THE
YELLOW
PEARL
——
ADELINE
M. TESKEY
THE YELLOW PEARL
March 1st, 1——
Here I am in this strange country about which I have learned in the geography and history, and about which I heard my father talk. The daughter of an American man and a Chinese woman, I suppose I am what is called a mongrel. My father was a Commissioner of Customs in China, and living for years in that country he fell in love with my mother and married her—as was natural. Who could help falling in love with my dear, yellow, winsome, little mother? My name is Margaret, called after my father's mother; my father said that the word Margaret means a pearl, so he gave me the pet name "Pearl." Dear father!
"It was a monstrous thing for Brother George to marry away there," I overheard my Aunt Gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "Why could he not have come back home to his own country and found a wife?—And above all to have married a heathen Chinese!"
"Not a heathen," said my grandmother, reproachfully, "she had previously embraced the faith of Europeans; so my dear George wrote me from that far-away country."
"Oh, they are all heathens in my estimation," cried my Aunt Gwendolin, scornfully; "what faith they embrace does not change the fact that they belong to the yellow people."