Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 15, 1893)
THE HESPERIAN unprosolyting and unproselytod. Who hnd printed centuries before Guttonborg was born, who had used anesthetics boforo chloroform was over dreamed of. Who, in the new west, settled down and ate and drank and dressed as men had dono in the days of the flood. Their terriblo antiquity weighed upon us like a dead hand upon a living heart. Yung did not know much about English literature. Ho liked the Bible, and ho had picked up a copy of Hiawatha and was very fond of it. " I suppose the artificial ness of the poem appealed to his natural instinct and his training. Pouter was much disgusted with his taste, and one night ho read the whole of Hamlet aloud to him, translating the archaic phrases into doggeral Chinese ns he read. When he finished, Yung stared at him with a troubled look and said in Chinese : "Yes, it is a great book, but I do not understand. If I were a young man I might try, but it is different. Wo cut our trees into shape, wo bind our women into shape, we make our books into shape by rule. Your trees and women and books just grow, and yet they have shape. I do not under stand. Come, let us smoke, the Smoke is good." Pouter threw the book on the floor and arose and paced the floor shouting angrily: "0 yes, d n you! You are a terrible people! I have come as near losing all human feeling and all human kinship as over a white man did, but you make mo shudder, every one of you. You live right under the 8un's face, but you cannot feel his fire. The breast of God heaves just over you, but you never know it. You ought to be a feeling, passionate people, but you are as heartless and devilish as your accursed stone gods that leer at you in your Pagodas. Your sagos learn rites, rites, rites, like so many parrots. They have forgotten how to think so long ago that they have forgotten they ever forgot. Your drama has outlived pathos, your science has outlived investiga tion, your poetry has outlived passion. Your very roses do not smell, thoy have for gotten how to give odor ages and ages ago. Your devilish gods have cursed you with im mortality and you have outlived your souls. You are so old that you are born yellow and wrinkled and blind. You ought to have been buried centuries before Europe was civilized. You ought to have been wrapped in your mort cloth ages before our swaddling clothes were made. You are dead things that move!" Yung answered never a word, but smiled his hideous smile and went across to the Portals of Paradise, and lay down upon his mat, and drew long wh ill's from his mouth piece, slowly, solemnly, as though ho were doing sacrifice to some god. Ho dreams of his own country, dreams of the sea and the mountains and forests and the slopes of sunny laud. When he awakes there is not much of his dream left, only masses and masses of color that haunt him all day. "Pouter," said Yung one day as he sat cutting a littlo three faced Vishnu in ivory, "when I die do not even bury mo here. Let them go through the rites and then send me home. I must lie there while the flesh is yet on my bones. Let the funeral be grand. Let there be many mourners, and roast pigs, and rice and gin. Let the gin bowls be of real China, and let the coffin be a costly one like the coffins of Liauchau, there is money enough. Let my pipe stay in my hand, and put me on the first ship that sails." Not long after that, Pouter arose from his mat one morning, and went over to waken Yung. But Yung-would not waken any more. lie had tasted his last ounce of the Smoke, and he lay with the mouthpiece in his mouth, and his fingers clutched about the bowl. Pouter sat down by him and said slowly: "A white man has got pretty low dov.u, Yung, when ho takes to the Smoke and runs with a heathen. But I liked you, Yun", ss mwh as a man can like a stone thin'. Yon were'nt a bad follow, sir. You knew more Sanskrit than Muller dreamed of
