Emperors and heroes have supped off strange flesh in time of war. According to some historians Napoleon’s larder was reduced to cat’s flesh, during the retreat from Moscow.
The most elegant woman I ever knew, a French woman who went through the Commune, told me once, “Ze meat of ze horse, it iz very nasty, but ze meat of ze rat it is nice, if you know not what it iz.”
“The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.”
We tip-tilt our nice European noses at a great deal, because we have had no usage of it. Sometimes we are condemned as unreasonable. Prejudice and lack of sympathy are near akin to injustice and misjudgment.
We left Canton reluctantly. As we neared Hong-Kong my comrade said to me—
“James, would anything on earth induce you to repeat that recital?”
“My friend,” I said, “if I could have another long day’s prowl about Canton I would stand up and recite the whole play of Hamlet all by myself,—and to an audience of three.” And I meant it.
CHAPTER XVI
CHINESE PRISONERS
The Chinese people are law-abiding. With those of their own number who are law-breakers they have but little sympathy, and the Government has none at all. I like China. I like the Chinese. Moreover, I respect them. But in two details of their national life they merit unqualified condemnation. Their hospitals and their prisons are unmitigated national disgraces. On second thought I withdraw the word unmitigated. The Chinese hospitals through which I went were almost everything that hospitals should not be. But the patients themselves would most strenuously have opposed, most feverishly have resented, any improvements along the line of their own comfort. The savants of China are held back by the taut ropes of public opinion, they are enchained by the general ignorance, as savants are everywhere else.