He suddenly realized that there might be something in learning.
CHAPTER IV
The circumstances surrounding his first meeting with foreigners—those white-faced men and women of western race who had been nicknamed by the common people "foreign devils"—had a tremendous influence on him.
From his earliest years he could remember being half-frightened, half-fascinated by the awesome tales which were current regarding their strength and their violence—and of the dread things they did to children if they fell into their clutches. No mad whisperings among illiterate Russian peasants leading to pogroms of the Jews could surpass these insiduous stories. Foreigners, it was said, when they wished powerful medicines, took the eyes of Chinese children and boiled them. They were also reported to cut up dead bodies, besides being willing to use their knives on the living whom they put to sleep with drugs and who woke up to find legs and arms missing....
In this way was the work of hospitals discredited—only the very poor and wretched dared to go near them. The "devils" represented a hideous force which so exercised the public mind that it had been always easy in the past to raise a riot against them on the slightest provocation. Parents never failed to threaten children who plagued them with the declaration that they would be handed over to the tender mercies of the first devil who was met with. This threat was worse than any possible chastisement. It instantly brought submission.
Little Wang had caught a distant glimpse of them several times passing in and out of the city gate; but like the other children he had immediately run away and hid himself until the coast was clear. Once, when there was no time to escape, a friendly cake-seller had taken hold of him and covered his eyes tightly with his hands so that "the malign influence" should not be transmitted to him through his vision. That action had so fascinated him that he had talked about nothing else for days. He even invented a game, in which he played the part of the foreigner, and all the children had to protect one another as the cake-seller had done from his influence when he approached.
Then had come the amazing adventure.
It was on a summer's afternoon, very late in the day when the August sun is still baking hot although it is about to set. All the world was drowsy and few were up and about. Stark-naked and supremely happy, he had wandered along the dusty highway into the country until he had come to a long irregular pond, full of stagnant water, with lilies growing in it, and frogs croaking their everlasting summer chorus. With the aid of a broken tool taken from his father's forge he had fashioned rudimentary boats and filled them with insects which tumbled in and out and fought one another and ended by dying the water-death.
Then, when he had tired of this sport, he had chased the slow and stupid dragon-flies with a stick on which was smeared bird-line borrowed from a neighbour, catching more than one by his surprising quickness. The diaphanous wings and the long shapely bodies provided him with new ideas: and with the aid of some strands of straw he had made for himself a crown of iridescent beauty—all shaking and moving with these creatures which he placed on his head, and which he thought entrancing.