"'Well,' thinks I to myself, 'it doesn't look as if he knew much more than I do myself. I may bluff him yet.' And we squatted down on a barrel apiece, with an empty sugar-box between us for a table.
"'Mr. Abrahamsen,' says he, 'if you'd kindly repeat a sentence, anything you like, in Chinese.' And he takes up a grand gold pencil-case and starts to write in the book.
"'Aha,' thought I, 'now we're sitting to the hardest part,' as the miller said when he got to the eighth commandment. Anyhow, here goes. And I rattles off, solemn-like: 'Me—hoh—puh—fih—chu—lang—ra—ta—ta—poh—uh—ee—lee—shung—la—uh—uh—uh!' And down it all goes in his book like winking.
"'Very good, very good. And now, what does it mean?'
"'What it means——' Well, that was a nasty one, as you can imagine. Funny thing, but I'd never thought about that. 'Mean—why—well, it means—H'm. Why, it's as much as to say—well, it's a sort of—sort of national anthem, as you might call it. Sons of China's Ancient Land. Not quite that exactly, but something like it, you understand. Chinese is—well, it's different, you know.'
"He looked at me pretty sharply under his glasses, but I stood my ground and never winked a muscle. And then, bless me if he wasn't mean enough to ask me to say it all over again.
"Well, I could have stood on my head in the dark easier than remember what it was I'd said before. So I puts on an air, superior-like, and says to him:
"'Wait a bit, it's your turn now. Let's see if you can manage it first.'
"'Well, my good sir, to begin with, Sons of Norway's Ancient Land is a sort of national anthem if you like, but I hardly think it's been translated into Chinese. And in the second place, the word for sons is "Yung-li," not "Me-hoh," as you said.'
"'Beg pardon, Professor, but there's different dialectrics out there, same as here: some talks northland and some westland fashion, not to speak of shorthand, and it's all as different as light and dark.'