Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator

by J. W. Duffield

“They’re not stupid by any means,” replied the doctor. “There was a time, thousands of years ago, when they were the very leaders of civilization. They had their inventors and their experimenters. Why, they found out all about gunpowder and printing and the mariner’s compass, when Europe was sunk in the lowest depths of ignorance. At that time, the intellect of the people was active and productive. But then they seem to have had a stroke of paralysis, and they’ve never gotten over it.”

“It always seemed to me,” said Bert, “that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ should really have been called ‘Alice in China-land.’ She and her mad hatter and the March hare and the Cheshire cat would certainly have felt at home here.”

“True enough,” rejoined the doctor. “It isn’t without reason that this has been called ‘Topsy-turvy’ land.”

“For instance,” he went on, “you could never get into a Chinaman’s head what Shakespeare meant when he said: ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ The roses in China have no fragrance.

“Take some other illustrations. When we give a banquet, the guest of honor is seated at the right of the host as a special mark of distinction. In China, he is placed at the left. If you meet a friend in the street, out goes your hand in greeting. The Chinaman shakes hands with himself. If an American or European is perplexed about anything he scratches his head. When the Chinaman is puzzled, he scratches his foot.”

The comicality of this idea was too much for the gravity of the boys—never very hard to upset at any time—and they roared with laughter. Their laugh was echoed more moderately by Captain Manning, who, relieved at last of the many duties attendant upon the first day in port, had come up behind them and now joined the group. The necessity of keeping up the strain and dignity of his official position had largely disappeared with the casting of the anchor, and it was more with the easy democracy and good fellowship of the ordinary passenger that he joined in the conversation.

“They have another queer custom in China that bears right on the doctor’s profession,” he said, with a sly twinkle in his eye. “Here they employ a doctor by the year, but they only pay him as long as the employer keeps well. The minute he gets sick, the doctor’s salary ceases, and he has to work like sixty to get him well in a hurry, so that his pay may be resumed.”

“Well,” retorted the doctor, “I don’t know but they have the better of us there. It is certainly an incentive to get the patient well at once, instead of spinning out the case for the sake of a bigger fee. I know a lot of fashionable doctors whose income would go down amazingly if that system were introduced in America.”

“You’ll find, too,” said the captain, “that the Chinaman’s idea of what is good to eat is almost as different from ours as their other conceptions. There’s just about one thing in which they agree with us, and that is on the question of pork. They are very fond of this, and you have all read, no doubt, the story told by Charles Lamb of the Chinese peasant whose cabin was burned, together with a pig who had shared it with the family. His despair at the loss of the pig was soon turned to rejoicing when he smelled the savory odor of roast pork and learned for the first time how good it was. But, outside of that, we don’t have much in common. They care very little for beef or mutton. To make up for this, however, they have made a good many discoveries in the culinary line that they regard as delicacies, but that you won’t find in any American cook book. Rats and mice and edible birds’ nests and shark fins are served in a great variety of ways, and those foreigners who have had the courage to wade through the whole Chinese bill of fare say it is surprising to find out how good it is. After all, you can get used to anything, and we Europeans and Americans are becoming broader in our tastes than we used to be. Horse meat is almost as common as beef in Berlin; dogs are not disdained in some parts of France, and only the other day I read of a banquet in Paris where they served stuffed angleworms and pronounced them good.”