“This food. How could they do it on such short notice?”
“They had notice enough. Everything has been planned in advance. Everything.” He repeated. “Wait till you see how we have planned it! Every beam—every spike is in its place. You will be amazed.”
She only half understood what he was saying, but she was impressed. “I am to be part of something big!” she whispered to herself. Her bosom swelled. “Something really big!”
“Colonel,” said Isabelle, “Tell us why we shouldn’t order chop suey in a Chinese restaurant over here.”
“Because they’d laugh at you,” was the surprising reply. “Over here, chop suey is beggar’s hash. When a beggar gets good and hungry, he goes from door to door with a big wooden bowl. At every door some scrap of food is thrown into the bowl. When he gets home he chops it all up fine and eats it.”
“But in America we pay fancy prices for chop suey!” Gale protested. “How come?”
“It goes back to the Gold Rush days of California,” said the colonel. There were a lot of Chinese workmen in one camp. They had their own restaurant.
“One night a bunch of white miners thought they’d try Chinese food, so they went in demanding to be served. It was late. Only scraps were left, so the frightened Chink threw the scraps into a big bowl, chopped them up and served them.
“‘That’s a swell dish!’ one of the miners exclaimed. ‘What do you call it?’
“‘Chop Suey,’ was the Chink’s reply. ‘Beggar’s hash’, to him. And that,” laughed the colonel, “started beggar’s hash joints all over America.”