The green roof of his chief temple rises among the trees within easy sight from the railway. If the rest of the land somewhat neglects him, his native town bears him constantly in mind, and any street urchin can point out the monument marking the spot where he traded his shoes for a book, or where other typical escapades are immortalized in stone slabs, in spite of the fact that centuries of a swarming population have left them sad, slum-like spots. Chinese celebrities have, of course, an advantage over those of the Occident in being kept before the attention of posterity. Public monuments and dwelling-house museums are all very well, but how much more certain of constant attention Shakspere or Washington would be had they direct male descendants, overlooking an adoption now and then, whose main business in life it would be, generation after generation, to worship at the shrine of these illustrious ancestors and see to it that the things sacred to their memories grow and prosper.
The present head of the Meng family—for the name of the chief successor of Confucius was really Meng Tse—is a man in middle life, who dwells inside a big high-walled compound across the street from that enclosing the temples; and he evidently bears a striking resemblance to less fame-pursued Chinese of his class, for information reached us that he was just then busily engaged in feasting some friends. Except that it is considerably smaller and less imposing, the temple grounds of Mencius are quite similar to those of his more famous forerunner. Aged cypresses and the marks of time give it dignity and a certain charm; the statue of the sage wears the same bead-veiled scholar’s head-dress, and a costume as exactly similar as if it had been copied by a Chinese tailor; behind him is the meeker temple of his consort, containing only her spirit tablet; at one side are the smaller but almost identical shrines of his parents. If there is anything unique about the place it must be the birds nesting in the tall trees in the unoccupied back of the compound, beautifully graceful white birds that resemble both cranes and herons, yet do not seem to be exactly either. The information that they are found nowhere else in China was disputed by some of those who heard it.
CHAPTER XVI
“ITINERATING” IN SHANTUNG
The day was delightful, fleckless and summery as if it had been three months later, and we should willingly have lingered longer among the cypress-sighing shades of Mencius, had it not been beyond the power of man to shake off the influx of childish soldiers, street urchins of all ages, and every inquisitive male of Tsowhsien who caught sight of us in time, that had burst through the opened gate and swirled about us like molten scoriæ wherever we moved. My companion, I have neglected to mention, was a robust American missionary with headquarters away down in the southern corner of Shantung, who was kind enough to initiate me into the devout sport of “itinerating.” From the home of Mencius we were to strike out across country by wheelbarrow. To the man who, before the present century began, had already grown to recognize that as his chief means of locomotion, there was far less thrill in the thought of wheelbarrowing than there would have been in the unusual experience of taking a street-car; but to me it was something entirely new in the field of travel. The passenger wheelbarrows of Shantung are of two kinds,—small and large, city and country, short or long distance, according to the individual choice of dividing line. In town they are merely two cushioned, straight-backed benches on either side of the high wooden wheel, on which six or eight crippled women may ride comfortably, sitting sidewise. But for cross-country work a larger, sturdier breed is used, with room for several hundredweight of baggage and a pair of the owners thereof stretched out upon it, feet forward, like a sultan on his divan. In town one man usually bears the whole burden; out in the country there must be at least another tugging at a rope ahead—unless one be wealthy enough to replace him with a donkey or an ox—besides the fellow gasping between the back handles, with the woven strap between them over his shoulders. For a very long trip, say twenty to thirty miles in a day, it is considered more humane, or at least more certain, to have a third man between the front shafts or handles which the country variety possesses.
Making two Chinese elders of a Shantung village over into Presbyterians
Messrs. Kung and Meng, two of the many descendants of Confucius in Shantung flanking one of those of Mencius
Some of the worst cases still out of bed in the American leper-home of Tenghsien, Shantung, were still full of laughter