A loud din led us to look in at an open door to see what was going on, and there a dozen boys were learning their tasks, all crying like auctioneers; one lad reciting his lesson out of Confucius turned his back to the master instead of looking him in the face, and another who was learning to write put the copy-slip under the paper to imitate it, instead of looking at it as our boys would do.
We next passed a fashionable lady stepping out of her sedan chair. Her head was adorned with flowers instead of a bonnet, her hands gloveless, and her neck quite bare. Her feet were encased in red silk pictured shoes not quite four inches long; her plaited, embroidered petticoat was a foot longer than her gown, and her waist was not to be seen. As she entered the court-yard, leaning on the shoulder of her maid to help her walk on those cramped feet, my friend observed, “There you see a good example of a live walking-stick.”
A little after we met one of his acquaintances accompanying a prettily carved coffin, and he asked who was dead.
“No man hab catchee die,” replied the Celestial; “this one piecy coffin I just now gib my olo fader. He likee too much counta my numba one ploper; s’pose he someteem catchee die, can usee he.”
“So fashion, eh?” rejoined my friend; “how muchee plice can catchee one alla same same for that?”
“I tinky can get one alla same so fashion one tousan dollar, so; this hab first chop hansom, lo.”
“Do you call that gibberish English or Chinese?” I asked; for the language sounded no less strange than the custom of presenting a coffin to a living father differed from my preconceived notions of filial duty.
“That’s the purest pigeon-English,” replied he; “and you must be the Jack Downing of Canton to immortalize it.”
“Come, rather let us go home, for soon I shall hardly be able to tell where or who I am in this strange land.”[389]