven faces and the sound in their voices that makes of their
English another tongue. In the troubles of 1912, when fires were
breaking out all over the city, and every foreigner fled for safety
to his Legation, Uncle Sam, guarding the western end of the wall
overlooking those Legations, seized the beautiful new watch-tower on the
Chien Men, his soldiers established themselves there, and they hold it
still. It dominates their Legation they say with reason, for their own
safety they must hold it, and the Chinese acquiesce, not because they
like it, but because they must. Periodically representations come in,
all is quiet now, the Americans may as well give up the main gate, or
rather watch-tower, for they do not hold the main gate, only the tower
that overlooks it. But the answer is always the same, it overlooks their
Legation, they must hold it. They have a wireless telegraph post there
and a block-house, and the regulations for the sentry, couched in cold,
calm, official language, are an insult to the friendly nation that gives
them hospitality, or would be so, if that nation had not shown itself
incapable of controlling the passions of its own aroused people. The
sentry clad in khaki in summer, in blue in winter, marching up and down
by the watch-tower, magnificent in its gorgeous Eastern decorations
of blue, and green, and red, and barbaric gold, must report at once
anything {061}unusual taking place in the gate below, any large
gathering of Chinese, any unusual commotion, but above all upon that
wall, that wall that belongs to them and is the wall of their capital
city, he must not allow, without a permit, any Chinese. The wording of
the order runs, “No low-class Chinese,” but the definition of low class
is left to the discretion of the soldier, and he is not likely to risk
a reproof from those in authority over him by being too lax. With my
own eyes have I seen a Chinese, well-dressed in European clothes, turned
back by the sentry from the ramp when he would have walked upon the
wall. He looked surprised, he was with European friends, the order
could not apply to him, but the sentry was firm. He had his orders, “No
Chinese,” and without a special permit he must see them carried out. It
seemed cruel, and unnecessarily humiliating, but on the central ramp
are still the places where the Americans, seeking some material for a
barricade, fighting to save themselves from a ghastly death, tore
out the bricks from the side of the great wall. Other nations beside
Britain, write in their actions, if not on their walls: “Lest We
Forget!” The lower-class Chinese probably do not mind the prohibition.
It is considered bad manners for a Chinaman to walk upon the wall,
because he thereby overlooks the private houses below, but in these days
of the New Republic possibly good manners are not so much considered as
formerly, and since the Chinese have never been allowed upon the wall
they probably do not realise that thirteen miles of it are free to them,
if they care to go there. Some few I know do, because I have met there
men gathering the dried vegetation for fuel, and I have {062}seen one or
two beggars, long-haired, filthy men in the frowsiest of rags, but the
first have probably got permission from the soldiers, and the latter,
seeing foreigners there, have most likely been tempted by the hope of
what to them is a lavish dole, and, finding no harm happen, have come
again. I may be wrong, of course, but I hardly think death can have much
terror for the Chinese beggar, life must hold so very little for him.
Those who, having dared their own portion of the wall with impunity,
find the foreign mile still a forbidden place to them, probably put it
in the same category as the Forbidden City, and never realise that it
is the outlander, the outer barbarian, and not their own Government that
shuts them off.
But the holding of that wall by an armed force, that dominates both the
Chinese and the Tartar Cities, seems to me the very greatest thing
in the way of insults. Some day when the Chinese are a united nation,
powerful as they ought to be, they will awake to that insult, and
the first thing they will do will be to clear their wall from foreign
interference. Meanwhile, as I sit in a courtyard of a temple of the
Western Hills, drinking in the sparkling air of September, looking
at the lovely blue sky peeping through the dark green branches of the
temple pines, as I sit and write this book, I think gratefully of that
loose-limbed, lissom, athletic, young American soldier who, with rifle
across his shoulder, is doing sentry-go upon the wall. The German is
there too, the stiff, well-drilled, military German, but my heart goes
out to the man who is nearer akin, and whose speech is not unlike that
of the people of my own land. It seems to me I am {063}safe here, alone
among the Chinese, because of those soldiers. There are those who will
say I am wrong, that the Chinese are always courteous, and that they
like me because of the money I put into their pockets. And that is true
enough too. I have found the very rickshaw coolie a finished, courteous
gentleman in his manner towards me, and I have received many little acts
of kindness which could but come from a kindly heart, with no thought of
profit behind it; but still, deep down at the bottom of my heart, I know
that the Chinese, more than any man on earth perhaps, respects power,
and the Legation Quarter, and the holding of that wall, are an outward
manifestation of power that reaches far and keeps me safe here in
my mountain temple. The gods here by my side are dead, who fears or
respects the gods, Spanish chestnuts are stored beside their altars, but
the foreign soldiers on the wall are a fact there is no getting over.
It impresses those in authority, and the fiat goes forth, permeating
through all classes, “The foreigner is not to be touched under any
circumstances whatever.”
On this wall come the foreign community to exercise and promenade in
the cool of the evening in summer, or to enjoy the sunshine at midday
in winter, and here all the soldiers and sailors of the various
nationalities foregather. There is no other place in all Peking where
one can walk with comfort, for the Chinese as a nation, have no idea of
the joy of exercise. They have put it out of the power of their women
to move save with difficulty, and that a man should take any pleasure in
violent exercise seems to them absurd. To walk when he {064}can ride in
a rickshaw, or mount a donkey, would argue something wrong in his mental
outlook, so it happens that, in all the great city, there are only the
streets of the Legation Quarter and the wall where walking exercise
can be indulged in. The streets of the Quarter are the streets of an
uninteresting, commonplace town, but the wall overlooking the two cities
is quite another matter. Here the part of the foreign community that
does not ride takes its exercise, and foregathers with its kind.
[Illustration: 0110]
[Illustration: 0111]
The foreign quarter is not always thinking of the dangers it is guarding
against. That it thinks also a great deal of its amusement, goes without
saying. I have observed that this is a special characteristic of the
Briton abroad. At home the middle-class man--or woman--is chary of
pleasure, taking it as if it were something he had hardly a right
to; but abroad he seizes eagerly the smallest opportunity for amusing
himself, demanding amusement as something that hardly compensates him
for his exile from his native land. So it has come that I, a looker-on,
with less strong bonds than those from the Old Country binding me to my
father's land, fancy that these exiles have in the end a far better time
than the men of the same class who stay at home. I am apt to have no
pity for them whatever.
One thing is certain, people keep horses here in Peking who could not
dream of such a luxury in England. True, they are only ponies fourteen
hands high, but a great deal of fun can be got out of pony racing. And
racing-stables are a feature of the Quarter. Not that they are in the
Quarter. {065}On the plain, about five miles to the west of the city,
lies the little race-course, and dotted about within easy distance of
this excellent training-ground are the various training-stables for the
ponies. The China pony comes from Mongolia, where close watch and ward
is kept over him, and neither mares nor stallions are exported.
“If I could only get hold of a mare,” sighs the young racing man, but he
sighs in vain. Meanwhile he can indulge in the sport of kings cheaply.
“I've joined another fellow in a racing-stable,” said a man to me, soon
after my arrival in Peking, and I looked upon him with something of the
awe and respect one gives to great wealth. I had not thought he was so
well off. He saw my mistake and laughed.
“The preliminary expenses are only thirty pounds,” he went on, “and
I don't intend they shall be very heavy. We can have good sport at a
moderate cost.” Of course moderate cost is an elastic term, depending on
the purse of the speaker, but in this case I think it meant that men
of very ordinary means, poor exiles who would live in a six-roomed flat
with a couple of maidservants in England, might have a good time without
straining those means unduly.
A race-meeting in Peking has peculiarities all its own. Of course it
is only the men from the West who would think of a race-meeting. The
Chinese, except at the theatre, do not amuse themselves in crowds.
The Spring Meeting took place early in May, and the description of it
should come a little later in my book, but it seems to fall naturally
into {066}the story of the doings of the Legation Quarter. Arrangements
were made with the French railway running to Hankow to stop close to
the course, and put the race-going crowd down there. There was no other
means of getting there, except by riding; for driving in a country where
every inch of ground, save a narrow and rough track, is given over
to the needs of agriculture, is out of the question. That spring
race-meeting the day was ideal. There was the blue sky overhead, the
brilliant sunshine, a gentle breeze to temper it, the young kaoliang was
springing, lush and green, in the fields, and the ash-trees that shelter
the race-course were one delicate tender green. A delicious day. Could
the heart of man desire more? Apparently the foreign residents of Peking
did not desire more, for they turned out, men, women, and children. And
then I saw what a handful of people are these foreigners who live in
the capital of China and endeavour to direct her destinies, for save and
except the missionary element, most of the other foreigners were there,
from his Britannic Majesty's representative to the last little boy who
had joined a hong as junior clerk at a hundred dollars a month, and
felt that the cares of Empire were on his shoulders. They were mostly
British, of course, the foreign trade of China--long may it be so--is
mostly in British hands; and there were representatives of every other
great nation, the Ministers of France, Germany, Russia, of Italy,
Austria, Spain, Belgium, Holland, and Japan, everyone but America, for
America was busy recognising the Chinese Republic, and the other nations
were smiling, and wondering why the nation that prides {067}itself on
being the champion of freedom for the people, was being the first to
recognise what is, virtually, a despotic rule.
The little course, a mile round, is marked out with leafy ash-trees, the
grand-stand was charming with lilac bloom purple and white, and
banksia roses, fragrant as tender memories. It was shaded by
p'engs--mats--raised high on scaffolding, so that pleasant shade might
not interfere with the cool breeze, and here were the women of the
community, the women of well-to-do people, gay in dainty toilets from
London and Paris; the men were in light summer suits, helmets and straw
hats, for summer was almost upon us. Tiffin, the luncheon of the East,
was set in the rooms behind, decorated with miniature flags of all
nations, made in Japan, and wreathed with artificial flowers, though
there was a wealth of natural blossom around the stand outside. There
is a steward's room and the weighing-room in one tiny building with a
curved roof of artistic Chinese design, and all the ponies are walked
about and saddled and mounted where every interested spectator can see
them. And every spectator on that sunny May day was interested, for
the horses, the sturdy Chinese ponies, were, and always are, owned and
ridden by the men of the company, men whom everybody knows intimately.
For these Peking race-meetings are only amateur, and though,
occasionally, a special pony may change hands at two thousand
dollars--two hundred pounds--the majority are bought and sold under two
hundred dollars--twenty pounds--and yet their owners have much joy and
pride in them.
Surely it is unique, a race-meeting where all the {068}civilised nations
of the earth meet and fraternise in simple, friendly fashion, taking a
common pleasure in small things.
“They're off!” Mostly the exclamation was in English, but a
Russian-owned horse, ridden by a Cossack rider, won one race, and was
led proudly up to the weighing-room by a fair lady of his own people,
and was cordially applauded, for the winner was always applauded, no
matter what his nationality.
The horses, coming out to parade, were each led by their own mafoo,
who managed to look horsey in spite of a shaven head, long queue, and
pronounced Chinese features. Up and down they led the ponies, up and
down, and when at last the precious charges must be resigned, a score of
them squatted down just where they could get the best view of the
race, and doubtless each man put up a little prayer to the god he most
affected, that the pony that carried his money might come in first.
When we were not watching the saddling, or the parade, or the race,
or the weighing-in, we were listening to a Chinese band, Sir Robert
Bredon's band, with a Chinese conductor, playing selections from all the
modern Western music. It might have been--where in the world might it
not have been? Nowhere but in Peking in the heart of China surely, for
there, just beyond the limit of the course, were long strings of camels
bound for coal to the Western Hills, marching steadily, solemnly,
tirelessly, as they marched in the days of Marco Polo, and a thousand
years before the days of Marco Polo, and all round the course, crowding
every point of vantage were a large concourse of Chinese, people {069}of
the working and middle classes, clad mostly in blue, the women with
bound feet from the farms near by, the men and the children very likely
from further afield, but all unchanging as the camels themselves,
eagerly watching the foreigners' sports. They are not allowed to come
into the enclosure, every mafoo and attendant wears a special badge, and
even Chinese of the better class may come only by special invitation
of some member. These interested folk, who have no friends among the
foreigners may not even go into the enclosure, where the “Tommies” and
bluejackets, men from England and America, France, Japan, and all the
countries of the earth crowded in the gay sunshine making high holiday.
Nevertheless the Orientals surrounded the course. They got upon the
mounds of earth that are at the back and looked from that vantage-point
not only at the races but at the foreign devils at their tiffin and
afternoon tea. Their own refreshment was provided by hawkers selling
cakes and sweetmeats, just outside the forbidden ground, and Peking
carts and donkeys waited round to take them back to their homes. There
were even beggars there, beggars with long, unkempt hair, wrapped in
a single garment of sackcloth, ragged, unwashed, unkempt, the typical
beggars of China, for no one knows better than they when money is being
lightly handled, and as the bright sunny day, the gorgeous spring day
of Northern China drew slowly to a close doubtless even they, whom every
man's hand was against, gathered in a few stray cash. I hope they did.
Such a very little makes so much difference in China.
The sun sank slowly to the west in the translucent {070}sky, the ponies
in the saddling paddock were walked slowly up and down in the long
shadows of the ash-trees, and the country was beautiful with the soft
regret of the dying day as we walked back through the fields of kaoliang
to the railway station, we, the handful of people who represented the
power and majesty of the Western world. The mighty walls of an older
civilisation frowned down upon the train--this thing of yesterday--the
last rays of the setting sun lighted up all the glory of the red and
gold of the Chien Men watch-tower and we were in the Legation Quarter
once more, with armed sentries at the gates, and the American soldier
upon the wall sounding the bugle call for the changing guard.
I come from a country where every little township considers a
race-course as necessary as a cemetery. I have been to many many
race-meetings, but this one in Peking, where the men of the land are so
barred out that no one of Chinese descent may belong to the Club or even
ride a race, stands out as unique. It has a place in my mind by itself.
It was so expressive of the attitude of the Powers who watch over
China. Peking, the Peking of the Legations had been amusing herself. The
National Assembly was in an uproar, the Premier was openly accused of
murder, the Loan was in anything but a satisfactory state, everyone
feared that the North and the South would be at each other's throats
before the month was out, the air was full of rumours of wars, but the
English-speaking community love racing, the other nations, from their
Ministers downwards, had fallen into line, and Peking, foreign Peking,
did itself well.
And I wondered, I wondered much what the {071}Chinese thought of it all.
It is very, very difficult, so men tell me who have lived in China long,
and speak the language well, to get at the bottom of the Chinese mind,
to know what they really do think of us. The Chinese gentleman is so
courteous that as far as possible he always expresses the opinion he
thinks you would like to hear, and the Chinese woman, even if she be of
the better classes, with very few exceptions is unlearned and ignorant
as a child, indeed she is worse than a child of the Western nations, for
the child is at least allowed to ask questions and learn, while all her
charm is supposed to depend upon her subservience and her ignorance.
As I stood on the race-course that day, and many a time as I sat in
the lounge of the Wagons Lits Hotel--the European hotel of the Legation
Quarter--where all tourists visiting Peking come, where the nations of
the world foregather, and East meets West as never before perhaps in the
world's history have they met, I have wondered very much indeed what the
East, the portly middle-aged Chinaman with flowing silken robes and
long queue thinks of us and our manners and customs. He was accompanied
perhaps by a friend, or perhaps by a lady in high collar and trousers
with a little son, the crown of the child's head shaven, and the
remaining hair done in a halo of little plaits tied up with string,
yellow, red, or blue, and he watched gravely either the dancing, or the
conversation, or the conjurer, or whatever other amusement the “Wagons
Lits” had for the time being set up. Again and again have I watched him,
but I could never even make a guess at what he thought. Probably it was
anything but complimentary.
[Illustration: 0119]
{072}“The men dressed for dinner,” said a Chinese once, describing an
evening he had spent among foreigners; “then the order was given and the
women stripped,” that is took off their wraps when the music began, only
everything is “ordered” in China, “and each man seized a woman in his
arms. He pushed her forward, he pulled her back,” graphic illustrations
were given, “he whirled round and round and she had no will of her own.
And it was all done to horrible music.”
Everything is in the point of view, and that is how, at least one
Chinese gentleman saw a waltz. I used to wonder what he said of the
musical comedy that from time to time is presented by a wandering
company in the dining-room of the Wagons Lits Hotel. They displayed
upon a tiny crowded stage, for the edification of Chinese and foreigners
alike, for the room was crowded with Chinese both of the old and of the
new order, such a picture of morals as Europeans take as a matter of
course. We know well enough that such scenes as are depicted in “The
Girl in the Taxi” are merely the figments of an exuberant imagination,
and are not the daily habits of any class either in London or Paris. But
what do the Chinese think? All things are necessary and good, I suppose,
but some are difficult to explain. Thirteen years ago the Boxer tragedy,
now the musical comedy full of indecencies scarcely veiled.
Truth to tell, it was a very interesting thing for a new-comer like me
to sit in that hotel watching the people, and listening to the various
opinions so freely given by all and sundry. From all parts of the world
people come there, tourists, soldiers, {073}sailors, business men,
philanthropists'--men who were working for the good of China, and men
who were ready to exploit her. And then the opinions as to the safety of
the Europeans in China that were expressed! Here, in the security of the
Legation Quarter, I collected those opinions as I wanted to go into the
interior, and I was by no means anxious to risk my life.
To arrive at any decision was very difficult. In the Treaty Ports there
may be some unanimity, but once outside it seemed that every man had his
own particular opinion of China and the Chinese, and all these opinions
differed widely.
“Safe,” said a man who had fought through the Boxer trouble; “safer far
than London. They had to pay then, and they won't forget, you can take
your oath of that.”
“Like living on a volcano,” said another. “No, I shall never forget the
Boxer trouble. That's the kind of thing that is graved on your mind with
hot irons. Do it again? Of course they'll do it again. A docile people,
I grant you, but they're very fiends when they're aroused. They're
emotional, you know, the French of the Far East, and when they let
themselves go------” He paused, and I realised that he had seen them let
themselves go, and no words could describe the horror of it. “Would I
let my wife and children live in one of the hu t'ungs of Peking? Would
I? How would they get away when the trouble commenced?”
The chances are they couldn't get away. The hu t'ungs of Peking are
narrow alley-ways running out from the main thoroughfares, and the
houses there are built, Chinese fashion, round courtyards {074}and
behind blank walls, hidden away in a nest of other buildings, and the
difficulty of getting out and back to the armed Legation Quarter, when a
mob were out bent on killing, would be enormous.
“A Debt Commission spells another anti-foreign outbreak, and we're
within an ace of a Debt Commission,” said another man thoughtfully;
“and if there is a row and things look like going against us, I keep one
cartridge in my revolver for myself.” It does not seem much when I write
it down, such things have I heard carelessly said many a time before,
but when I, a foreigner and a solitary woman, was contemplating a trip
up-country, they had a somewhat sinister sound.
On the other hand again and again have I heard men scout all idea of
danger, men who have been up and down the country for years. And yet
but yesterday, the day before I write these words, a man looked at his
pretty young wife, she was sweetly pretty, and vowed vehemently, “I
would not leave my wife and child alone for a night in our house just
outside the Quarter for anything on earth. If anything did happen--and
it might------” and he dropped his voice. There are some things that
will not bear thinking about, and he had seen the looting of Nanking and
the unfortunates who had died when they took the Woosung Forts. “We went
to look after the wounded,” said he, “and there weren't any wounded.
The savage Northern soldiery had seen to that.” And those whom they
mutilated were their own people! What would they do to a foreigner in
the event of an anti-foreign outbreak?
“Are you afraid?” I asked a man who certainly lived far enough away in
the city. {075}He looked at me curiously, as if he were going to say
there was nothing to be afraid of, and then he changed his mind.
“Perhaps I am when I think of it,” said he; “but then you see, I don't
think of it.”
And that is the average attitude, the necessary attitude, because no man
can perpetually brood over the dangers that might assail him. Certain
precautions he takes to safeguard himself, here are the nations armed
to the teeth in the heart of a friendly country, and for the rest _Quien
sabe?_
And I talked with all men, and while I was making preparations to go
into the interior, had the good-fortune to see a quaint and curious
pageant that took me back to Biblical days and made me remember how
Vashti the Queen was cast down, and the beautiful Esther found favour in
the sight of her lord, and how another tragic Hebrew Queen, going down
to posterity with a name unjustly smirched and soiled, had once painted
her face and tired her head, and looking out of the window had defied to
the death her unfaithful servant. “Had Zimri peace who slew his master?”