“I perceive that you too have wisdom,” said Quong Ho. “You appreciate the privilege of living under the same roof as the illustrious Baltazar.”
He burst into an unaccustomed laugh. Conversation with a goat appealed to his prim sense of humour. But all the same, he expressed his own deeply-rooted conviction. To the keen-brained young Chinaman, Baltazar appeared as a man of stupendous intellectual force. His knowledge of the abstract sciences of the Western world would have commanded his respect; but his vast Chinese erudition, acknowledged with admiration by Mandarins and scholars and other Great Ones of China, gave Quong Ho cause for a veneration reaching almost to idolatry.
Also Baltazar, for all his patriarchal years, earned his pupil’s respect as a man of marvellous muscle and endurance. During the winter, when the inclemency of the weather forbade agricultural pursuits—and on that moorland waste the weather abandoned itself to every capricious devildom within meteorological possibilities—Baltazar, having ordered a set of gloves from London, gave boxing lessons to his disciple. At first Quong Ho was shocked. How could so contemptible a person as he ever make a pretence of smiting the highly honourable face of his master? Baltazar bade him try. He would give him an hour’s extra private tuition for every hit. And Quong Ho, encouraged by so splendid a prize, tried, at first diffidently, then earnestly, then zealously, then desperately, then bald-headedly, but never a wild blow could pass the easy guard of his smiling master.
“You see, Quong Ho, it’s a science,” said Baltazar. “Now I’m going to hit you.” And he feinted and struck out with his left and sent his disciple swinging across the room. “It is also a game,” he added, holding up his hand, “because what I have just done did not hurt you in the least.”
Quong Ho rubbed his jaw. “It was like the kiss of a butterfly,” said he.
“Here endeth the First Lesson,” said Baltazar. “The English etiquette now requires that we should shake hands.”
When they had gone through the formality Baltazar continued:
“You of all non-English people oughtn’t to be astonished. Did not the same ceremony exist in your country over two thousand years ago? Is it not referred to in the Analects?”
“Sir,” said the breathless and perspiring Quong Ho, “I have unworthily forgotten.”
“Did not the Master say: ‘The true gentleman is never contentious. If a spirit of rivalry is anywhere unavoidable, it is at a shooting-match. Yet even here he courteously salutes his opponents before taking up his position’—we ought to have shaken hands before starting, but we’ll do it next time—‘and again when, having lost, he retires to drink the forfeit-cup’—your forfeit-cup being the loss of the extra hours of tuition. ‘So that even when competing, he remains a true gentleman.’ ”