“Say Momma,” said the millionaire—we thought he was a millionaire because of the observation-car, but he may have been just more ordinarily well-to-do than a writer of books—“where's Cora?” "Search me,” said Momma placidly.
He didn't search her, perhaps because, seeing she was but five feet and small and thin at that, he did not think it likely that Cora, who was a buxom young person close on six feet, could possibly be concealed anywhere about her person.
The maiden aunt pointed an accusing finger up the rough, grass-grown stones that make the top of the Wall.
“Skipping like a young ram,” she snorted, and then all three raised their voices, and those old-world rocks rang with shouts of “Cora! Cora!! Cora!!!”
I trembled for the poet's feelings, if he were anywhere within range, but after all, in their own way and time, I dare say the keepers of the Wall were just as commonplace. My companion, who was steadily making his way up the Wall beside Cora, turned at the ear-piercing yells, looked at his watch, spoke to the girl, and came slowly back while she quickened her pace for a moment, as if determined to get over the other side of the hill, whatever happened.
“The young gentleman has the most sense,” opined Momma.
“She'll come now he's turned,” said the maiden aunt acidly, and even though she did come, down across the rough stones, by the ruined watch-towers, I felt the insinuation was unjust.
Those watch-towers are empty now, deserted and desolate. No thoughtful captain, weighed down with responsibility, looks through their arched windows, no javelin men stand on the stone steps, no sentry tramps along peering out to the north. The Wall is tumbling into disrepair, the grass and weeds grow up between the stones, and the wonder of the world is a mighty ruin, stately even in its decay, for never again beneath the sun will such another wall be built. Look at it climbing up those hills, cutting the blue sky, bridging the gullies, and think of the tears, and sweat, and blood, that went to the building of it! That foundations may be well and truly laid, so says tradition, they must be laid on a living human being. It is one way of saying that on sacrifice our lives are based, that for every good thing in life something of value must be given; so to the building of the Wall, that was to hold China safe, went hundreds and thousands of lives, and its upkeep and its watching cost more than we can well imagine.
We went back to the Ching Er Hotel at Nankou, the little hotel close to the railway and plunged once more into modern life for, unpretentious and kept by Chinese as it is, it still represented the present day. It is just one big room, divided into a hall and many little rooms by so many sheets of paper, so that the man in the room in front may whisper and nothing be lost upon the man in the room at the back, six rooms away, while to have a bath is a matter of public interest, for the smallest splash can be heard from one end of the building to the other.
Nevertheless, I shall always have friendly feelings towards that little hotel, where they lodged me so hardly, and fed me so well.