“But me, I'm different,” says Sadler, “The uselessness of things bothers me. Look at 'em. I been in Saleratus five years, partner with Fu Shan. Sometimes I had a good time. Where is it now? You laugh, or you sigh. Same amount of wind, nothing left either way.
What's the use?
You chew tobacco and spit out the juice.
What's the use?
If there's anybody with a destiny that's got any assets at all, and he wants to swap even, bring him along. Look at this town! Is it any sort of a town? No honesty, for there ain't a man in it that can shuffle a pack without stackin' it. No ability, for there ain't more'n one or two can stack it real well. No seriousness, for they start in to drown a Chinaman in a dry creek, and they cut away as happy as if they'd succeeded. I sits up here on my porch, and I says, 'What is it but a dream? Fu Shan,' I says, 'this here life's a shadow!' Then that forsaken, conceited, blank heathen, he says one of his ancestors discovered the same three thousand years ago. But, he says, another ancestor, pretty near as distinguished, he discovered that, if you put enough curry on your rice, it gives things an appearance of reality. Which, says he, they discovered the uselessness of things in Asia so long ago they've forgot when, and then they discovered the uselessness of the discovery. They discovered gunpowder, he says, long before we did, but they use it for fireworks in the interests of irony. They've forgotten more'n we ever knew, says he, the stuck-up little cast-eyed pig. Go on! I'm disgusted. Haven't I put on curry till it give me a furred mouth and dyspepsia of the soul? What's the use?”
Fu Shan chuckled again.
“What's the use?” says Sadler. “Things happen, but they don't mean anything by it. You hustle around the circle. You might as well have sat down on the circumference. Maybe the trouble is with me, maybe it's Saleratus. One of us is played out!”
Fu Shan took the ivory pipestem from his mouth, and spoke placid and squeaking. “My got blother have joss house by Langoon. Velly good joss house, velly good ploperty. Tlee hundred Buddha joss and gleen dlagons. My ancestors make him. Gleen dlagon joss house. Velly good.”
“My! You'd think he's an idjit to hear him,” says Sadler, and looked at Fu Shan, admiring. “But he ain't, not really.”
Fu Shan chuckled a third time.
He took no more stock in the happiness of his countrymen than Sadler did in the morals of his. They seemed to be a profitable combination, but I didn't make out to understand Sadler, though I went as far as to see that he had a variegated way of putting it.
Then I told him I wanted a first mate's berth on the Good Sister, supposing he was willing, either on account of old times or because he might happen to be convinced I was good enough for it. I told him the experiences I'd had. What had happened to the Helen Mar I told him, and about the Mituas business, and the loss of the Anaconda, and even about Kreps and Liebchen.