DIRECTIONS TO A SERVANT IN PIDGIN ENGLISH.
I heard a captain of a steamer address his man-servant thus, when sending him from the cabin to his stateroom on deck for a box of writing paper: “Boy, you go topside my room. You see two piecee box belong all same, (look just alike.) One piecee have pens; my no wanchee that. Other piecee have paper. My wanchee. You makee pay my, (bring that to me.) Savez? (do you understand?”) The waiter nodded assent, and brought the right box.
A lady was giving a dinner party to several gentleman and ladies. She told her butler to “set the table for sixteen piecee man.”
A sampan man whom our captain wished to hire, was asked by him how many there were to row his sampan. He replied, “Seven piecee man,” meaning, as it proved, himself, several sons, most of them young boys, and the mother who rowed with her infant tied round her neck; making seven hands, not counting the babe.
A gentleman who was joking with one of his sedan bearers, talking nonsense, was answered, “Massa C., you belong too much culio, (too funny.) My never have see one man all same culio.”
The American Eagle, that fierce gray bird with a bending beak, is known even in China by that celebrated feature. A Chinese servant told his master that while he was out a gentleman called. On being asked who it was, the servant said: “My no savee; but my can speakee what fashion he makee look see;” (what his appearance was.) “He belong one smallee man; no too muchee stout; had got one nose all same that Melican chickey.”
The mysteries of human speech are impressively illustrated in the ease with which the children of foreign extraction, brought up from infancy in China, learn and skilfully use the slight tones and the other niceties of the language. An ear accustomed to music of course is a great help in learning this language; but when a person is in the least dull of hearing, it is not easy to distinguish between some of the words, and especially the intonations, which in the Cantonese dialect, for example, so largely determine the meaning. One thought impressed me in thinking of the language as a barrier against the rest of the world: If the Chinese nature is naturally upright, and if sin is owing wholly to contamination by intercourse with depraved people, how happens it that China does not present us with a people of saints? having been kept by their language, as they have been, from mixing with men. That language has done more than their great wall in separating them from the rest of mankind.
A TYPHOON.
We had a typhoon at Hong Kong, Sept. 29. I was spending a fortnight at the house of Dr. Legge. On Sabbath evening at sundown there was an appearance of rain, with some unusual disturbances in the air; soon the servants came into the parlor with planks and joists to strengthen the windows, the same precaution being used outside. The wind rapidly increased, till the strength of our gale at Boston, Sept. 8, 1869, had but a faint resemblance to it. Instead of one blast, there were lulls; then a renewed tempest increasing in strength while the typhoon lasted, which in this case was from sundown on Sunday till Tuesday at daybreak. Hundreds of lives were lost in Hong Kong harbor. The ships were almost invisible from the shore, the spoon-drift being nearly equal to a thick fog. We were grateful that the typhoon did not find us at sea. We could understand the answers of old sea-captains, who, on some one in our hearing saying that he should like to witness a typhoon, shook their heads, looked grave, and said, “You will never wish to see another.”[59]
