| [1] | For an account of this exploit, vide Lane’s Modern Egyptians, cap. xxv.; and compare the description of Richardson, the famous fire-eater, in Evelyn’s Memoirs for October 8, 1672. |
A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE
By L. DE BRA
Bow Sam stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane stand and watched with narrowed eyes an old man who shuffled uncertainly down the alley towards him.
“Hoo la ma!” cried Bow Sam, in surprised Cantonese as the old man drew near. “Hello, there! I scarcely knew you, venerable Fa’ng!”
Fa’ng, the hatchetman, straightened his bent shoulders and looked up. There was a gleam in his deep bronze eyes that was hardly in keeping with his withered frame.
“Hoo la ma, Bow Sam,” he said, his voice strangely deep and vibrant.
“You have grown very thin,” remarked Bow Sam with friendly interest.
“Hi low; that is true. But why carry around flesh that is not food?”
The sugar-cane vendor eyed the other shrewdly. What was the gossip he had heard concerning Fa’ng, the famous old hatchetman? Was it not that the old man was always hungry? Yes, that was it! Fa’ng, whose long knife and swift arm had been the most feared thing in all Chinatown, was starving—too proud to beg, too honest to steal.