“I never spozed that I should git down to this, Samantha, to ride in a wheelbarrow. What would Ury say! I am glad he can’t see it, or Deacon Henzy or any of the other Jonesville brothers and sistern.”
The furrin suburbs are laid out like a European city, with broad streets, well lighted and clean. We went on the Bubbling Well Road, named from a boiling spring a few miles out. The road is broad and smooth as glass with beautiful villas along the way; we also passed a great number of small burying places. They have to bury folks according to the rules of Feng Shui. If Feng Shui should order a burial place in a dooryard it would have to be there. It rules buildings, customs, laws, everything. I asked a Chinaman who could talk English what this Feng Shui wuz that they had to obey it so strictly, and he described it as being like the wind and water: like wind because you don’t know where it come from nor when it would go or where; and like water because you could never know how to grasp it, it would elude you and slip away and you would have nothing in your hand to show. Miss Meechim cried out about the enormity of such a law and laid it to the evil doin’s of furriners, but Arvilly said that it wuz some like the laws we had in America, for we found out on inquiry that money would most always appease this great Feng Shui and git it to consent to most anything if it wuz paid enough, just as it did in America.
Josiah said he had a good mind to set up some such 212 thing in Jonesville when he got back, sez he, “I wouldn’t name it Feng Shui just like this, I might call it Fine Shue or sunthin’ like that. And jest see, Samantha, how handy it would be if the meetin’ house went aginst me I would jest git up and lift up my hand and say, ‘Fine Shue has decided. It will be as I say.’ Or on ’lection day, if I wuzn’t put up for office, or when they elect somebody besides me, or at the cheese factory if they put up another salesman, or on the beat, if they wanted another pathmaster, I’d jest call on the Fine Shue and there I’d be. Why, Samantha,” sez he, gittin’ carried away in his excitement, “I could git to be President jest as easy as fallin’ off a log if I could make the Fine Shue work.”
“Yes,” sez I, “but that is a big if; but do you want to, Josiah, turn back the wheels of our civilization that are creaky and jolty enough, heaven knows, back into worse and more swampy paths than they are runnin’ in now?”
“I d’no,” sez Josiah, “but it would be all right if it wuz run by a man like me; a Methodist in full standin’, and one of the most enlightened and Christian men of the times.”
But I lifted my hand in a warnin’ way and sez, “Stop, Josiah Allen, to once! such talk is imperialism, and you know I am sot like a rock aginst that. Imperialism is as much out of place in a republic as a angel in a glue factory.”
Well, I am in hopes that ten thousand milds of travel will jolt some idees out of his mind.
Being in Shanghai over Sunday, we attended service held by a missionary. It wuz a beautiful service which we all enjoyed. The words of this good Christian man in prayer and praise sounded to our ears as sweet as the sound of waters in a desert land. Over a hundred wuz present, and after service the pulpit wuz moved off and several wuz baptized in water jest as they do in America.
The rich and poor seem to live side by side more than they do in our country, and rich merchants live over their shops; mebby it is to protect them from the Feng Shui, 213 for if that gits on track of a rich man a great part of his wealth is appropriated by the government; it very often borrys their money––or what it calls borryin’.
Shanghai wuz the first place where I see men carryin’ fans. When they’re not fannin’ themselves they put the fan at the back of their neck, for a ornament I guess.