London’s First Adventure to Japan in 1893 at Age 17:

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PART II:

ANTHOLOGY OF LONDON’S ASIAN WRITING

LONDON’S FIRST ADVENTURE TO JAPAN IN 1893 AT AGE 17

THE BONIN ISLANDS:

AN INCIDENT OF THE SEALING FLEET

[Source: Oakland Aegis 1897]

How many beautiful, unfrequented spots there are that are practically unknown and unheard of! Unknown and unheard of, not only by that great class, the “staying-at-home” people, but by the wandering sight-seer.

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste it’s fragrance on the desert air.”

So it is with these glorious garden spots of nature with which the world abounds-perfect paradises, that the curious traveler has never trod. The ignorant, uncouth inhabitants and the crews of an occasional ship, who do not even pause to realize their beauty, alone see them.

The Bonin Islands, situated between the 25th and 27th degrees of north latitudes, and east longitude 140 degrees and 23 minutes, are one of these known, yet unknown spots-known to the navigator and the chart-maker and almost entirely unknown to the rest of the world. They were discovered two hundred and fifty years ago, tradition says, by a great junk while beating back to Japan, after having been blown off the coast in a typhoon. Soon after, the Japanese government took possession and colonized them; but fifty years later they were deserted. During the next two centuries their few inhabitants, abandoned by their mother county and cut off from all intercourse with the outside world, relapsed into semi-barbarism. This beautiful but remote group of islets was forgotten, actually forgotten. The world knew of them no more. During the middle of this century, however, occasional whale ships ran in for water, and bought onions, sweet potatoes and yams from their half-civilized inhabitants, while the crews disported themselves ashore, hunting the wild hogs and deer with which the hills abounded, and catching fish and great green turtles along the reefs and shores.

But soon Japan, having aroused from her lethargy, began her onward march towards the civilization which at the present time causes the whole world to look upon her with astonishment and admiration, and awoke to fact that the possession of these islands was not so trivial a matter at all. For the second time she colonized them, but this time on a grander scale. St. John, the principle island of the group, in which there are about forty, alone received between two and three thousand emigrants from the crowded cities of Yokohama and Tokio. With the typical push and energy of modern Japan, they completely revolutionized the existing state of affairs. The 50 or so savage natives did not take kindly to the encroachments of the foreigners, but, like the Red Indians of America, they were pushed ahead of the advancing tide, till now they are as strangers in their own land. Here and there, on some isolated coral beach or in the dark depths of the mighty volcanic gorges, one occasionally stumbles upon a miserable, grass-thatched hut, from which the savage owner peers threateningly with sullen visage at the venturous traveler who has invaded his domain-his last retreat before the progressive Japanese. These people are of doubtful nationality, being a promiscuous mingling of the descendants of the original settlers with Kanakas and the renegades who deserted from the whalers in earlier times.

The little colony now boasts a governor, a police force, several thriving villages, many rich plantations, a handsome stone pier, numerous school houses, and in many rich plantations, a handsome stone pier, numerous school houses, and in fact, a civilization in miniature that is on a par with Japan itself. Nevertheless, they are still practically unknown and unvisited. Only twice a year their intercourse with their mother country and outside world is revived. Every six months a government steamer arrives with additional emigrants, the luxuries and necessities of civilized life and the news from the outside world. Then the pretty islands slumber peacefully in their semi-tropical climate for another half year, when the next “steamer day” is at hand.

To the beholder, the chief and most manifest charm in the scenery of these islands is that of variety-the sharp and telling contrasts which abound on every hand and in such grand magnitude. The group is of volcanic formation. Here high mountains rise perpendicularly from the sea, covered to their very summits by the luxuriant growth of tropical vegetation; there, a little coral beach of the purest, dazzling white, reposes at the base of some mighty cliff, ever washed by the ceaseless surf. Now the bold contour of the landscape is smoothed and chastened by the easy rising of the fruitful plain, all verdant with the loholla, mulberry, banana, and cabbage tree, or a gentle slope, where the sugar-cane, pine-apple, sweet potato and yam thrive in the rich soil; and again, great bluffs and frightful precipices enhance the weird beauty and add to the diversity of the scenery. And over all, the rich vegetation flourishes in every conceivable nook and cranny. In many places it seems to spring out of the solid, volcanic rock, where not an atom of soil is apparent to the eye. Far up among the cliffs at the head of the deep, cavern-like gorges, pure springs of ice-cold water send down sparkling streams and rivulets to meet the fierce surge of the surf far below. Now dashing through some volcanic rupture in the gorge, they become a wild swirl of churning waters; then rushing over a tremendous precipice, they shoot into mid air and descend like a silvery veil of mist in an unbroken fall of hundreds of feet. Sometimes plunging over a succession of cataracts, they leap clear into the sea; or again, traversing the fruitful clearings and plantations of the industrious farmer, they become slow and dignified in their place and are finally lost to view in the white beaches of pounded coral rock, through which they sink and filter away into the sea.

Such is the view from the harbor, where the vessel lays at anchor, almost over-shadowed by the great, volcanic mountains, whose lofty heads seem to disappear and be lost among the mists and clouds above.

The harbor is nearly land-locked, and has good holding ground in anywhere from ten to fifty fathoms. It could accommodate quite a fleet; but the bay is nearly always deserted, except for the pretty out-rigger canoes and sampans of the natives. The whalers in olden time visit this beautiful spot no more, and but twice a year the monotony is broken by the arrival of the government steamer. However, the year I was there (1893), the easy-going, phlegmatic inhabitants received such a thorough awakening, that I hardly know if they recovered from it yet. It was about the first part of the month of March. The steamer was not expected for another three months. It had been years since the last whale-ship had put in for water-nothing was expected and the little colony slumbered peacefully. Suddenly a sail appears in the offing. Every inhabitant of St. Johns is on alert. It squares away, and with flowing sheet, runs through the dangerous channel, regardless of the proffered services of the dirty, bewhiskered renegade, who has put off in his canoe to pilot her in, as he did the whale-ships long ago. It is a little schooner, and as she comes up into the wind with her sails a-shivering, the anchor is let go and the stars and stripes flung to the breeze. She is one of those venturous sealing schooners from the American Coast, 5,000 miles away; the fore-runner of the fleet that is to follow.

The Governor, who at the same time is the Harbor Master, supreme head of the custom house, Judge and Justice of the Peace, besides filling a dozen other honorable positions, pays his state visit to the Captain and returns to shore. The bay swarms with canoes and sampans, all bound aboard this strange craft, which has come all the way from America, that country about which they have heard so much, and which they so greatly admire.

The next day the surprise is redoubled, for the little schooner now has a companion to keep her company in the lonely bay. The newcomer floats the English flag. She is the herald of the British fleet, that sails yearly out of Victoria. And at dusk that night the eager inhabitants perceive two more sails laying to in the offing waiting for daylight with which to effect the dangerous passage. And by the middle of March, a fleet of fifteen sealers is assembled in the little port.

When the inhabitants recovered from their first surprise at the unexpected invasion, they realized the great possibilities and profits to accrue from their intercourse with the strangers with the typical energy of their enterprising race, they launched boldly into hitherto unknown channels of commerce. The plantations were ransacked, and their joyful proprietors came aboard with whole boat-loaded of bananas, pine-apples, yams, sweet potatoes, sugar-cane, and all sorta of vegetables, while the fishermen sold large quantities of fresh fish, with which the reefs and shoals abound, and innumerable sea turtles. The hogs, cattle and deer also slaughtered and sold to the Captains of the various schooners. And how these foreigners drank! Why the liquor dealers netted independent fortunes on “square faces” of Holland gin and big bottles of half fermented saki, a drink distilled from rice.

Whew! How things boomed! The simple Japanese must have thought that the millennium had come. And how they all scrambled in the mad rush for wealth! To them, it seemed as though these white sea-rovers were made of gold, and even their vessels laden with the precious metal. Prices went up faster than a hot air balloon. Yesterday, fresh beef was three cents a pound, to-day, four; to-morrow, five; the next day nine; and by Saturday, it had reached the exorbitant price of twenty-two cents and was still rising. When before, for ten cents one could buy a stick of sugar-cane as long as a fishing pole, he now paid twenty-five cents for a single joint, hardly a foot long. A “square face” of Holland gin, which at first had sold for forty cents, went up in a couple of jumps to the astonishing price of six dollars.

The Japanese are shrewd speculators-it seems inherent, but this time they reckoned without their host. Fresh meat became scarce because of the unreasonable price demand. One day, however, one of the Captains went ashore with a couple of hunters and killed a steer; but they were prevented from taking it aboard by the Governor and the Chief of Police. The foreign “sea pirates” resolved to break the blockade, and the next day the greatest battue that had ever occurred in the history of the islands took place.

Scores of seal hunters, the coolest crack shots in the world, and hundreds of hardy, bold-spirited seamen ranged the island from end to end; from the depths of the dark, volcanic gorges to the dizzying heights of the cloud-topped mountains. All day nothing was to be heard but the loud reports of the guns and the wild shouts of the simple, good-natured fellows, who were as school boys out for a frolic. Now the sharp crack of the rifle and the quick, whistling ping of the bullet came to the ear; and again, the heavier reports of the shotguns. Then a long scattering of shots like an irregular volley, followed by the merry shouts of the hunters. Sometimes the fleeing cattle could be seen tearing through the thick jungles, pursued by a score of agile sailors, who, in turn, were often put to flight and scattered in all directions before the headlong charge of an infuriated boar and steer.

So the merry hunt went on. In vain the Governor tried to stop it. He stormed, prayed, cursed and entreated by turns, but all in vain. The disturbance was beyond his control. His few dozen native police were completely ignored by the “white pirates” and “foreign devils.” And when night fell, the slaughter ceased and the boats returned, heavily laden with the day’s spoils, to their respective schooners.

Then the Governor issued a manifesto: Law and order should be restored and maintained. All disturbers of the peace would be punished. All sailors must be aboard their respective craft by ten o’clock every night. The delinquents were to be arrested and confined in the guard house. And if the Captains could not or would not control their men, they would be forced to leave the island.

That night every sea-rover was ashore. Ten o’clock soon passed, but none dreamed of going aboard. Instead, the evening’s festivities were just beginning. Right in front of the Governor’s mansion, a rousing Virginia Reel was in progress. “Big Oscar,” a giant Norwegian, who towered a whole head and shoulders above the throng, played away for the dancers on an accordion, while “square faces” circulated freely through the crowd. Though the entire police force had been massed to clear the streets, the governor thought discretion the better part of valor and wisely refrained from precipitating affairs.

The next morning the Captains were ordered to sail their schooners hence; which demand was completely ignored. For a navy, the island boasted thee uniformed marines and a gig; so the governor was powerless to enforce his commands. Still, though triumphant, the sailors committed to indignities or outrages, and the natives, finding them to be a peaceable, law-abiding people, became reconciled to their presence and were glad that such good customers still remained. Prices soon dropped to their normal level, and complete serenity was restored.

At last, one morning, unusual activity was observed aboard the different craft. Gaskets were cast off and the sails loosened. Boats were hoisted aboard and everything made shipshape. Then the merry chants of the crews at the windlasses, as singing their inspiring “shanties,” they hoisted the heavy anchors, came to the ears of the wondering natives. Sail after sail was set, and schooner after schooner filled away, and with a leading wind ran through the narrow passage into the open sea. The fleet was bound for the Coast of Japan, where all summer they would follow the migratory seals northward toward the rookeries in Behring Sea. Almost before the natives could realize it, not one of the numerous fleet remained in their little Harbor.

And so, the Bonin Islands were left to slumber peacefully on, in their blissful, tropical climate, lapped by the blue waters of the great ocean and waiting for the next “steamer day.” But their inhabitants never tire of recounting the invasion of the white sea-rovers, and of telling of their wild doings and strange customs.

“Ah! Life was life, then!” and they smack their lips appreciatively over that by-gone event, and jingle the foreigners gold in their girdles.

LONDON’S MAIN SHORT STORIES WITH AN ASIAN FOCUS

SAKAICHO, HONA ASI AND HAKADAKI

[Source: Oakland High School literary magazine, Aegis, 19 April 1895]

“JOCK, you likee come see my house?—not far—you come see my wifee—come’ chopee—chopee’—allesamee good ‘chow.’”

Ah! the magic of those words! (“chopee chopee!”) Food! Dinner! What a relish they conveyed to me, who was as hungry a sight-seer as had ever trod the by-ways and thoroughfares of Yokohama. All morning I had wandered from tea-house to temple, through bazaar and curio-shop, “up hill and down dale,” till now I was as famished as the most voracious shark that ever cut the blue waters of the tropic sea with his ominous fin, while in search of a breakfast. In fact, I felt like a veritable man-eater, and this unexpected invitation of my jin-riki-sha man was most opportune. And, of course, I accepted.

Away he sped, gradually leaving the crowded streets and entering the poorer and more squalid portion of the native quarter. At last, turning, a hundred feet or so, into a narrow alley, he stopped before an insignificant little house, which he told me, with very evident pride, was his home.

The whole side of the main, or sitting-room, facing the alley, was open, to admit the cooler air from without. To my Occidental eye it seemed a very bare little room. The floor was covered with thin, unpadded mats of rice straw, on which, beside a little table eight inches high, with a half-hemstitched silk handkerchief stretched across it, lay a woman in sound slumber. It was his wife.

As she lay there, one could see, even from a Japanese standpoint, that she was not pretty; neither was she ugly. But the stern lines of care had left their vivid impress on the face, and even as she slept she seemed troubled, and a spasm of pain or worry for a moment contracted her relaxed features.

With a light and tender caress, Sakaicho roused her. At his touch she awoke and greeted him affectionately; but when she beheld me she became suddenly abashed, and retreated across the room. Then ensued a quick conversation, in which Sakaicho probably told her that I was the American who had so graciously patronized him during the past week. Remembering her duties as a hostess, and full of gratitude for her husband’s patron, with low salaam and blushing countenance, she invited me with a quick motion of her hand to a seat on the floor. Removing my shoes at the threshold, for that is one of the strictest rules of Japanese etiquette, I settled down, tailor fashion, in the middle of the room, opposite Sakaicho.

As his wife pushed the hilbachi and tabako-bon before us, and then retired, humbly, to the background, he made me acquainted with her name, which was Hona Asi. She was only twenty-seven, he said; but she looked at least forty. Toil and worry had stamped her naturally pretty face, and left it wrinkled and sallow.

This I noticed and pondered on, as with deft fingers I rolled the little pellets of fine-cut native tobacco, inserted them in the rectangularly-bent head of the slender pipe, and then ignited them, with a quick puff at the little coal of fire in the hilbachi. A couple of inhalations of the mild, sweet-flavored herb, emitted through the nostrils in true Japanese style, and the thimble-like bowl is emptied. Then, with a quick, sharp tap on the hilbachi, the ashes are expelled and the operation of filling and lighting repeated.

For five minutes we smoked in silence, when the hilbachi and the tabako-bon were removed, and Hona Asi placed before us two cups of weak green tea. As soon as emptied they were taken away, being replaced by a table five inches high and a foot and a half square, bravely lacquered in red and black.

According to Japanese custom, Hona Asi did not eat with us, but waited on the table as a true wife should. She removed the covering from a round wooden box, and with a wooden paddle ladled out two bowls of steaming rice, while Sakaicho uncovered the various bowls on the table and revealed a repast fit for the most fastidious epicure. The savory odors arising from different dishes whetted my appetite, and I was anxious to begin. There was bean soup, boiled fish, stewed leeks, pickles and soy, raw fish, thin sliced and eaten with radishes, kurage, a kind of jellyfish, and tea. The soup we drank like water; the rice we shoveled into our mouths like coals into a Newcastle collier; and the other dishes we both helped ourselves out of with the chopsticks, which by this time I could use quite dexterously. Several times during the meal we laid them aside long enough to sip warm saki (rice wine) from tiny lacquered cups.

By the time we concluded Hona Asi had brought from the little shop round the corner two glasses of ice cream, which she placed before us with a porcelain jar full of green plums, packed in salt. When we had done justice to this, we had resort to the inevitable hilbachi and tabako-bon, presumably to aid digestion.

As a rule, I had found the Japanese a shrewd, money-seeking race; but when, as a matter-of-course, I took out my purse to pay the reckoning, Sakaicho was insulted, while, in the background, Hona Asi threw up her hands deprecatingly, blushed, and nearly fainted with shame. They gave me to understand very emphatically that it was their treat, and I was forced to accept it, though I knew they could ill afford such extravagance.

Soon Sakaicho recovered his good humor and I enticed him into talking of himself. In his queer broken English he told me of his youth; his struggles, and his hopes and ambitions. His boyhood had been spent as a peasant in the fields, on the sunny slopes of Fujihama; his youth and early manhood as porter and driver of hired jin-riki-shas in Tokio. With great economy he had saved from his slender earnings, till now, having removed to Yokohama, he owned his little home and two jin-riki-shas, one of which he rented out at fifteen cents a day. His wife, a true helpmeet, worked industriously at home hemstitching silk handkerchiefs; sometimes making as high as eighteen cents a day. And all this struggle was for his boy—his only child. He was now sending him to school, and soon, when he would own and rent out several jin-riki-shas, the boy would receive instruction in the higher branches, and mayhap, some day, he would be able to send him to America to complete his education. “Who knows?”

As he told me this his eyes sparkled and his face flushed with pardonable pride, while his whole being seemed ennobled with the loftiness of his aspirations and the depth of his love and self-sacrifice.

Tired of sight-seeing, I passed the afternoon with him, waiting for the boy’s return from school. At last he appeared; a sturdy, rollicking little chap of ten, who enjoyed, as his father said, fishing in the adjacent canal, though he never caught anything, and the water was not deep enough to drown him. Like his mother, the little fellow was very bashful in my presence; but, after a deal of persuasion, he condescended to shake hands with me. As he did so, I slipped a bright Mexican dollar into his sweaty little paw. Great was his delight in its possession, and he was most profuse in his thanks, salaaming low, again and again, as he cried in shrill, childish treble, “Arienti! Arienti!”

A week later, returning from a pleasant trip to Tokio and Fujihama, I missed Sakaicho from his accustomed stand, and so hired a strange jin-riki-sha man. It was my last day ashore, and, resolving to make the best of it, I hurried through the different sights I had not yet seen.

Late in the afternoon I found myself speeding out into the country for a passing glimpse of the native graveyard. Rounding a quick turn in the road, I espied a funeral cortege ahead. Hurrying my panting jin-riki-sha man forward, I soon overtook it. It was a double funeral, I perceived, by the two heavy chests of plain white wood, borne on the shoulders of several stalwart natives. A solitary mourner followed, and in the slender form and bowed head I recognized Sakaicho. But O! how changed! Aroused by my coming he slowly raised his listless head, and, with dull, apathetic glance, returned my greeting. As we walked reverently in the rear, my strange jin-riki-sha man told me that a destructive fire had swept through Sakaicho’s neighborhood, burning his house and suffocating his wife and child.

Presently the grave was reached, and priests from the buddhist temple near by chanted the requiem with solemn ceremony, while a group of idle natives curiously crowded round. With glassy eye, Sakaicho followed the movements of the priests, and, when the last clod had been thrown on, he erected a memorial stone to his loved ones. Then he turned away, to place among the mementos before his household God two little wooden tablets, marked with the name and date of birth and death of his wife and boy, while I returned in haste to my ship. And, though five thousand miles of heaving ocean now separate us, never will I forget Sakaicho and Hona Asi, nor the love they bore their son Hakadaki.

A NIGHT’S SWIM IN YEDDO BAY

[Source: Oakland High School literary magazine Aegis, 27 May 1895]

“YES, a mighty nice set of people are them Japs, for all their being half civilized, which I deny, and say right here that for smartness, push and energy, learning, honesty, politeness and general good-naturedness, their like can’t be beat. And when it comes to comparing them to our people, for real moral goodness and purity, why, we ain’t in it.” And the speaker, a grizzled, old merchant seaman, drained his glass and set it down on the bar with a slam, as though inviting criticism or controversy. But none dared to oppose him. Good-humoredly glancing round on his little group of listeners, he called for another round of drinks.

“An enterprising people, they are,” he went on, leaning comfortably back against the bar and striking an attitude, without which, as his old chum, Bill Nandts, said, it was impossible for him to spin a yarn.

“They’re always longing to be, as they call it, Europeanized or Americanized. They’re only too quick to discard their old habits and way of doing things for the newer and more improved customs and methods of ours. Why, take the simple matter of dress, for instance. From the lowest beggar in the street to the highest dignitary in the land, they all want to be European in their dress. Pretty near all that can afford it dress like us, and sometimes those who can’t put themselves to pretty shifts in order to do so.

“Why, there isn’t a ship that leaves Yokohama but with a fo’ks’le full of slender, dilapidated wardrobes, the rest of which the Japs have obtained by shrewd trading and sharp tricks. Of course, the curio traders that come aboard while in port get more than a fair share of the spoils; but still, the ‘sam pan’ or boat men do a fair trade in that line.

“God pity the sailor who finds himself down on the pier without the necessary ‘ten sen’ to pay the boatmen’s hire out to his vessel. Unless he can find a shipmate, from whom to borrow the money, he will usually end in parting with his shirt or singlet, or some article of wearing apparel; for the rapacious ‘sam pan’ men just ache to dress like us, though thy can’t do it on the square. They tried that game on me once, but it did not succeed.

“It was my first trip to Yokohama, and I had been ashore half the night, carrying on as only a reckless young rat knows how. I had been up in ‘Bloodtown’, for that is what the low white quarter is called by the natives, because of the many drunken brawls and fights that occur there. Well, it was ‘do in Rome as Rome does’, and, of course, I had got mixed up in a couple of rows and street fights, for I was about half seas under, and did not care a snap for anything. Just about midnight I came wandering down to the little stone pier, or jetty, which was Yokohama’s only apology for the long line of docks to be met with in every seaport. In Yokohama, as you know, all the shipping lays out to anchor or to huge buoys; the work of loading and unloading being carried on by hundreds of lighters and thousands of low class Japanese laborers. I hear, however, that the Government has now erected a splendid steel pier, which cost a couple of million.

“But to return to my yarn. Along I came, taking in the whole street in a way that reminded me of the drunken fishermen, who, with thirty-two points in the compass, steered thirty more. My hat was gone; the sailor’s knot, with which I had tied the silk handkerchief round my neck, had been slipped and drawn tight against my windpipe, nearly choking me; my clothes were all dusty and awry, from where I had been rolling on the ground with two doughty ‘ricksha’ men and a policeman; and, in fact, I must have presented a most charming appearance as I came under the lights of the police station and custom-house.

“About a hundred paces farther on, I came to the stone steps where the ‘sam pans’ clustered, while their owners solicited custom, for all the world like our own cabmen and hotel runners down at the ferries when the overland passengers are due.

“I soon engaged an old codger, who seemed like those battered armors which one sees in museums and such places. He must have been at least sixty years old, and, with great height, he was as lean as a skeleton; while his whole body was nothing but a mass of wrinkles. Here and there, as the light from a brazier, charcoal fire, shone on his sunburned hide, I could see big black and white scars of all descriptions. He was the most battered old hulk one would wish to meet with, and his voice was in harmony with the rest of him. It was as thin and shrill and piping as a child’s, and it made me fidget as he bowed and ducked before me.

“Following him, I climbed aboard the ‘sam pan’, where I made the acquaintance of the rest of his crew. It was as startling a contrast as I ever saw. It was a little lump of a boy, not much larger than a good-sized chaw of tobacco. He was a precocious little youngster, with plump, well-formed body, and the bearing and assurance of a full-grown man. I proceeded to take a seat; but, what with my condition and the shaky, old concern, I came down all in a heap, as though I intended going through the bottom of the rickety craft.

“As I lay there, sprawling, I saw the little shaver glace sharply at me, and then jabber away to the old fellow, who, in turn, stared at me and paused in the very act of shoving the ‘sam pan’ off. I managed to gain my feet, and, irritated at the delay and my own clumsiness, I told them rather sharply to go ahead. They refused to do so. By this time the steps were crowded by the rough watermen, who were all laughing and jeering at me.

“I began to get angry at all this, and was about to shove off myself when the youngster came up to me and said very laconically, as he held out his had, ‘Pay now’. At first I did not understand, so closely were the two words run together; but after he repeated his ‘pay now’ several times, to the great delight of the crowd, I comprehended. Of course, I had no objections as to when I paid; but, digging down into my pocket, I found I was broke. Then I carefully searched every pocket, and the result was the startling knowledge that I hadn’t a ‘sou markee’ to my name.

“When this became apparent, the crowd on the steps fairly howled in their glee, as they chattered away and hurled whole strings of advice and admonitions to my triumphant ‘sam pan’ crew.

“The youngster, after sharply scanning me with his shrewd, black eyes, laid hold of my shirt, which was bran’ new from the slop chest, and said, ‘Gimme shirt’. To this request the crowd signified their approval by sundry had-clappings and with much laughter enjoyed my predicament.

“‘Not by a long-shot’, sez I, and, finding him obstinate, I climbed out on the pier, feeling pretty cheap.

“Well, I fooled around a long while; but not one of all the ‘sam pan’ men would take me out without being paid in advance. To my every appeal, they would answer, ‘Gimme coat’, ‘Gimme shirt’, and so on. I was very obstinate myself in those days and wouldn’t give in.

“I remember getting up on a big block of hewn granite and delivering an impassioned harangue to the motley mob, who cheered and jeered me by turns, not understanding a word of my discourse. Bye and bye I fell off the stone on top of them, nearly mashing two or three.

“Then I wandered down to the police station, and made known my ridiculous plight to the lieutenant. He seemed a very affable, good-natured man, and he went out and addressed the ‘sam pan’ men in choice Japanese. But they still refused to take me unless I parted company with my coat or shirt, or some article of wearing apparel, worth ten times the necessary money.

“Well, to make a long story short, after puzzling my head a little, I decided to swim aboard. As quick as it takes to tell it, I stripped myself, and, telling the lieutenant to take care of my clothes, I started out the pier on the run, closely followed by the ‘sam pan’ men, who seemed to hugely enjoy the queer caper I cut. I started down the stone steps with the tread of a hero; but the tide was out, and slipping on the slimy ooze which covered them, I went heels over head, bumpety bump, all the way down to the bottom. I struck the water with a mighty splash, to the accompaniment of the hoarse shouts of the enthusiastic crowd.

“However, when I came to the surface, they all signified their willingness to take me aboard if I would return. But I was stubborn now. I waved them good-bye, and paddled away in the dark. I had no fear, for I could swim like a fish, and, as it was mid-summer, the water was quite warm. Besides, the freshening effect of the salty brine was rapidly clearing my muddled head.

“Far ahead of me our anchor light burned brightly, and, with a strong, steady stroke, I struck out. It was not much of a swim—hardly a mile—and I soon found myself alongside. Climbing silently on deck, unperceived by the anchor watch, who was no other than my old chum here, Bill Nandts, I made by way to the fo’ks’le. I took my blankets up on the fo’ks’le head, near the catheads, and laid down, for the fo’ks’le was too stifling for a comfortable sleep.

“Before I could close my eyes, I heard a boat come alongside and hail the anchor watch. Then quite a conversation followed, and some one climbed over the side and threw something down on the deck. This Bill Nandts examined. All of a sudden, he jumped to his feet, and exclaimed, ‘My God! They’re Charley’s’

“It was one of the harbor police boats, which had brought my clothes aboard and inquired about my safety. Of course, Bill hadn’t seen me, and, after rousing the fo’ks’le to find me, he made sure that I was drowned. The Captain, aroused by the noise, came on deck. After listening to the story, he ordered a boat over the side to search for me.

“Away both boats pulled, and I could hear Bill Nandts shouting again and again, ‘Charley! O Charley! Where are you?’

“After vainly hunting for me in the water, they inquired of all the ships, thinking that I might have swam aboard one of them in the dark. Before long the whole harbor was in an uproar. The hailing of the anchor watches roused the dogs, which many of the ships carried, and soon every dog in the harbor was baying vigorously. The noise was contagious and spread to the shore, where all their canine friends came in on the grand chorus. And the cocks began to crow and the chickens to cackle, as though the last day had come, while a general alarm of fire was turned in by a nervous watchman; and all Yokohama awoke, thinking the city was being burned down.

“The bay was now swarming with the ‘sam pan’ men, who lent their hoarse cries to swell the tumult. Lights were flashing hither and thither across the water. The police tug, having got up steam by this time, came out to see what was all the uproar was about, and but added to the general confusion. Then the Harbor Master, aroused by some over-zealous official, with a wild tale of disaster, came hurrying out in his six-oared gig. But the scene of excitement had spread so far that he could neither make head nor tail out of it.

“Suddenly he was run down and spilled into the water by the police boat, which was just then engaged in an exciting chase of a poor, bewildered fisherman, to whom, with startling intuition, they had attributed all the trouble. The frightened fisherman, now that he was saved by the accident, lost his head, and fouled the bowsprit of a Norwegian bark, near us, and capsized. Then a whole fleet of custom-house boats, thinking it was a preconcerted plan of the smugglers to land illicit goods during the excitement, came dashing across the harbor in all directions. And how they overhauled the frightened ‘sam pans’ and fishing craft with great fierceness, in the heroic discharge of their duty!

“And to cap the climax, the aged keepers of the two light ships, on either side of the narrow opening in the great breakwater, seeing the lights of a P. and O. steamer approaching, thought it was an invasion of the Chinese. So they hurriedly extinguished both lights, and the big passenger steamer ran aground in the darkness.

“The excitement was intense; but, after an hour’s duration, it died away, and I fell asleep, hugging myself in glee at the great prank I had played.

“The next I knew I was being roughly awakened. Opening my eyes, I found the sun rising in the East. Bill Nandts was a-shaking me like mad, so happy as not to know whether to be angry with me or not. Of course, explanations followed, and it was a long time before I heard the last of it. And as for the ‘sam pan’ men—why, I had the freedom of the harbor. For, ever after, they refused to take money from me, though they would always set up a great jabbering and laughing whenever I hove in sight.”

“Well, boys,” said Bill Nandts when he concluded, “that’s one on me. So come up, all hands, and drink to the health of Long Charley, the best old ‘shell back’ that ever sailed out of Frisco.”

O HARU

[Published in 1897]

“‘WHO is she?’ What, chum, hast been sleeping? ‘Tis O Haru—of all geishas, the best, the purest; of all dancers, the matchless, the gracefulest; of all women, the most divinely beautiful, the most alluring. ‘Tis O Haru, the dream of the lotus, the equal of Fugi, and the glory of man. Truly hast thou squandered thy last years in America, else wouldst thou have known her, else seen her in our great festival processions, raised aloft on immense dashi and dancing to the admiring multitudes. Call thyself lucky; consider this tea house the shrine of your geisha-girl worship; thank the father that gave thee life that thou art here! Bless the illustrious Lord Sousouchi, who has thrice-blessed thee by bringing thee here! For ‘tis O Haru, the spring, the glorious dancer, the heavenly beauty; peer unto none of all geishas and dancers!”

This, amid the hum of admiration and burst applause which succeeded O Haru’s dance. The most illustrious, the most honorific, the Lord Sousouchi, had invited the great British nobleman to a supper with music, singers and dancers, so that he might gain an insight of Japanese pleasures. The most famous geishas, singers and players had been hired for the occasion, nor had his hand been sparing in aught that would diminish its charm and brilliancy. There were perhaps a dozen that partook of Sousouchi’s hospitality and that now vied with each other in applauding O Haru.

The geishas or dancing-girls are the brightest, most intelligent and most accomplished of Japanese women. Chosen for their beauty they are educated from childhood. Not only are they trained in all the seductive graces of the dance and of personal attraction; but also in singing, music, and the intricate etiquette of serving and entertaining; nor are their minds neglected, for in wit, intelligence and repartee, they excell. In short, the whole aim of their education is to make them artistically fascinating. In class, they occupy much the same position as do our actresses, and though many are frail beauties that grace the tea house festivals, here and there will be found gems of the purest luster.

O Haru, as was the custom, now that her dance was finished, attended upon the Lord Sousouchi, and her quick wit, beauty, silvery laughter, and fascinating personality, set the guests a-throb with the pleasure of her presence. To the Occidental she could not but appeal, while to the Japanese, she was the ideal of beauty. Her figure, slender, long-waisted and narrow-hipped, was a marvel of willowy grace, rendered the more bewitching by the ease and charm of her carriage. Her bust was that of a maid’s—no full suggestion of luscious charms beneath the soft fold of her kimono—rather the chaste slimness of virginity. Long, slender, beautifully curved, the neck was but a fitting pedestal for the shapely head, poised so delicately upon it. Her hair, long, straight, and glossy black, was combed back from the clear, high forehead—a wondrous dome to the exquisite oval of the face. High above the long, narrow eyes, arched the brows, seemingly stencilled, so extreme the delicacy of their lines. The nose, while not prominent, aquiline; and the mouth, small, approached lips, full and scarlet-red. Of a clear, ivory white, her complexion pled all innocence of the customary rouge, while in the cheek lay the faintest suggestion of color—color, which could mount to the heights of passion or sink to the imperceptibility of placidity. The expression, never the same, the shifting mirror of every mood, of every thought: now responsive to vivacious, light-hearted gayety; now reflecting the deeper, sterner emotions; now portraying all the true womanly depths of her nature. Truly was she “O Haru, the dream of the lotus, the equal of Fugi and the glory of man!”

The samisens strike up: the drumming girls cease. A group of geishas, clad in robes of scarlet and yellow, dance the pretty dance of maple leaves, shivering and shaking in the autumn wind. But the eyes and souls of the company are bent on O Haru, whose ravishing beauty and inimitable wit bind them her slaves, and even the senility of the Right Honorable Lord Sousouchi vanishes before her irresistible charms. Soon she leaves them to expatiate upon her wondrous self, while she retires to dress for her next dance, her last for the evening.

A burst of music and she appears, clad in the armor and complete war-panoply of the ancient samurai—the samurai of feudal Japan, whose whole duty was embraced within the single term, loyalty; loyalty, so pure, that wife, children, kindred, all human ties, even his gods must be, if needs, sacrificed for his master the diamiõ. It was one of her masterpieces, the interpretation of Oishi, the leader of the “Loyal Rõnins,” plotting the revenge of his master’s death. Oishi, who, that nothing may distract him from his contemplated vengeance, divorces his wife and sends his children away.

Full well she understood her past. Of samurai blood; the daughter of diamiõ’s favorite, who had gone through the fiery ordeal of the shogunate; who had seen the son of heaven come forth from his centuries of seclusion to hurl to earth the proud feudal nobility of old Japan; she was possessed, by heredity and tradition, of all the pride of her race. Fired by the wild rush of her father’s blood, her slender form seemed to vibrate with intensity of Oishi’s emotion, seemed to suffocate with the scorching heat of his passion. A hush of awe fell upon the company, as with martial tread and gesture she personified the oldtime hero. With superstitious reverence and bated breath they followed her in her wildly-graceful pantomime. Vanished the bright lights, the cheery tea house, the laughing geishas, as her audience followed her into the reality of old Japan. Through the depths of melancholy, grief and anguish, up the heights of stormy passion and soul-consuming thirst for vengeance, she led them—on—on—till, in a wild burst of rhythmic motion, the diamiõ is avenged and the consumation all but attained. Then the last scene, the dramatic climax, the hara-kiri. All hopes, all joys of life forgotten, Oishi follows his lord into the nether world. A flash of steel, the simulated death thrust in the abdomen, and the dance is over. No applause, glistening eyes and weeping geishas, and O Haru, with heaving breast and flashing eyes, overcome by the excess of her feeling, forgets to make due obeisance to the Lord Sousouchi, omits the customary sayonara and retires in a tumultuous flood of tears.

Home at last. O Haru sat in the soft halo of the andon, deep-sunk in dreamy reverie. But her thoughts were far away from tea house revels and her soul wandered in strange lands, with the image of one, Toyotomi. Toyotomi the brave, the venturesome; the love her girlhood, the desire of her womanhood.

Strange had been the mingling of their lives. Both of the samurai class, his father had prospered, hers had died, and she, an orphan, had gone into the possession of Saisdashai, the master of a geisha ya. There she had passed her childhood, spent in the cultivation of all the arts and graces of the accomplished geisha; there, in the first bloom of her maturity had she met Toyotomi; there, and in many the tea house he chose to frequent, had she learned to love him.

Peculiar had been their courtship: contrary to all tradition and custom. No fathers or mothers to choose for their children, for his also had journeyed on in quest of that silent Nirvana. Saisdashai opposed, as by law he could, her marriage, for she was his by the contract, his to hire out to the tea house patrons, and well he was paid for her marvelous dancing. But Toyotomi had been hot on the chase and one day—ah well she remembered—selling all his possessions, paid Saisdashai the last yen he could claim on her, and she found herself free—free to love and marry her lover.

But Toyotomi was ambitious. Penniless, he cared not for poverty, so they plighted their troth and she was left to her dancing, while he sailed over the sea to the white barbarians, promising to come back, rich and powerful, and marry her. What his fortune had been she knew not and save for short and infrequent letters, his wanderings were sealed to her. For a decade now, had she waited for him and saving her earnings, she recked not whether he returned rich or poor. She was rich, nay, wealthy—for was she not the most popular geisha, the people’s idol, the noblemen’s despair? And thanks to her lover, she had not to surrender her earnings to a geisha ya master, for she was free, independent. And though dangerous had been the path of her journey, had she not trod it unswervingly? The temptations of her position had been many, and often, most powerful; aye, and many were honorable and of the greatest inducement. There was Hakachio, the rich silk merchant, who had begged and pleaded with her to marry him; and Honondo the lieutentant, and Ueuado the diamiõ’s son, and even Ogushi, the staid professor of the Royal College, who had been bewitched by her charms. Yet had she saved herself for Toyotomi, her girlish sweetheart, her woman’s passion. Always had the lotus been her emblem, the symbol of purity. And glory of glories, he was returning at last: to morrow his steamer came in: to morrow she would take the train and journey down to Yokohama to meet him.

The sweet tears of joy bedimming her eye and moistening her cheek, she opened the camphorwood chest beside her and drew forth a parcel wrapped in many a fold of cotton. Undoing it she held before her an obi, a girdle of beautiful silk. The symbol of woman’s betrothal; Toyotomi’s symbol of her betrothal. Again she opened the chest, this time drawing forth two swords, the swords of her father the samurai. With the deep pride of race and the reverential love of her people she gazed long and earnestly upon them. How near it brought her to him, her father, whom she sometimes forgot for Toyotomi. Her father, the grim old warrior, the chivalrous captain, who had so long upheld his diamiõ’s house with this long sword, and who, when all was lost had saved all with this short one, then sought oblivion through the honorable death by hara-kiri. In the heat of the lotus-time night, she slumbered before these, her most precious of relics, and in the morning, Hohna Asi, her hair-dresser, found her smiling with joy in her sleep.

O Toyotomi! Wild Toyotomi! Cruel Toyotomi!—A year had passed since his return, since their marriage; and what a year! What a marriage! What a return for her years of waiting, for her years of clinging to the lotus-flower emblem!

How handsome and noble he had looked, clad in his barbarian garments, when she met him on the pier at Yokohama. Truly she had thought that her fondest dreams were realized, that the world, in the highest sense of the word, had made a man of him. But alas! How changed! She had not understood then, had not comprehended the customs of the “foreign devils” among whom he had wandered. And he had come back with many of those fiend-begotten customs clinging to him.

Extravagance! It had affrighted her—such lavishness, such unwonted prodigality. She had known that in those far away lands, money was earned so easily; but till now she had not understood the ease with which it was spent. And Toyotomi—ah! he had learned how to spend it. To her economical soul, invested with all the saving Oriental traits of heredity, such extravagance was repulsive, crushing. Her fortune—with trusting faith and wifely obedience she had made it over to him. Ah! The crystallization of her years of labor—how he had spilled it like water! And now, in a year, nothing remained.

Many tricks had he gained in the “white devil” country and now he had become a professional wrestler. A wrestler to be proud of, and one who often made large money; but wrestler, the companion of roughs and jõrõs, the frequenter of low tea houses, and one who had abjured his native sak’e to take those expensive foreign liquors. And now she must go out and dance again, for he never brought a sen home.

O Toyotomi! So great was her love that all this was forgotten; but he was even worse. He had come back with the foreign standard of beauty, and to him she was no longer beautiful. She, the most beautiful of all geishas, the most beautiful of all Japanese women, the personified ideal of the Japanese standard, was no longer beautiful to Toyotomi, her old-time lover. He would come home drunken and surly and critcize her walk, her carriage, her narrow hips, her flat breast, slim face and slanting eyes; then rave in ecstasies of delight over the Occident beauties. Buddha! That such could be! That her Toyotomi could admire those fierce, masculine creatures, that strode, long-stepping, like men; that had great hips and humps like actual deformities. Those repulsive creaturs, with their large mouths, high noses, and eyes, deep-sunk in horrid sockets beneath fierce, heavy brows. Those creatures, so terrible, that when they looked on a Japanese baby it must burst into tears of fright. Those animals, who were loathsome, disgustingly mouthing themselves and their men—Toyotomi called it kissing and had tried to teach her. Ach! How could it be!

And even was he worse than all that: sometimes he had beaten her, and still worse, he loved that half-caste jõrõ from yoshiwari. That girl of the Japanese mother and the English father, whom he thought so bewitching, whom he loved for her resemblance to the “white devil” beauty.

And worst of all, had he not said to day “O Haru, go thou out to night and dance, else will I not only beat but divorce thee.”

“O jizo! Jizo!” she moaned. “That such could be!

That such could be!

The pleasurable stillness of the lazy lotus-time afternoon, pressed heavily against O Haru, as she said her prayers to her Shinto gods. But the gods gave no sign: no rest came to her, the young, almost boyish priest gazed curiously at her as she prostrated herself in her devotions. He knew her (who did not), the wonderful dancer, whose life had seemed such a joyous span; but of late she had come to the temple often and he wondered what might burden her. He drew near, and as her prayer ceased, blessed her and spoke soothing words. She was married? Yes. And prayed for children? No. For her ancestors? Yes, as she had always done. Then for what? But she burst into tears and would not answer.

The priest paused and his sensitive, intellectual face clouded in a moment’s thought—she was brighter than most who prayed their in their childish sorrows; she was in trouble, suffered. Why not? Surely she could understand a few slight glimmerings of his esoteric knowledge. His face illumined with the divine compassion of Siddãrtha Guatama. He raised her and led her before the staue of the sitting Buddha: there, in simple language, he told her of the birth, the boyhood, the manhood of Guatama, afterward the Buddha; of his grief for the sorrow of the world; of his discovery of the great truth. Self, the mere clinging to life, was the evil: self was the illusion, whereby the soul endured the pain of countless incarnations: self was to be annihilated, and when destroyed, the soul passed to Nirvana. Nirvana, the highest attainable sphere, where peace and rest and bliss unuttered soothed the soul, weary from many migrations. Thus had the divine Buddha done, thus might she do—annihilate self and gain Nirvana. Then he blessed and left her soothed, soothed, but with too faint a glimmering of his secret wisdom.

She gazed on the sweet, mysterious face of the Buddha, brooding in ineffable calm above her. O the peace, the rest, the awful placidity of his face! And gazing, she repeated the words of the priest: self, the mere clinging to life was evil. Nirvana, the highest sphere where there was naught but rest and bliss unutterable.

Thrice the priest passed by and beheld her still kneeling, still contemplating the wondrous face of the Holy One. More than one curious devotee glanced at her and thrilled on beholding the peaceful expression of holy joy which lighted her face.

The fountain in the courtyard splashed dreamily; the shadows lengthened; the somber silence of the temple deepened: O Haru prostrated herself before the great-hearted Buddha, and rose, soothed and at rest with herself and all the world. She paused on the temple steps, and with her last few coppers, bought of the old woman all her caged sparrows. One by one, she gave them liberty, and with each breathed a prayer—a prayer to attain Nirvana.

“All hail to O Haru, the wandered, the lost one! For she has returned to her tea houses and dancing! All hail to O Haru, the lotus-flower beauty, the dreamy-bewitching, the ideally perfect! Blessed are we, her slaves, to behold her! Blessed are we that drink of her sweetness, her beauty! Blessed are we, happiest of mortals! For ‘tis O Haru, the wonderful dancer, come once again among us, her bondmen! ‘Tis O Haru, the joy and the pride of all mankind, the ruler of beasts, the conquerer of men! O Haru, the dream of rhythmical beauty, of fiery emotion, of terrible passion! O Haru, the wondrous, the queenly, the radiant; the gracefulest, sweetest and purest of dancers! Rejoice O my fellows! For she has returned, come among us! Rejoice! Rejoice! For ‘tis O Haru, the spring, the glorious dancer—peer unto none of all geishas and dancers!”

The enthusiasm was boundless. The news had gone abroad that this night she was to dance, and her admirers had flocked to her as they had never before. Triumphant had been her return, but with all the sweet modesty of her nature, not unmingled with a certain sad pride, she received their homage. To accommodate the throng, the whole tea house had been thrown into a single, pavilion-like room, and even then, the crush was suffocating. She was simply superb, totally eclipsing her previous self. Never had she appeared so beautiful, so merry, so witty. In her moments of rest she kept them convulsed with her brilliant repartee and good-natured badinage. With each moment of the growing evening did she discover new graces, charms and glories. And now, in the ecstasies of worship, a hush of expectancy and awe fell upon the audience. She was to close with her favorite, Oishi, the “Loyal Rõnin.”

A wild burst of samisens and the rolling of tom-toms greet her appearance: the dance begins. Again the fierce and haughty samurai blood courses like fire through her veins: again she holds all with the magic sway of her personality: again she leads them with her into the illusory realities of old Japan. She surpassed herself in the force, the vividness, the emotion of her portrayal. With bold confidence she essayed flights hitherto undreamed of, playing the gamut of their feelings with the intrepidity of inspiration. Never before had the sentiment and the dramatic of her nature been so unified, so harmoniously one.

On—on—she led them into chaos of conflicting emotions: yet distinctly grew the picture of true ancient chivalry. Ever they beheld Oishi treading the mighty heights of his true manhood; casting aside all doubts and fears, all human ties; walking of a verity with the gods. Up—up—they forgot their baser selves, were raised to the sublimities of seemingly realized ideals. The climax approaches. But hush! A throb of emotion, intuitive, anticipatory, sways with an audible sob, the anguuished beholders.

O Haru, before the hara-kiri, undergoes a transfiguration. Her face illumines with angelic glory, with a brightness, too dazzling, almost, to gaze upon, she seems a being not of the world. The samisens wail in heart-breaking sorrow: the low crescendo roll of the finale commences: she kisses her father’s sword and the audience shudders expectantly. She is to follow her lord into the nether world, into the silent Nirvana. Her body sways in rhythmical undulations: her face is a-glow with heavenly rapture: she poises for the blow. Now——the music rolls and crashes—swift, that deft, upward thrust—swift the mighty gush of blood—

And the sweet silence of the lotus-time night is rent with the sobbing agony of many voices: “Woe! Woe! Woe! O Haru, the divine O Haru is no more!”

THE UNPARALLELED INVASION

(1907)

It was in the year 1976 that the trouble between the world and China reached its culmination. It was because of this that the celebration of the Second Centennial of American Liberty was deferred. Many other plans of the nations of the earth were twisted and tangled and postponed for the same reason. The world awoke rather abruptly to its danger; but for over seventy years, unperceived, affairs had been shaping toward this very end.

The year 1904 logically marks the beginning of the development that, seventy years later, was to bring consternation to the whole world. The Japanese-Russian War took place in 1904, and the historians of the time gravely noted it down that that event marked the entrance of Japan into the comity of nations. What it really did mark was the awakening of China. This awakening, long expected, had finally been given up. The Western nations had tried to arouse China, and they had failed. Out of their native optimism and race-egotism they had therefore concluded that the task was impossible, that China would never awaken.

What they had failed to take into account was this: that between them and China was no common psychological speech. Their thought- processes were radically dissimilar. There was no intimate vocabulary. The Western mind penetrated the Chinese mind but a short distance when it found itself in a fathomless maze. The Chinese mind penetrated the Western mind an equally short distance when it fetched up against a blank, incomprehensible wall. It was all a matter of language. There was no way to communicate Western ideas to the Chinese mind. China remained asleep. The material achievement and progress of the West was a closed book to her; nor could the West open the book. Back and deep down on the tie-ribs of consciousness, in the mind, say, of the English-speaking race, was a capacity to thrill to short, Saxon words; back and deep down on the tie-ribs of consciousness of the Chinese mind was a capacity to thrill to its own hieroglyphics; but the Chinese mind could not thrill to short, Saxon words; nor could the English-speaking mind thrill to hieroglyphics. The fabrics of their minds were woven from totally different stuffs. They were mental aliens. And so it was that Western material achievement and progress made no dent on the rounded sleep of China.

Came Japan and her victory over Russia in 1904. Now the Japanese race was the freak and paradox among Eastern peoples. In some strange way Japan was receptive to all the West had to offer. Japan swiftly assimilated the Western ideas, and digested them, and so capably applied them that she suddenly burst forth, full-panoplied, a world-power. There is no explaining this peculiar openness of Japan to the alien culture of the West. As well might be explained any biological sport in the animal kingdom.

Having decisively thrashed the great Russian Empire, Japan promptly set about dreaming a colossal dream of empire for herself. Korea she had made into a granary and a colony; treaty privileges and vulpine diplomacy gave her the monopoly of Manchuria. But Japan was not satisfied. She turned her eyes upon China. There lay a vast territory, and in that territory were the hugest deposits in the world of iron and coal--the backbone of industrial civilization. Given natural resources, the other great factor in industry is labour. In that territory was a population of 400,000,000 souls--one quarter of the then total population of the earth. Furthermore, the Chinese were excellent workers, while their fatalistic philosophy (or religion) and their stolid nervous organization constituted them splendid soldiers--if they were properly managed. Needless to say, Japan was prepared to furnish that management.

But best of all, from the standpoint of Japan, the Chinese was a kindred race. The baffling enigma of the Chinese character to the West was no baffling enigma to the Japanese. The Japanese understood as we could never school ourselves or hope to understand. Their mental processes were the same. The Japanese thought with the same thought-symbols as did the Chinese, and they thought in the same peculiar grooves. Into the Chinese mind the Japanese went on where we were balked by the obstacle of incomprehension. They took the turning which we could not perceive, twisted around the obstacle, and were out of sight in the ramifications of the Chinese mind where we could not follow. They were brothers. Long ago one had borrowed the other’s written language, and, untold generations before that, they had diverged from the common Mongol stock. There had been changes, differentiations brought about by diverse conditions and infusions of other blood; but down at the bottom of their beings, twisted into the fibres of them, was a heritage in common, a sameness in kind that time had not obliterated.

And so Japan took upon herself the management of China. In the years immediately following the war with Russia, her agents swarmed over the Chinese Empire. A thousand miles beyond the last mission station toiled her engineers and spies, clad as coolies, under the guise of itinerant merchants or proselytizing Buddhist priests, noting down the horse-power of every waterfall, the likely sites for factories, the heights of mountains and passes, the strategic advantages and weaknesses, the wealth of the farming valleys, the number of bullocks in a district or the number of labourers that could be collected by forced levies. Never was there such a census, and it could have been taken by no other people than the dogged, patient, patriotic Japanese.

But in a short time secrecy was thrown to the winds. Japan’s officers reorganized the Chinese army; her drill sergeants made the mediaeval warriors over into twentieth century soldiers, accustomed to all the modern machinery of war and with a higher average of marksmanship than the soldiers of any Western nation. The engineers of Japan deepened and widened the intricate system of canals, built factories and foundries, netted the empire with telegraphs and telephones, and inaugurated the era of railroad-building. It was these same protagonists of machine-civilization that discovered the great oil deposits of Chunsan, the iron mountains of Whang-Sing, the copper ranges of Chinchi, and they sank the gas wells of Wow-Wee, that most marvellous reservoir of natural gas in all the world.

In China’s councils of empire were the Japanese emissaries. In the ears of the statesmen whispered the Japanese statesmen. The political reconstruction of the Empire was due to them. They evicted the scholar class, which was violently reactionary, and put into office progressive officials. And in every town and city of the Empire newspapers were started. Of course, Japanese editors ran the policy of these papers, which policy they got direct from Tokio. It was these papers that educated and made progressive the great mass of the population.

China was at last awake. Where the West had failed, Japan succeeded. She had transmuted Western culture and achievement into terms that were intelligible to the Chinese understanding. Japan herself, when she so suddenly awakened, had astounded the world. But at the time she was only forty millions strong. China’s awakening, with her four hundred millions and the scientific advance of the world, was frightfully astounding. She was the colossus of the nations, and swiftly her voice was heard in no uncertain tones in the affairs and councils of the nations. Japan egged her on, and the proud Western peoples listened with respectful ears.

China’s swift and remarkable rise was due, perhaps more than to anything else, to the superlative quality of her labour. The Chinese was the perfect type of industry. He had always been that. For sheer ability to work no worker in the world could compare with him. Work was the breath of his nostrils. It was to him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure had been to other peoples. Liberty, to him, epitomized itself in access to the means of toil. To till the soil and labour interminably was all he asked of life and the powers that be. And the awakening of China had given its vast population not merely free and unlimited access to the means of toil, but access to the highest and most scientific machine-means of toil.

China rejuvenescent! It was but a step to China rampant. She discovered a new pride in herself and a will of her own. She began to chafe under the guidance of Japan, but she did not chafe long. On Japan’s advice, in the beginning, she had expelled from the Empire all Western missionaries, engineers, drill sergeants, merchants, and teachers. She now began to expel the similar representatives of Japan. The latter’s advisory statesmen were showered with honours and decorations, and sent home. The West had awakened Japan, and, as Japan had then requited the West, Japan was not requited by China. Japan was thanked for her kindly aid and flung out bag and baggage by her gigantic protégé. The Western nations chuckled. Japan’s rainbow dream had gone glimmering. She grew angry. China laughed at her. The blood and the swords of the Samurai would out, and Japan rashly went to war. This occurred in 1922, and in seven bloody months Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa were taken away from her and she was hurled back, bankrupt, to stifle in her tiny, crowded islands. Exit Japan from the world drama. Thereafter she devoted herself to art, and her task became to please the world greatly with her creations of wonder and beauty.

Contrary to expectation, China did not prove warlike. She had no Napoleonic dream, and was content to devote herself to the arts of peace. After a time of disquiet, the idea was accepted that China was to be feared, not in war, but in commerce. It will be seen that the real danger was not apprehended. China went on consummating her machine-civilization. Instead of a large standing army, she developed an immensely larger and splendidly efficient militia. Her navy was so small that it was the laughing stock of the world; nor did she attempt to strengthen her navy. The treaty ports of the world were never entered by her visiting battleships.

The real danger lay in the fecundity of her loins, and it was in 1970 that the first cry of alarm was raised. For some time all territories adjacent to China had been grumbling at Chinese immigration; but now it suddenly came home to the world that China’s population was 500,000,000. She had increased by a hundred millions since her awakening. Burchaldter called attention to the fact that there were more Chinese in existence than white-skinned people. He performed a simple sum in arithmetic. He added together the populations of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, European Russia, and all Scandinavia. The result was 495,000,000. And the population of China overtopped this tremendous total by 5,000,000. Burchaldter’s figures went round the world, and the world shivered.

For many centuries China’s population had been constant. Her territory had been saturated with population; that is to say, her territory, with the primitive method of production, had supported the maximum limit of population. But when she awoke and inaugurated the machine-civilization, her productive power had been enormously increased. Thus, on the same territory, she was able to support a far larger population. At once the birth rate began to rise and the death rate to fall. Before, when population pressed against the means of subsistence, the excess population had been swept away by famine. But now, thanks to the machine-civilization, China’s means of subsistence had been enormously extended, and there were no famines; her population followed on the heels of the increase in the means of subsistence.

During this time of transition and development of power, China had entertained no dreams of conquest. The Chinese was not an imperial race. It was industrious, thrifty, and peace-loving. War was looked upon as an unpleasant but necessary task that at times must be performed. And so, while the Western races had squabbled and fought, and world-adventured against one another, China had calmly gone on working at her machines and growing. Now she was spilling over the boundaries of her Empire--that was all, just spilling over into the adjacent territories with all the certainty and terrifying slow momentum of a glacier.

Following upon the alarm raised by Burchaldter’s figures, in 1970 France made a long-threatened stand. French Indo-China had been overrun, filled up, by Chinese immigrants. France called a halt. The Chinese wave flowed on. France assembled a force of a hundred thousand on the boundary between her unfortunate colony and China, and China sent down an army of militia-soldiers a million strong. Behind came the wives and sons and daughters and relatives, with their personal household luggage, in a second army. The French force was brushed aside like a fly. The Chinese militia-soldiers, along with their families, over five millions all told, coolly took possession of French Indo-China and settled down to stay for a few thousand years.

Outraged France was in arms. She hurled fleet after fleet against the coast of China, and nearly bankrupted herself by the effort. China had no navy. She withdrew like a turtle into her shell. For a year the French fleets blockaded the coast and bombarded exposed towns and villages. China did not mind. She did not depend upon the rest of the world for anything. She calmly kept out of range of the French guns and went on working. France wept and wailed, wrung her impotent hands and appealed to the dumfounded nations. Then she landed a punitive expedition to march to Peking. It was two hundred and fifty thousand strong, and it was the flower of France. It landed without opposition and marched into the interior. And that was the last ever seen of it. The line of communication was snapped on the second day. Not a survivor came back to tell what had happened. It had been swallowed up in China’s cavernous maw, that was all.

In the five years that followed, China’s expansion, in all land directions, went on apace. Siam was made part of the Empire, and, in spite of all that England could do, Burma and the Malay Peninsula were overrun; while all along the long south boundary of Siberia, Russia was pressed severely by China’s advancing hordes. The process was simple. First came the Chinese immigration (or, rather, it was already there, having come there slowly and insidiously during the previous years). Next came the clash of arms and the brushing away of all opposition by a monster army of militia-soldiers, followed by their families and household baggage. And finally came their settling down as colonists in the conquered territory. Never was there so strange and effective a method of world conquest.

Napal and Bhutan were overrun, and the whole northern boundary of India pressed against by this fearful tide of life. To the west, Bokhara, and, even to the south and west, Afghanistan, were swallowed up. Persia, Turkestan, and all Central Asia felt the pressure of the flood. It was at this time that Burchaldter revised his figures. He had been mistaken. China’s population must be seven hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knew how many millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world, Burchaldter announced, and the world trembled. China’s increase must have begun immediately, in 1904. It was remembered that since that date there had not been a single famine. At 5,000,000 a year increase, her total increase in the intervening seventy years must be 350,000,000. But who was to know? It might be more. Who was to know anything of this strange new menace of the twentieth century--China, old China, rejuvenescent, fruitful, and militant!

The Convention of 1975 was called at Philadelphia. All the Western nations, and some few of the Eastern, were represented. Nothing was accomplished. There was talk of all countries putting bounties on children to increase the birth rate, but it was laughed to scorn by the arithmeticians, who pointed out that China was too far in the lead in that direction. No feasible way of coping with China was suggested. China was appealed to and threatened by the United Powers, and that was all the Convention of Philadelphia came to; and the Convention and the Powers were laughed at by China. Li Tang Fwung, the power behind the Dragon Throne, deigned to reply.

“What does China care for the comity of nations?” said Li Tang Fwung. “We are the most ancient, honourable, and royal of races. We have our own destiny to accomplish. It is unpleasant that our destiny does not tally with the destiny of the rest of the world, but what would you? You have talked windily about the royal races and the heritage of the earth, and we can only reply that that remains to be seen. You cannot invade us. Never mind about your navies. Don’t shout. We know our navy is small. You see we use it for police purposes. We do not care for the sea. Our strength is in our population, which will soon be a billion. Thanks to you, we are equipped with all modern war-machinery. Send your navies. We will not notice them. Send your punitive expeditions, but first remember France. To land half a million soldiers on our shores would strain the resources of any of you. And our thousand millions would swallow them down in a mouthful. Send a million; send five millions, and we will swallow them down just as readily. Pouf! A mere nothing, a meagre morsel. Destroy, as you have threatened, you United States, the ten million coolies we have forced upon your shores--why, the amount scarcely equals half of our excess birth rate for a year.”

So spoke Li Tang Fwung. The world was nonplussed, helpless, terrified. Truly had he spoken. There was no combating China’s amazing birth rate. If her population was a billion, and was increasing twenty millions a year, in twenty-five years it would be a billion and a half--equal to the total population of the world in 1904. And nothing could be done. There was no way to dam up the over-spilling monstrous flood of life. War was futile. China laughed at a blockade of her coasts. She welcomed invasion. In her capacious maw was room for all the hosts of earth that could be hurled at her. And in the meantime her flood of yellow life poured out and on over Asia. China laughed and read in their magazines the learned lucubrations of the distracted Western scholars.

But there was one scholar China failed to reckon on—Jacobus Laningdale. Not that he was a scholar, except in the widest sense. Primarily, Jacobus Laningdale was a scientist, and, up to that time, a very obscure scientist, a professor employed in the laboratories of the Health Office of New York City. Jacobus Laningdale’s head was very like any other head, but in that head was evolved an idea. Also, in that head was the wisdom to keep that idea secret. He did not write an article for the magazines. Instead, he asked for a vacation. On September 19, 1975, he arrived in Washington. It was evening, but he proceeded straight to the White House, for he had already arranged an audience with the President. He was closeted with President Moyer for three hours. What passed between them was not learned by the rest of the world until long after; in fact, at that time the world was not interested in Jacobus Laningdale. Next day the President called in his Cabinet. Jacobus Laningdale was present. The proceedings were kept secret. But that very afternoon Rufus Cowdery, Secretary of State, left Washington, and early the following morning sailed for England. The secret that he carried began to spread, but it spread only among the heads of Governments. Possibly half-a-dozen men in a nation were entrusted with the idea that had formed in Jacobus Laningdale’s head. Following the spread of the secret, sprang up great activity in all the dockyards, arsenals, and navy-yards. The people of France and Austria became suspicious, but so sincere were their Governments’ calls for confidence that they acquiesced in the unknown project that was afoot.

This was the time of the Great Truce. All countries pledged themselves solemnly not to go to war with any other country. The first definite action was the gradual mobilization of the armies of Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Then began the eastward movement. All railroads into Asia were glutted with troop trains. China was the objective, that was all that was known. A little later began the great sea movement. Expeditions of warships were launched from all countries. Fleet followed fleet, and all proceeded to the coast of China. The nations cleaned out their navy-yards. They sent their revenue cutters and dispatch boots and lighthouse tenders, and they sent their last antiquated cruisers and battleships. Not content with this, they impressed the merchant marine. The statistics show that 58,640 merchant steamers, equipped with searchlights and rapid-fire guns, were despatched by the various nations to China.

And China smiled and waited. On her land side, along her boundaries, were millions of the warriors of Europe. She mobilized five times as many millions of her militia and awaited the invasion. On her sea coasts she did the same. But China was puzzled. After all this enormous preparation, there was no invasion. She could not understand. Along the great Siberian frontier all was quiet. Along her coasts the towns and villages were not even shelled. Never, in the history of the world, had there been so mighty a gathering of war fleets. The fleets of all the world were there, and day and night millions of tons of battleships ploughed the brine of her coasts, and nothing happened. Nothing was attempted. Did they think to make her emerge from her shell? China smiled. Did they think to tire her out, or starve her out? China smiled again.

But on May 1, 1976, had the reader been in the imperial city of Peking, with its then population of eleven millions, he would have witnessed a curious sight. He would have seen the streets filled with the chattering yellow populace, every queued head tilted back, every slant eye turned skyward. And high up in the blue he would have beheld a tiny dot of black, which, because of its orderly evolutions, he would have identified as an airship. From this airship, as it curved its flight back and forth over the city, fell missiles--strange, harmless missiles, tubes of fragile glass that shattered into thousands of fragments on the streets and house- tops. But there was nothing deadly about these tubes of glass. Nothing happened. There were no explosions. It is true, three Chinese were killed by the tubes dropping on their heads from so enormous a height; but what were three Chinese against an excess birth rate of twenty millions? One tube struck perpendicularly in a fish-pond in a garden and was not broken. It was dragged ashore by the master of the house. He did not dare to open it, but, accompanied by his friends, and surrounded by an ever-increasing crowd, he carried the mysterious tube to the magistrate of the district. The latter was a brave man. With all eyes upon him, he shattered the tube with a blow from his brass-bowled pipe. Nothing happened. Of those who were very near, one or two thought they saw some mosquitoes fly out. That was all. The crowd set up a great laugh and dispersed.

As Peking was bombarded by glass tubes, so was all China. The tiny airships, dispatched from the warships, contained but two men each, and over all cities, towns, and villages they wheeled and curved, one man directing the ship, the other man throwing over the glass tubes.

Had the reader again been in Peking, six weeks later, he would have looked in vain for the eleven million inhabitants. Some few of them he would have found, a few hundred thousand, perhaps, their carcasses festering in the houses and in the deserted streets, and piled high on the abandoned death-waggons. But for the rest he would have had to seek along the highways and byways of the Empire. And not all would he have found fleeing from plague-stricken Peking, for behind them, by hundreds of thousands of unburied corpses by the wayside, he could have marked their flight. And as it was with Peking, so it was with all the cities, towns, and villages of the Empire. The plague smote them all. Nor was it one plague, nor two plagues; it was a score of plagues. Every virulent form of infectious death stalked through the land. Too late the Chinese government apprehended the meaning of the colossal preparations, the marshalling of the world-hosts, the flights of the tin airships, and the rain of the tubes of glass. The proclamations of the government were vain. They could not stop the eleven million plague-stricken wretches, fleeing from the one city of Peking to spread disease through all the land. The physicians and health officers died at their posts; and death, the all- conqueror, rode over the decrees of the Emperor and Li Tang Fwung. It rode over them as well, for Li Tang Fwung died in the second week, and the Emperor, hidden away in the Summer Palace, died in the fourth week.

Had there been one plague, China might have coped with it. But from a score of plagues no creature was immune. The man who escaped smallpox went down before scarlet fever. The man who was immune to yellow fever was carried away by cholera; and if he were immune to that, too, the Black Death, which was the bubonic plague, swept him away. For it was these bacteria, and germs, and microbes, and bacilli, cultured in the laboratories of the West, that had come down upon China in the rain of glass.

All organization vanished. The government crumbled away. Decrees and proclamations were useless when the men who made them and signed them one moment were dead the next. Nor could the maddened millions, spurred on to flight by death, pause to heed anything. They fled from the cities to infect the country, and wherever they fled they carried the plagues with them. The hot summer was on—Jacobus Laningdale had selected the time shrewdly—and the plague festered everywhere. Much is conjectured of what occurred, and much has been learned from the stories of the few survivors. The wretched creatures stormed across the Empire in many-millioned flight. The vast armies China had collected on her frontiers melted away. The farms were ravaged for food, and no more crops were planted, while the crops already in were left unattended and never came to harvest. The most remarkable thing, perhaps, was the flights. Many millions engaged in them, charging to the bounds of the Empire to be met and turned back by the gigantic armies of the West. The slaughter of the mad hosts on the boundaries was stupendous. Time and again the guarding line was drawn back twenty or thirty miles to escape the contagion of the multitudinous dead.

Once the plague broke through and seized upon the German and Austrian soldiers who were guarding the borders of Turkestan. Preparations had been made for such a happening, and though sixty thousand soldiers of Europe were carried off, the international corps of physicians isolated the contagion and dammed it back. It was during this struggle that it was suggested that a new plague- germ had originated, that in some way or other a sort of hybridization between plague-germs had taken place, producing a new and frightfully virulent germ. First suspected by Vomberg, who became infected with it and died, it was later isolated and studied by Stevens, Hazenfelt, Norman, and Landers.

Such was the unparalleled invasion of China. For that billion of people there was no hope. Pent in their vast and festering charnel-house, all organization and cohesion lost, they could do naught but die. They could not escape. As they were flung back from their land frontiers, so were they flung back from the sea. Seventy-five thousand vessels patrolled the coasts. By day their smoking funnels dimmed the sea-rim, and by night their flashing searchlights ploughed the dark and harrowed it for the tiniest escaping junk. The attempts of the immense fleets of junks were pitiful. Not one ever got by the guarding sea-hounds. Modern war- machinery held back the disorganized mass of China, while the plagues did the work.

But old War was made a thing of laughter. Naught remained to him but patrol duty. China had laughed at war, and war she was getting, but it was ultra-modern war, twentieth century war, the war of the scientist and the laboratory, the war of Jacobus Laningdale. Hundred-ton guns were toys compared with the micro- organic projectiles hurled from the laboratories, the messengers of death, the destroying angels that stalked through the empire of a billion souls.

During all the summer and fall of 1976 China was an inferno. There was no eluding the microscopic projectiles that sought out the remotest hiding-places. The hundreds of millions of dead remained unburied and the germs multiplied themselves, and, toward the last, millions died daily of starvation. Besides, starvation weakened the victims and destroyed their natural defences against the plagues. Cannibalism, murder, and madness reigned. And so perished China.

Not until the following February, in the coldest weather, were the first expeditions made. These expeditions were small, composed of scientists and bodies of troops; but they entered China from every side. In spite of the most elaborate precautions against infection, numbers of soldiers and a few of the physicians were stricken. But the exploration went bravely on. They found China devastated, a howling wilderness through which wandered bands of wild dogs and desperate bandits who had survived. All survivors were put to death wherever found. And then began the great task, the sanitation of China. Five years and hundreds of millions of treasure were consumed, and then the world moved in—not in zones, as was the idea of Baron Albrecht, but heterogeneously, according to the democratic American programme. It was a vast and happy intermingling of nationalities that settled down in China in 1982 and the years that followed—a tremendous and successful experiment in cross-fertilization. We know to-day the splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output that followed.

It was in 1987, the Great Truce having been dissolved, that the ancient quarrel between France and Germany over Alsace-Lorraine recrudesced. The war-cloud grew dark and threatening in April, and on April 17 the Convention of Copenhagen was called. The representatives of the nations of the world, being present, all nations solemnly pledged themselves never to use against one another the laboratory methods of warfare they had employed in the invasion of China.

--Excerpt from Walt Mervin’s “Certain Essays in History.”

“THE CHINAGO”

(From the July, 1909 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine)

AH CHO did not understand French. He sat in the crowded court-room, very weary and bored, listening to the unceasing, explosive French that now one official and now another uttered. It was just so much gabble to Ah Cho, and he marvelled at the stu