xt7xd21rg60t https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7xd21rg60t/data/mets.xml La Motte, Ellen Newbold, 1873-1961. 1919  books b92-224-31182876 English George H. Doran, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Civilization  : tales of the Orient / by Ellen N. La Motte. text Civilization  : tales of the Orient / by Ellen N. La Motte. 1919 2002 true xt7xd21rg60t section xt7xd21rg60t 














CIVILIZATION
TALES OF THE ORIENT
ELLEN N. LA MOTTE

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CIVILIZATION

TALES OF THE ORIENT


          BY
     ELLEN N. LA MOTTE
 AUTHOR OF "THE BACKWASH OF WAR," ETC




         Ba.,



     NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

 









      Copyright, 1919,
By George H. Doran Company



Printed in the United States of America

 



















  The stories "Under A Wineglass,"
"Homesick" and "The Yellow Streak"
are published by courtesy of the Century
Magazine.

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              CONTENTS

                                       PAGE

                    II
THEc YEUow S=Ex .............          11

ON THE HEIGHTS     ............................  33
                    III
HommIcK ..................................     65
                    IV
CIVILIZATION................................   93
                    V
MISUNDERSTANDING   .      ............... 121
                    VI
PRISONERS     .................... 141
                   VII
CANTERuRY CHIm.E   ........            177
                   VIII
UINDER A WIEGLASS   .     ............... 217
                    Ix
CHOLERA ................................... 235
                    x
Cos8mc JusTIcE..........               247


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THE YELLOW STREAK

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I



            THE YELLOW STREAK

  HE came out to Shanghai a generation ago,
in those days when Shanghai was not as re-
spectable as it is now-whatever that says to
you. It was, of course, a great change from
Home, and its crude pleasures and crude com-
panions gave him somewhat of a shock. For
he was of decent stock, with a certain sense of
the fitness of things, and the beach-combers,
adventurers, rough traders and general riff-
raff of the China Coast, gathered in Shanghai,
did not offer him the society he desired. He
was often obliged to associate with them, how-
ever, more or less, in a business way, for his
humble position as minor clerk in a big cor-
poration entailed certain responsibilities out
of hours, and this responsibility he could not
shirk, for fear of losing his position. Thus,
by these acts of civility, more or less enforced,
le was often led into a loose sort of intimacy,
                    [11]

 
CIVILIZATION



into companionship with people who were dis-
tasteful to his rather fastidious nature. But
what can you expect on the China Coast He
was rather an upright sort of young man, deli-
cate and abstemious, and the East being new
to him, shocked him. He took pleasure in
walking along the Bund, marvelling at the
great river full of the ships of the world, mar-
velling at the crowds from the four corners of
the world who disembarked from these ships
and scattered along the broad and sunny thor-
oughfare, seeking amusements of a primitive
sort. But in these amusements he took no
part. For himself, a gentleman, they did not
attract. Not for long. The sing-song girls
and the "American girls" were coarse, vulgar
creatures and he did not like them. It was
no better in the back streets-bars and saloons,
gaming houses and opium divans, all the coarse
paraphernalia of pleasure, as the China Coast
understood the word, left him unmoved.
These things had little influence upon him, and
the men who liked them overmuch, who chaffed
him because of his squeamishness and distaste
of them, were not such friends as he needed in
his life. However, there were few alterna-
                   [12]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



tives. There was almost nothing else for it.
Companionship of this kind, or the absolute
loneliness of a hotel bedroom were the alterna-
tives which confronted him. He had very lit-
tle money,-just a modest salary-therefore
the excitement of trading, of big, shady deals,
said nothing to him. He went to the races,
a shy onlooker. He could not afford to risk
his little salary in betting. Above all things,
he was cautious. Consequently life did not
offer him much outside of office hours, and in
office hours it offered him nothing at all. You
will see from this that he was a very limited
person, incapable of expansion. Now as a
rule, life in the Far East does not have this
effect upon young men. It is generally stim-
ulating and exciting, even to the most unimag-
inative, while the novelty of it, the utter free-
dom and lack of restraint and absence of con-
ventional public opinion is such that usually,
within a very short time, one becomes unfitted
to return to a more formal society. In the
old days of a generation ago, life on the China
Coast was probably much more exciting and
inciting than it is to-day, although to-day, in
all conscience, the checks are off. But our
                    [13]

 
CIVI.L.IZATION



young man was rather fine, rather extraordi-
narily fastidious, and moreover, he had a very
healthy young appetite for the normal. The
offscourings of the world and of society rolled
into Shanghai with the inflow of each yellow
tide of the Yangtzse, and somehow, he resented
that deposit. He resented it, because from
that deposit he must pick out his friends.
Therefore instead of accepting the situation,
instead of drinking himself into acquiescence,
or drugging himself into acquiescence, he
found himself quite resolved to remain firmly
and consciously outside of it. In consequence
of which decision he remained homesick and
lonely, and his presence in the community was
soon forgotten or overlooked. Shy and prig-
gish, he continued to lead his lonely life. In
his solitary walks along the Bund, there was
no one to take his arm and snigger suggestions
into his ear, and lead him into an open door-
way where the suggestions could be carried out.
He had come out to the East for a long term
of years, and the prospect of these interminable
years made his position worse. Not that it
shook his decision to remain aloof and de-
tached from the call of the East-his decision
                    [14]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



was not shaken in the slightest, which seemed
almost a pity.
  Like all foreigners, of course, he had his own
opinions of the Chinese. They were an in-
ferior, yellow race, and therefore despicable.
But having also a firm, unshakable opinion of
his own race, especially of those individuals of
his race in which a yellow streak predominated,
he held the Chinese in no way inferior to these
yellow-streaked individuals. Which argues
broadmindedness and fairmindedness. Of the
two, perhaps, he thought the Chinese prefer-
able-under certain circumstances. Yet he
knew them to be irritating in business dealings,
corrupt, dishonest-on the whole he felt pro-
found scorn for them. But as they had been
made to suit the purposes of the ruling races
of the world-such, for example, as himself,
untainted by a yellow streak-he had to that
extent, at least, succumbed to the current opin-
ions of Shanghai. He resolved to make use
of them-of one, at least, in particular.
  He wanted a home. Wanted it desperately.
He wanted to indulge his quiet, domestic
tastes, to live in peace a normal, peaceful life,
far apart from the glittering trivialities of the
                    [15]

 
CIVILIZATION



back streets of the town. He wanted a home
of his own, a refuge to turn to at the end of
each long, monotonous day. You see, he was
not an adventurer, a gambler, a wastrel, and
he wanted a quiet home with a companion to
greet him, to take care of him, to serve him in
many ways. There was no girl in England
whom he wanted to come out to marry him.
Had there been such a girl, he would probably
not have allowed her to come. He was a de-
cent young man, and the climate was such, here
on the China Coast, that few women could
stand it without more of the comforts and lux-
ury than his small salary could have paid for.
So finally, at the end of a year or two, he got
himself the home he wanted, in partnership
with a little Chinese girl who answered every
purpose. He was not in love with her, in any
exalted sense, but she supplied certain needs,
and at the end of his long days, he had the ref-
uge that he craved. She kept him from going
to the bad.
  His few friends-friends, however, being
hardly the word to apply to his few casual ac-
quaintances,-were greatly surprised at this.
Such an establishment seemed to them the last
                   [16]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



sort of thing a man of this type would have
gone in for. He had seemed such a decent
sort, too. Really, a few professed to be quite
shocked-they said you never knew how the
East would affect a person, especially a de-
cent person. For themselves, they preferred
looser bonds, with less responsibility. They
said this to each other between drinks, and
there was then, as now, much drinking in
Shanghai. A few even said this to each other
quite seriously, as they lay in pairs on opium
divans, smoking opium, with little Chinese
girls filling their pipes-girls who would after-
wards be as complaisant as was required. One
man who had lost his last cent at the gambling
wheels, professed great astonishment at this
departure from the usual track, a departure
quite unnecessary since there were so many
ways of amusing oneself out here in the East.
Of course such unions were common enough,
heaven knows-there was nothing unusual
about it. But then such fastidious people did
not as a rule go in for them. It was not the
m6nage, it was the fact that this particular
young man had set up such, that caused the
comment. The comment, however, was short-
                   [17]

 
CIVILIZATION



lived. There was too much else to think
about.
  Rogers liked his new life very much. Never
for a moment did he think of marrying the girl.
That, of course, never dawned on him. Recol-
lect, he was in all things decent and correct,
and such a step would have been suicidal. Un-
til the time came for him to go Home, she was
merely being made use of-and to be useful
to the ruling races is the main object in life
for the Chinese. They exist for the profit and
benefit of the superior races, and this is the cor-
rect, standard opinion of their value, and there
are few on the China Coast, from Hongkong
upwards, who will disagree with it.
  In time, a son was born to Rogers, and for
a while it filled him with dismay. It was a
contingency he had not foreseen, a responsi-
bility he had not contemplated, had not even
thought he could afford. But in time he grew
used to the boy, and, in a vague way, fond of
him. He disturbed him very little, and
counted very little in his life, after all. Later,
as the years rolled by, he began to feel some
responsibility towards the child. He despised
half-breeds, naturally-every one does. They
                   [18]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



are worse than natives, having inherited the
weakness of both ancestries. He was sin-
cerely glad to be rid of the whole business,
when, at the end of about fifteen years, he was
called home to England. It had all served his
purpose, this establishment of his, and thanks
to it, he was still clean and straight, undemoz.
alised by the insidious, undermining influences
of the East. When he returned to his native
land, he could find himself a home upon ortho-
dox lines and live happily ever afterwards.
Before he felt Shanghai, he sent his little Chi-
nese girl, a woman long ago, of course, back
to her native province in the interior, well sup-
plied with money and with the household fur-
niture. For the boy he had arranged every-
thing. He was to be educated in some good,
commercial way, fitted to take care of himself
in the future. Through his lawyer, he set
aside a certain sum for this purpose, to be ex-
pended annually until the lad was old enough
to earn his own living. In all ways Rogers
was thoughtful and decent, far-sighted and
provident. No one could accuse him of self-
ishness. He did not desert his woman, turn
her adrift unprovided for, as many another
                   [19]

 
               CIVILIZATION

would have done. No, thank heavens, he
thought to himself as he leaned over the rail
of the ship, fast making its way down the yel-
low tide, he had still preserved his sense of hon-
our. So many men go to pieces out in the
East, but he, somehow, had managed to keep
himself clear and clean.
  Rogers drops out of the tale at this point,
and as the ship slips out of sight down the
lower reaches of the Yangtzse, so does he dis-
appear from this story. It is to the boy that
we must now turn our attention, the half-caste
boy who had received such a heritage of de-
cency and honour from one side of his house.
In passing, let it be also said that his mother,
too, was a very decent little woman, in a hum-
ble, Chinese way, and that his inheritance from
this despised Chinese side was not discredit-
able. His mother had gone obediently back
to the provinces, as had been arranged, the
house passed into other hands, and the half-
caste boy was sent off to school somewhere, to
finish his education. Being young, he con-
soled himself after a time for the loss of his
home, its sudden and complete collapse. The
                    [20]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



memory of that home, however, left deep traces
upon him.
  In the first place, he was inordinately proud
of his white blood. He did not know that it
had cost his guardian considerable searching
to find a school where white blood was not ob-
jected to-when running in Chinese veins.
His schoolmates, of European blood, were less
tolerant than the school authorities. He there-
fore soon found his white blood to be a curse.
There is no need to go into this in detail. FoiL
every one who knows the East, knows the con-
tempt that is shown a half-breed, a Eurasian.
Neither fish, flesh nor fowl-an object of gen-
eral distrust and disgust. Oh, useful enough
in business circles, since they can usually speak
both languages, which is, of course, an advan-
tage. But socially, impossible. In time, he
passed into a banking house, where certain of
his qualities were appreciated, but outside of
banking hours he was confronted with a worse
problem than that which had beset his father.
He felt himself too good for the Chinese. His
mother's people did not appeal to him, he did
not like their manners and customs. Above all
things he wanted to be English, like his father,
                   [21]

 
CIVILIZATION



whom in his imagination he had magnified into
a sort of god. But his father's people would
have none of him. Even the clerks in the bank
only spoke to him on necessary business, dur-
ing business hours, and cut him dead on the
street. As for the roysterers and beach-comb-
ers gathered in the bars of the hotels, they
made him feel, low as they were, that they were
not yet sunk low enough to enjoy such com-
panionship as his. It was very depressing
and made him feel very sad. He did not at
first feel any resentment or bitterness towards
his absent father, disappeared forever from his
horizon. But it gave him a profound sense of
depression. True, there were many other
half-breeds for him to associate with-the
China Coast is full of such-but they, like him-
self, were ambitious for the society of the
white man. What he craved was the society
of the white man, to which, from one side of
his house, he was so justly entitled. He was
not a very noticeable half-breed either, for his
features were regular, and he was not darker
than is compatible with a good sunburn. But
just the same, it was unmistakable, this touch
of the tar brush, to the discriminating Euro-
                   [22]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



pean eye. He seemed inordinately slow wit-
ted-it took him a long time to realise his sit-
uation. He argued it out with himself con-
stantly, and could arrive at no logical explana-
tion. If his mother, pure Chinese, was good
enough for his father, why was not he, only
half-Chinese, good enough for his father's peo-
ple Especially in view of the fact that his
father's history was by no means uncommon.
His father and his kind had left behind them
a trail of half-breeds-thousands of them. If
his mother had been good enough for his
father      His thoughts went round and
round in a puzzled, enquiring circle, and still
the problem remained unsolved. For he was
very young, and not as yet experienced.
  He was well educated. Why had his father
seen to that And he was well provided for,
and was now making money on his own ac-
count. He bought very good clothes with his
money, and went in the bar of one of the big
hotels, beautifully dressed, and took a drink at
the bar and looked round to see who would
drink with him. He could never catch a re-
sponsive eye, so was forced to drink alone. He
hated drinking, anyway. In many ways he
                   [23]

 
CIVILIZATION



was like his father. The petty clerks who
were at the office failed to see him at the race
course. He hated the races, anyway. In
many respects he was like his father. But he
was far more lonely than his father had ever
been. Thus he went about very lonely, too
proud to associate with the straight Chinese,
his mother's people, and humbled and snubbed
by the people of his father's race.
  He was twenty years old when the Great
War upset Europe. Shanghai was a mass of
excitement. The newspapers were ablaze.
M1en were needed for the army. One of the
clerks in the office resigned his post and went
home to enlist. In the first rush of enthusi-
asm, many other young Englishmen in many
other offices resigned their positions and en-
listed, although not a large number of them
did so. For it was inconceivable that the war
could last more than a few weeks-when the
first P. and 0. boat reached London, it would
doubtless all be over. During the excitement
of those early days, some of the office force sc
far forgot themselves as to speak to him on
the subject. They asked his opinion, what he
thought of it. They did not ask the shroff, the
                   [24]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



Chinese accountant, what he thought of it.
But they asked him. His heart warmed!
They were speaking to him at last as an equal,
as one who could understand, who knew things
English, by reason of his English blood.
  So the Autumn came, and still the papers
continued full of appeals for men. No more
of the office force enlisted, and their manner
towards him, of cold indifference, was resumed
again after the one outburst of friendliness oc-
casioned by the first excitement. Still the
papers contained their appeals for men. But
the men in the other offices round town did not
seem to enlist either. He marvelled a little.
Doubtless, however, England was so great and
so invincible that she did not need them. But
why then these appeals Soon he learned that
these young men could not be spared from
their offices in the Far East. They were in-
dispensable to the trade of the mighty Em-
pire. Still, he remained puzzled. One day,
in a fit of boldness, he ventured to ask the
young man at the next stool why he did not
go. According to the papers, England was
clamouring loudly for her sons.
  "Enlist!" exclaimed the young Englishman
                    [25]

 
CIVILIZATION



angrily, colouring red. "Why don't you enlist
yourself You say you're an Englishman, I
believe !"
  The half-breed did not see the sneer. A
great flood of light filled his soul. He was
English! One half of him was English! Eng-
land was calling for her own-and he was one
of her own! He would answer the call. A
high, hot wave of exultation passed over him.
His spirit was uplifted, exalted. The glori-
ous opportunity had come to prove himself-
to answer the call of the blood! Why had he
never thought of it before!
  For days afterwards he went about in a
dream of excitement, his soul dwelling on lofty
heights. He asked to be released from his po-
sition, and his request was granted. The man-
ager shook hands with him and wished him
luck. His brother clerks nodded to him, on
the day of his departure, and wished him a
good voyage. They did not shake hands with
him, and were not enthusiastic, as he hoped
they would be. His spirits were a little
dashed by their indifference. However, they
had always slighted him, so it was nothing un-
usual. It would be different after he had
                   [26]

 
           THE YELLOW STREAK

proved himself-it would be all right after he
had proved himself, had proved to himself and
to them, that English blood ran in his veins,
and that he was answering the call of the blood.
  His adventures in the war do not concern
us. They concern us no more than the gap in
the office, caused by his departure, concerned
his employer or his brother clerks. Within a
few weeks, his place was taken by another
young Englishman, just out, and the office
routine went on as usual, and no one gave a
thought to the young recruit who had gone to
the war. Just one comment was made.
"Rather cheeky of him, you know, fancying
himself an Englishman." Then the matter
dropped. Gambling and polo and golf and
cocktails claimed the attention of those who re-
mained, and life in Shanghai continued normal
as usual.
  In due course of time, his proving completed,
he returned to his native land. As the ship
dropped anchor in the lower harbour, his heart
beat fast with a curious emotion. An unex-
pected emotion, Chinese in its reactions. The
sight of the yellow, muddy Yangtzse moved
him strangely. It was his river. It belonged,
                   [27]

 
CITILIZATION



somehow, to him. He stood, a lonely figure,
on the deck, clad in ill-fitting, civilian clothes,
not nearly so jaunty as those he used to wear
before he went away. His clothes fell away
from him strangely, for illness had wasted him,
and his collar stood out stiffly from his scrawny
neck. One leg was gone, shot away above the
knee, and he hobbled painfully down the gang-
plank and on to the tender, using his crutches
very awkwardly.
  The great, brown, muddy Yangtzse! His
own river! The ships of the world lay an-
chored in the harbour, the ships of all the
world! The tender made its way upward
against the rushing tide, and great, clumsy
junks floated downstream. As they neared the
dock, crowds of bobbing sampans, with square,
painted eyes-so that they might see where
they were going-came out and surrounded
them.  A miserable emotion overcame him.
They were his junks-he understood them.
They were his sampans, with their square,
painted eyes-eyes that the foreigners pointed
to and laughed at! He understood them all-
they were all his!
  Presently he found himself upon the
                   [28]

 
THE YELLOW STREAK



crowded Bund, surrounded by a crowd of men
and women, laughing, joyous foreigners, who
had come to meet their own from overseas.
No one was there to meet him, but it was not
surprising. He had sent word to no one, be-
cause he had no one to send word to. He was
undecided where to go, and he hobbled along
a little, to get out of the crowd, and to plan a
little what he should do. As he stood there
undecided, waiting a little, hanging upon his
crutches, two young men came along, sleek,
well-fed, laughing. He recognised them at
once two of his old colleagues in the office.
They glanced in his direction, looked down on
his pinned-up trouser leg, caught his eye, and
then, without sign of recognition, passed on.
  He was still a half-breed.



[29]

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ON THE HEIGHTS

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II



             ON THE HEIGHTS

  RIVERS made his way to China many years
ago. He was an adventurer, a ne'er-do-weel,
and China in those days was just about good
enough for him. Since he was English, it
might have seemed more natural for him to
have gone to India, or the Straits Settlements,
or one of the other colonies of the mighty Em-
pire, but for some reason, China drew him.
He was more likely to meet his own sort in
China, where no questions would be asked.
And he did meet his own sort-people just like
himself, other adventurers and ne'er-do-weels,
and their companionship was no great benefit
to him. So he drifted about all over China,
around the coast towns and back into the in-
terior, to and fro, searching for opportunities
to make his fortune. But being the kind of
man he was, fortune seemed always to elude
him. In course of time he became rather well
                   [:331

 
CIVILIZATION



known on the China Coast-known as a beach-
comber. And even when he went into the re-
mote, interior province of Szechuan, where he
lived a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence for
several years, he was also known as a beach-
comber. Which shows that being two thou-
sand miles inland does not alter the character-
istics associated with that name.
  Personally, he was not a bad sort. Men
liked him, that is, men of his own type. Some
of them succeeded better than he did, and
afterwards referred to him as "poor old Riv-
ers," although he was not really old at that
time. Neither was he really old either, when
he died, several years later. He was rather
interesting too, in a way, since he had experi-
enced many adventures in the course of his
wanderings in remote parts of the country,
which adventures were rather tellable. He
even knew a lot about China, too, which is more
than most people do who have lived in China
many years. Had he been of that sort, he
might have written rather valuable books, con-
taining his shrewd observations and intimate,
underhand knowledge of political and eco-
nomic conditions. But he was emphatically
                   [34]

 
ON THE HEIGHTS



not of that sort, so continued to lead his dis-
reputable, roving life for a period of ten years.
At the end of which time he met a plaintive
little Englishwoman, just out from Home, and
she, knowing nothing whatever of Rivers, but
being taken with his glib tongue and rather
handsome person, married him.
  As the wife of a confirmed beach-comber she
had rather a hard time of it. But for all that
she was so plaintive and so supine, there was a
certain quality of force within her, and she in-
sisted upon some provision for the future.
They were living in the interior at that time,
not too far in, and Rivers had come down to
Shanghai to negotiate some transactions for a
certain firm. He could do things like that well
enough when he wanted to, as he had a certain
ability, and a knowledge of two or three Chi-
nese dialects, and these things he could put to
account when he felt like it. Aided by his
wife, stimulated by her quiet, subtle insistence,
he put through the business entrusted to him,
and the business promised success. 'Which
meant that the interior town in which they
found themselves would soon be opened to for-
eign trade. And as a new trade centre, how-
                   [35]

 
CIVILIZATION



ever small, Europeans would come to the town
from time to time and require a night's lodg-
ing. Here was where Airs. Rivers saw her
chance and took it. In her simple, wholly su-
pine way, she realised that there were nothing
but Chinese inns in the place, and therefore it
would be a good opportunity to open a hotel
for foreigners. Numbers of foreigners would
soon be arriving, thanks to Rivers' efforts, and
as he was now out of employment (having gone
on a prolonged spree to celebrate his success
and been discharged in consequence), there
still remained an opportunity for helping for-
eigners in another way. Personally, he would
have preferred to open a gambling house, but
the risks were too great. At that time the
town was not yet fully civilized or European-
ised, and he realised that he would encounter
considerable opposition to this scheme from the
Chinese-and he was without sufficient influ-
ence or protection to oppose them. His wife,
therefore, insisted upon the hotel, and he saw
her point. She did not make it in behalf of
her own welfare, or the welfare of possible fu-
ture children. She merely made it as an op-
portunity that a man of his parts ought not to
                    [36]

 
ON THE HEIGHTS



miss. le had made a few hundred dollars out
of his deal, and fortunately, had not spent all
of it on his grand carouse. There was enough
left for the new enterprise.
  So they took a temple. Buddhism being in
a decadent state in China, and the temples be-
ing in a still further state of decay, it was an
easy matter to arrange things with the priests.
The temple selected was a large, rambling af-
fair, with many compounds and many rooms,
situated in the heart of the city, and near the
newly opened offices of the newly established
firm, the nucleus of this coming trade centre
of China. A hundred dollars Mex. rented it
for a year, and Mrs. Rivers spent many days
sweeping and cleaning it, while Rivers himself
helped occasionally, and hired several coolies
to assist in the work as well. The monks'
houses were washed and whitewashed; clean,
new mats spread on the floors, cheap European
cots installed, with wash basins, jugs and
chairs, and other accessories such as are not
found in native inns. The main part of the
temple still remained open for worship, with
the dusty gods on the altars and the dingy
hangings in place as usual. The faithful, such
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               CIVILIZATION

as there were, still had access to it, and the
priests lived in one of the compounds, but all
the other compounds were given over to Riv-
ers for his new enterprise. Thus the preju-
dices of the townspeople were not excited, the
old priests cleared a hundred dollars Mex.,
while the new tenants were at liberty to pur-
sue their venture to its most profitable limits.
Mrs. Rivers managed the housekeeping, as-
sisted by a capable Chinese cook, and Rivers
had a sign painted, in English, bearing the
words "Temple Hotel." Fortunately it was
summertime, so there were no expenses for ar-
tificial heat, an item which would have taxed
their small capital beyond its limits.
  Two weeks after the Temple Hotel swung
out its sign, the first guest arrived, the man-
ager of the new company. He came to town
reluctantly, dreading the discomforts of a Chi-
nese inn, and bringing with him his food and
bedding roll, intending to sleep in his cart in
the courtyard. Consequently he was greatly
pleased and greatly surprised to find a Euro-
pean hotel, and he stayed there ten days in
perfect comfort. Mrs. Rivers treated him
royally-lost money on him, in fact, but it was
                    [38]

 
ON THE HEIGHTS



a good investment. At parting, the manager
told Rivers that his wife was a marvel, as in-
deed she was. Then he went down to Shang-
hai and spread the news among his friends, and
from that time on, the success of the Temple
Hotel was assured. True, Rivers still con-
tinued to be a good fellow, that is, he contin-
ued to drink pretty.hard, but his guests over-
looked it and his wife was used to it, and the
establishment continued to flourish. In a year
or two the railroad came along, and a period
of great prosperity set in all round.
  Like most foreigners, Rivers had a profound
contempt for the Chinese. They were inferior
beings, made for servants and underlings, and
to serve the dominant race. He was at no
pains to conceal this dislike, and backed it up
by blows and curses as occasion required. In
this he was not alone, however, nor in any way
peculiar. Others of his race feel the same con-
tempt for the Chinese and manifest it by sim-
ilar demonstrations. Lying drunk under a
walnut tree of the main courtyard, Rivers had
only to raise his eyes to his blue-coated, pig-
tailed coolies, to be immensely aware of his
superiority. Kwong, his number-one boy,
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CIVILIZATION



used to survey him thus stretched upon the
ground, while Rivers, helpless, would explain
to Kwong what deep and profound contempt
he felt for all those who had not his advan-
tages-the great, God-given advantage of a
white skin. The lower down one is on the so-
cial and moral plane, the more necessary to
emphasize the distinction between the races.
Kwong used to listen, imperturbable, thinking
his own thoughts. When his master beat him,
he submitted. His impassive face expressed
no emotion, neither assent nor dissent.
  Except for incidents like these, of some fre-
quency, things we