8
THE HESPERIAN
pedantry. Ho found American schoolman
distasteful. uToo mueheo good to know
muchec," ho onco sarcastically remarked.
Of course Yung was only a heathen Chinco
who howed down to wood and stono his
judgment in this unO other matters" does not
count for much.
There was one American whom Yung
took to his heart and loved, if a Chinaman
can love, and that was old Ponter. Pouter
was one of the most learned men who ever
drifted into 'Frisco, but his best days were
over before he came. lie had held the
chair of Sanskrit in a western university for
years, but he could drink too much beer and
was too good a shot at billiards to keep that
place forever, so the college had requested
his resignation. He went from place to
place until at last he drifted into San Fran
cisco, where he stayed. lie went clear
down to the mud sills there. How he lived
no one knew. He did some copying for the
lawyers, and he waited on the table in a
third rate boarding house, and he smoked a
great deal of opium. Yung, too, loved the
Smoke; perhaps it was that as much as
Sanskrit that drew the two men together.
At any rate, as soon as Yung's bazar was
closed, they went together down to his dark
little den in the Chinese quarters, and there
they talked Buddah and Confucius and
Lau-tsz till midnight. Then they went
across the hall to the Seven Portals of
Paradise. There they each took a mat and
each his own sweet pipe with bowls of jade
and mouthpieces of amber Yung had given
Ponter one and pulled a few steady puffs
and were in bliss till morning.
To Ponter Yung told a good deal of his
history. Not in regular narativo form, for
he never talked about himself long, but he
Jet it out bit by bit. When he was a boy
he lived in Nanking, the oldest city of the
oldest empire, where the great schools are
and the tallest pagoda in the world rears its
height of shining porcelain. There he had
been educated, and had learned all the wis
dom of the Chinese. He became tired of
all that after awhile; tired of the rice paper
books and of the masters in their black
gowns, of the blue mountains and of the
shadows of the great tower that fell sharp
upon the yellow pavement in tho glare of
tho sun. He went south; down tho great
canal in a red barge with big sails like
dragon's wings. Ho camo to Soutchcofou
that is built upon the water-ways among tho
hills of Lake Taihoo. There tho air smelt
always of ilowers, and tho bamboo woods
were green, and the rico fields shook in tho
wind. There tho actors and jugglers gather
the year around, and the Mnndfins come to
find brides for their harems. For once a
god had loved a woman of that city, and he
gave to her the charms of heaven, and since
then the maidens of Soutchcofou have been
the most beautiful in the Middle Kingdom,
and have lived but to love and be loved.
There Yung dwelt until he tired of pleasure.
Then he went on foot across the barren
plains of Thibet and the snow-capped Him
alayas into India. He spent ten years in a
temple there among tho Brhamin priests,
learning the sacred books. Then ho fell in
with some high caste Indian magicians and
went with them. Of tho next five years of
his life Yung never spoke. Once, when
Ponter questioned him about them, he
laughed an ugly laugh which showed his
broken yellow teeth and said:
l'I not know what I did then. The devil
ho know, ho and the fiends."
At last Yung came to California. There
he took to carving and the Smoke.
Yung was rich; he might have dwelt in a
fine house, but he prefered to live among
"his own people in a little room across from
the Seven iPortals. Ho celebrated all tho
feasts and festivals with tho other Chinamen,
and bowed down to the gods in the joss
house. Ho explained this to Ponter one
day by saying:
"It is to keep us together, keep us China
men.
5J
Wise Yung! It was not because of the
cheapness of Chinese labor that the Chinese
bill was enacted. It was because church
and state feared this people who went about
