Early one morning, before our babies were awake, we steamed slowly up the Canton River. I put the thought of the horrid recital out of my mind; and settled into my cosy steamer chair and said to myself, “If there be an Elysium on earth it is this—it is this.” The day was perfect. Ah! how many perfect days this old world has seen, and yet how she throbs and smiles and blushes into beauty, and looks quite like a bride, the disreputable weather-beaten old jade, and welcomes the kisses of each new perfect day, and beneath those kisses assumes the virtue of loveliness, even though she have it not!
We were carrying some hundreds of coolies, and some thousands of fish to Canton. The coolies were tightly packed behind a secure grating. The fish were poured by hundreds into holes, purposely made in the side of the boat. How they sprang for their freedom, the scaly, silvery, speckled things, and with what splendid splutter and splash they fell back into the water-filled hole!
There were four cabin passengers on the delightful little bark. I was the only woman on the boat—fore or aft. When I am the only woman among a boat-load of men, and the weather behaves itself, I always say to myself, “If there be an Elysium on earth it is this—it is this!” The three gentlemen were—the Editor of a Hong-Kong paper, a charming fellow and a good friend of ours; an interesting German who spoke French fluently and told me a great deal about Canton; and last, but if you please, not least, that extremely fortunate individual who is my husband.
What a pleasant fellow the captain was! He will, most probably, never see these lines, and I feel it my duty to describe him. He was my fellow countryman—and the kind of man who causes you to hold up your head and say, “It’s a good thing to be an American.” I am supposed to be a bad American. I don’t quite plead guilty to the accusation; but I certainly do not fill Sir Walter Scott’s ideal of patriotism. I fear he would even consider my soul dead. My cosmopolitanism is far more than my patriotism. But it always gives me a deep thrill of real pleasure to meet in a foreign land—delightful Americans. I think of my compatriots as some one thought of a little girl whom they immortalised in the lines,
When she was good, she was very, very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid.
No one is more charming, more admirable, than a charming American. I know Americans whom the children of no other nation can excel. If patriotism consists in praising the shrilly cackling, over-diamonded women, and the ill-educated, shallow, opinionated men of our hoi polloi—why then I am not patriotic. They, beyond everything else human, set my teeth on edge, do Americans the vulgar. But because I cry out at them with genuine American acrimony, it does not follow that I am stupid enough to think them the only Americans. There is another type of American of whom I would far rather think, and I wish that he travelled more. I mean the man who stands hat in hand to welcome you on to the porch of his Virginia home. I mean the man who is superlatively a gentleman even when he carries our flag through the wigwams of the wild west. I mean—oh! well, I mean all that ilk!
Our captain was a courtly, cultivated gentleman. He was highly educated, and had lived in China intelligently. He was quite a perfect host.
Everything combined to make our little trip enjoyable. The Chinese butler not only understood his duty but did it. Dinner was eminently successful. But it was on deck that we were happiest.
China! China! For all your great antiquity, how new and fresh and fascinating you were to me!