His long petticoats of silk were slit at the sides, he had on a silken jacket and a little round cap. He wore no queue, because few of the men of his generation, and of his rank wear a queue, and he spoke English as good as my own.
“What is the matter?” I told him. “How much did you pay him?”
“Forty cents.”
“It is too much,” said he, and he called a policeman, and that coolie was driven off with contumely. But it marked a wonderful stride in Chinese feeling that a Chinese should come to the assistance of a foreigner in distress. Not very long ago he would have passed on the other side, scorning the woman of the outer barbarians, glad in his heart that she should be “done” even by one so low in the social scale as a rickshaw coolie, a serf of the great city these ancient walls enclose.
CHAPTER IV—THE LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING
A forgotten tragedy—The troops—“Lest We Forget”—The fortified wall—“No low-class Chinese”—The last thing in the way of insults—A respecter of power—Racing stables—Pekin s'amuse—Chinese gentleman on a waltz—Musical comedy—The French of the Far East—Chances of an outbreak—No wounded.
At Canton a few years since,” wrote Sir George Staunton, recording the visit of the first British Ambassador to the Emperor of China in 1798, “an accident happened which had well-nigh put a stop to our foreign trade. Evils of every kind fraught with this tendency are to be apprehended, and ought to be particularly guarded against, especially by a commercial nation. On some day by rejoicing in firing the guns of one of those vessels which navigates between the British settlements in India and Canton, but not in the employment of the East India Company, two Chinese, in a boat lying near the vessel, were accidentally killed by the gunner. The crime of murder is never pardoned in China. The Viceroy of the Province, fired with indignation at the supposed atrocity, demanded the perpetrator of the deed, or the person of him who ordered it. The event was stated in remonstrance to be purely accidental but the Viceroy, supposing it to have been done from a wicked disposition, still persisted in his demand, and to assure himself of that object, he seized one of the principal supercargoes. The other factories being alarmed, united themselves with the English as in a common cause, and seemed disposed to resist the intentions of the Viceroy who on his part arranged his troops on the banks of the river to force a compliance. It was at last deemed expedient on principles of policy, to give up the gunner with scarce a glimmering of hope that his life would be spared.”