Geoi^Hoyt/Ulen 










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It tickled him 



Around the World 

With 

George Hoyt Allen 



BY 
GEORGE HOYT ALLEN 



CLINTON, N. Y.: 
OCCIDENTAL AND ORIENTAL PUBLISHING CO. 

1910 



<**$, 



Copyright 1910 
By The Robt. M. La Follette Co. 



Copyright 19 10 
By George Hoyt Allen. 



Copyright in England and British Colonies 

Entered at Stationers Hall, London, England 

All Rights Reserved. 



©CI.A2780^7 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

I. HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S ... 9 

II. SEVEN HOURS IN HAWAII ... 17 

III. A VOYAGE AT SEA 22 

IV. IN THE LAND OF THE MIKADO . . 28 
V. A RICKSHAW RIDE 41 

VI. JOHN CHINAMAN'S WHEELBARROW . 46 

VII. HOW THE PARvSON'S PRAYER AND SOUP 

GOT MIXED— ALMOST . . . ... 55 

VIII. BEAUTIFUL HONG KONG AND GRUESOME 

CANTON 61 

IX. OUR LITTLE BROWN BROTHER IN THE 

PHILIPPINES 70 

X. THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND CHI- 
NESE ART ....... 76 

XI. IN BURMAH 82 

XII. A HOT TIME IN INDIA .... 94 

XIII. HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO 

ANSWER PRAYER ...... 98 

XIV. A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW . 108 

XV. A PEEP AT EGYPT 116 

XVI. THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL 

GUTDE .126 

XVII. FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICO . 138 

XVIII. A LETTER THAT EXPLAINS ITSELF 146 



Introduction 



Gentle, or savage reader, as the case may be, you who pick up 
this book, if there's a doubt in your mind as to whether it's full 
of hot stuff or not, forget it. You can dip into it anywhere and 
be warmed, and clothed and fed; edified, nourished, and built 
up. I ought to know, I wrote it. 

But I wouldn't ask you to take my unsupported word in this 
matter. Bless you, no. Having worked off more than fifty of 
the years allotted to me and in that time bumped up against a 
good share of the billion and a quarter gentle and savage critter, 
called man, who infest this globe, I know just what a suspicious 
lot you are, and, instead of swallowing that statement, bait, 
hook and sinker, as you should do without question, you'll go 
swimming around looking at it out of Missouri eyes and saying 
"show us." Say, why can't you take what's set before you for 
once in your life and ask no questions for conscience sake? I 
once knew a fellow who made a fortune by just taking 'a chance. 

In support of my bold assertion as to the quality of the stuff 
herein set forth, and to allay your suspicions I have prepared for 
you Chapter I, telling how I met LaFollette's. 

The Author. 



HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S 

I'm just a plain, unassuming, human ant, trying to support a 
family by minding my own business in an humble way, keeping 
out from under foot, if may be, so as not to get tramped into the 
ground by the Special Interests. 

I got mad at the Tariff Bill, Bill Taft and his crowd foisted on 
to us vermin last year, and spoke my mind about it. 

Yes, sir; I just up and wrote Mr. Taft an open letter and told 
him if I'd known that the Republican party was going to hand us 
out such a rotten deal I'd never have voted for him. Got it up in 
booklet shape, nifty style, full of pictures, and called it "I Am 
Reminded." 

Say, Mr. Taft never answered it. Why! he just ignored it! 
No sir, he never peeped, leastways not to me. The only balm to 
my wounded feelings at receiving no acknowledgment from Mr. 
Taft, in answer to my letter to him (I can't think of anything 
more annoying than not to have your letters answered) was the 
stack I got from other people. Yes sir, total strangers wrote me 
in answer to my letter to Mr. Taft. While my letter wasn't 
written to them they answered it anyway. 

Mr. Bryan (William Jennings) wrote to me. He joshed me. 
Said as bright a man as I was (seemingly) ought to have known 
better than to be taken in by those Republican promises to reduce 
the tariff. I'd felt all cut up over Mr. Bryan's letter if he 
hadn't given the booklet such a send off in his Commoner. 

A lot of United States Senators wrote to me, too. They were 
feeling a little lonesome anyway, I guess. Some of them had been 
read out of their party, so, while they were lonesomely rubbering 



AROUND THE WORLD 

around to see where they were at they took the opportunity to 
commend me for that letter of mine to Mr. Taft. 

I was in Washington last December. I looked up the address 
of the Senator who had bubbled the best in writing me, and 
dropped him a letter. Told him I was in Washington for a few 
days and that if he wasn't too busy I'd be pleased to call on him, 
if he would drop me a line telling me when it would be con- 
venient to see me. I'd liked to have called on Mr. Taft but 
seeing he hadn't answered my letter I felt a little hesitancy about 
trying to make a date with him. That Senator didn't write to 
me. No sir, he telephoned me. Asked me how long I was going 
to be in Washington. Said he was tied up till two o'clock the 
next day but that he would call on me, at the club, where I was 
stopping, at 2:30. I was on hand the next day at 2:30 and so 
was the Senator. In the course of our conversation he asked me 
if I had ever met Senator LaFollette. I told him I hadn't. He 
turned to the telephone, looked up a number, got connected and 
said, "Is this you Senator? Will you be there for an hour? I've 
got a man here I want to bring around to call on you." 

He hung up the receiver and said, "Let's go and call on Sen- 
ator LaFollette, Mr. Allen." 

We went and called on Senator LaFollette. Found him in his 
private room at the Capitol. We got at him by a private door. 
The Senator's ante-room was filled with a lot of fellows who all 
looked as if they wanted something. There was an old ex-soldier 
with an empty sleeve and another fellow who looked as if he 
could run a post-office — oh, there was an assorted bunch waiting 
to see Senator LaFollette. My Senator friend said: "Senator, 
I want you to meet my friend Mr. Allen of Clinton, N. Y." 

I was mightily impressed with Senator LaFollette. He struck 
me as a human dynamo, radiating energy in talk, and look, and 
gesture. A man who would drive things to the center and hold 
'em there. "Senator," my friend said, "have you seen Mr. Allen's 
booklet / Am Reminded?" The Senator said he hadn't. I had 
one with me and handed him a copy. He turned the pages, 

10 



• HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S 

looked at the pictures, smiled, caught a phrase here and there 
and smiled again. " Mr. Allen tells me, Senator, " my friend said, 
"that he is going around the world next year. You ought to 
make a deal with him to write some articles for that magazine 
of yours. Mr. Allen," he said, "I'm going to my rooms here 
in the Capitol, in the bureau of Indian affairs. After you get 
through visiting with Senator LaFollette, come around and see 
me." 

I spent an hour with Senator LaFollette. A more charming 
man I never m p t. N Q ver before in one short hour did I get so 
well acquainted with a man. We thought along the same lines. 
I told him some of the things I had done in my career as a 
business man. He told me of some of the things he had done 
and what he hoped to do. "Mr. Allen," he said, "I am aiming 
to make a popular magazine of LaFollette' s. I recognize it needs 
strengthening in certain lines. I won't say it's heavy reading, 
but there's a good deal of preaching in it. I've felt that some 
matter in a lighter vein would help to drive the truths home that 
we are trying to put up to the people. Write us a page, or half 
a page, on anything that strikes your fancy, when you happen 
to have an inspiration Also write my publishers at Madison a 
tentative proposition which may lead up to an arrangement with 
you to contribute regtuar' \ for us on your proposed trip around 
the world next year. It's nearing Christmas. I'm going to 
Madison for the holiday season. I'll take the matter up with 
them, when I get home, and my "publishers and editor, and I will 
thresh the proposition over." 

I didn't write that page or half a page the Senator suggested. 
Didn't have an "inspiration." Inspirations are elusive ducks 
and I really had other things to do. I'm a business man and not 
a magazine writer. But between that time and the following 
February I did strike up a correspondence with LaFollette 's and 
in some joshing sort of letters, back and forth, got prettv well 
acquainted with the managing editor and business manager. It 
resulted in a cordial invitation to drop out there and see them. 

11 



AROUND THE WORLD 

I dropped. Blew into Madison one February day. Editor 
MacKenzie was in Washington with Senator LaFollette for a 
two weeks' holiday. They wired him — "Allen is in town; you 
ought to be here." In a couple of hours this answer came back 
from MacKenzie— " Leave for Madison this afternoon, hold 
Allen." 

Say! it didn't take a log chain to "hold Allen." My oh! but 
that LaFollette's crowd are a nice lot of boys. Pending the 
couple of days it took MacKenzie to get to Madison (there was 
a wreck on the road and he was delayed) they made things so 
pleasant for me I'd like to have lived there always. Met more 
good fellows, from the Governor 01 Wisconsin down, than I ever 
dreamed a town the size of Madison could hold. MacKenzie 
finally blew in, in a breezy way, with some facetious remarks 
about railroads that couldn't keep their cars on the tracks. We 
all got together and had a feast of reason and flow of soul which 
resulted in an agreement that I should hand LaFollette's some 
of my "inimitable stuff" on my trip around the world this year. 

When it came to the question of my remuneration for pushing 
my pencil to help popularize LaFollette's Magazine, I didn't want 
them to think that I was a short skate so I opined that $5,000.00 
would be about right. That's a round number — write 's easy. 
Four thousand looks funny and 6,000 or 7,000 looks odd. So I 
said, "Suppose we make it five?" 

"Allen" they said, "we believe you'll prove a find. We'll go 
you," and we got together on that basis. After everything was 
all signed and sealed and agreed to, the whole business staff and 
managers met in MacKenzie 's sanctum and we had a bully time. 
I told them of experiences I'd picked up along life's highway 
which seemed to interest them. 

Mr. Rogers, Senator LaFollette's law partner and Vice Presi- 
dent of the LaFollette's Publishing Company, turned to Mac- 
Kenzie and said, "Mack, those stories Mr. Allen has told us 
are mighty interesting. Use some of them in the issue of 
LaFollette's in which we introduce Mr. Allen to our readers." 

12 



HOW I MET LA FOLLETTE'S 

"Sure thing," Mr. MacKenzie said. "Push your pencil, Mr" 
Allen, on your way back east, giving us a synopsis of your ca- 
reer and I'll use it to build an editorial to introduce you to our 
readers." 

In Europe, Asia, Africa or the islands of the sea I've never 
met a better lot of boys than the LaFollette's crowd. The next 
day I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and glowing with the 
warmth of their appreciation for me, having a few hours on my 
hands, I did what MacKenzie asked me to. Yes, sir; I sat down 
and coughed up the high lights in my career, from the time I was 
a kid of eight years old right down to the minute and mailed the 
stuff to LaFollette's. 

It tickled them so much that they published it entire, just as 
I'd written it, and preceded it in their March Sth issue with this 
editorial : 

Not long ago we got hold of a little booklet written by George 
Hoyt Allen. It was called J am Reminded. We liked it. We told 
Mr. Allen so. Result - he sent us more of his works, said works 
being stories of his travels in foreign lands. 

Mr Allen, we discovered, is a good story-teller. He is a keen 
observer. Few things escape him. He manages to extract a lot 
of fun out of everything that happens. His philosophy of life is 
of the wholesome, cheerful kind. It is contagious. Also he has 
a sense of humor. He is the sort of a man who can laugh when 
things go wrong, and he can make you laugh with him. 

Later we got acquainted with Mr. Allen. We liked him even 
more than we liked his sketches We were impressed with his 
originality and resourcefulness. We were delighted with his 
quaint humor. We were charmed by his stories. 

He said he was planning to make another tour of the world — 
his fifth — in the interest of his business, during the coming summer- 

An idea struck us. Why not have Mr. Allen write some stories 
about his next trip for LaFollette's. Here was a "good thing." 
Why not pass it along to our readers? 

Mr. Allen (as he himself admits) is not a "literary cuss." He 
is a business man. His mission in life is to convince 80,000,000 
people that they simply can't get along without his goods. He took 
to traveling and to writing primarily for the purpose of getting 

13 



AROUND THE WORLD 

said people interested in said goods. But the idea worked. It 
worked because the originator of it understood human nature. He 
told people things they liked to hear about, in a captivating way 
We think most folks like stories of travel. Not the guide-book 
variety, but the kind that have to do with people — real, live human 
beings — and with adventures that befall the traveler. Isn't it just 
that common interest in life outside our own ken that makes us 
enjoy our Marco Polos and our African huntsmen and our Arctic 
explorers and our "travelouge" artists? 

Negotiations were forthwith begun. We convinced Mr. Allen 
that he would reach an appreciative audience through LaFollette's. 
We likewise convinced him that our offer was in the nature of a 
very profitable "side line" to carry on his journey. He accepted 
it. 

During the coming year, therefore, a new feature will be added to 
LaFollette's. George Hoyt Allen will write a series of sketches, in 
his own unique and entertaining style, about his travels among the 
people of the Orient. We hope our family of readers will enjoy 
them. We think you will. We shouldn't give them to you if we 
didn't. 

We asked Mr. Allen to send us the story of his career so we could 
introduce him properly to our readers. He replied in so charac- 
teristic a vein that we have decided to print his letter. Read 
what he says about himself and see if you don't think this man will 
have some interesting stories to tell after he gets started on his 
journey. — Editor's Note. 

They wanted my picture to put on the front cover of that 
issue too. There's some class to the boys who occupy that space. 
Roosevelt, Taft, Pinchot and that bunch. So I sent them the 
cockiest photograph I had of myself. The one I thought looked 
the most like an author (if I don't look like an eminent duck 
it isn't because I didn't try to look like one in that picture) and 
they put me there pretty nearly as big as life and just as cocky. 
On the next page is a reproduction of that front cover. I had 
the cut made necessarily for publication right there and as a 
guarantee of good faith. When I saw that issue of LaFollette's 
I said, "Gee! am I getting famous?" I want to call your par- 
ticular attention to the fact that they dubbed me a "humorist" 
along with the other names they called me on that cover. 

14 




ollettes 



Weekly Magazine 



▼ 



"YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH ASD THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE 

"v6LVlT,"N0.S." "" SiAKSOK, Wi«X)XSLS'. -v.m-j-v. :.. 




GEORGE HOYT ALLEN 

Manufacturer, Importer, Traveler, Humorist, Writer, Who Will Entertain the Readers of La Follette 
During the Coming Year 'With a Series of Stories About his Trip Around the World 



AROUND THE WORLD 

You'll find it in the small type under the " George Hoyt Allen.' ' 

I have an object in calling your attention to that word "hum- 
orist." 

At any time in your perusal of these pages when you're in 
doubt on this point you can turn back to page 15 and reassure 
yourself. 

Well, there it was and I had to stand for it. Whether a man 
is a humorist or not is largely a case of imagination anyway. 
Years ago Eph Spinks went all the way from a little town in 
New Hampshire to Boston to hear Mark Twain lecture. By 
mistake he strayed into a hall where a Harvard professor was 
lecturing on astronomy, so he didn't hear Mark lecture at all 
but thought he did. When he got back to his native town 
he met his friend Josh White. 

Josh said, "So ye've been daown to Boston, Eph, to hear 
Twain lecture, have ye?" 

"Yep" Eph said. 

"Did ye hear him?" 

"Yep." 

" Wor he funny?" 

"Wall, yes, he wor funny but he warn't so gosh darn funny." 

In the following chapters of this book will be set forth the 
sketches I wrote for LaFollette's on my business trip around the 
world, together with notes and emendations and some other 
letters. 



16 



II 

SEVEN HOURS IN HAWAII 

Honolulu, May 17, 1910. 

Witness me, on the 30th of last month, leaving my happy 
home in Clinton and starting out to lead a double life — an erst- 
while respectable business man — now business man and "literary 
cuss." You're to blame. 

If I don't play the bull in the China shop and bust some rare 
old bric-a-brac trying to get away with this literary jag you've 
loaded me up with on this business trip around the world, it will 
be because your scholarly managing editor is on to his job, and 
even with him doing his best there is bound to be some crockery 
broken. 

Those of your readers who rather enjoy seeing things go 
smash — in the other fellow's China shop — can get aboard and 
I'll tow 'em around. 

I have been seventeen days closing the gap between Clinton 
and this town. My ship tied up to the dock at ten this morn- 
ing and she sails for Japan this afternoon at five, and I sail with 
her. 

Seven hours to lead a "double life" in Hawaii! 

I can't cut much ice at steeping my soul in crime at the liter- 
ary end if I do justice to what I'm really out for — hustlin' for 
business. 

The farmer's boy who gave the settin'-hen forty-seven eggs 
to cover "just to see the old fool spread herself," may have been 
funny, but today my sympathies lie with the hen. 

17 



AROUND THE WORLD 

I was the first man down the gang plank this morning and 
went ranging through Honolulu. No old hen with forty -seven 
eggs to cover, off her nest to fill her crop, was ever busier than 
myself. I button-holed everyone I met, who looked intelligent, 
for information about these islands. I've got data enough for 
any "literary feller" to make good with, if I could only get it 
out of my system as the natives poured it into me. 

The first fellow I clucked up to looked like a poet, and I guess 
he was, all right. He had long hair and dreamy eyes, and as 
near as I can recall his words to mind he said: 

"When the world was in the making, the Creator kissed these 
fair isles and flung them into the shimmering sea, the very Eden 
spot of earth. Here biting cold and blighting heat ne'er come. 
The islands' shores are bathed in warm and limpid seas of emer- 
ald, turquoise, and chalcedony hues, the while their mountains' 
brows are cooled with soft and soothing snows. Eternal sum- 
mer zephyrs fan their meadows, dales and hills, while o'er them 
all in moods of bursting love the heavens weep in sweet refresh- 
ing showers." 

(I butted in right there to ask: "Did they do it nights and 
Sundays so the hired man could rest?") 

"No deadly serpents here. In all these favored isles no snake 
nor wild ferocious beast. Here noxious insects are unknown: 
nor poisoned herb, nor plant, nor vine, have ever taken root, 
and the natives of these isles are gentle, kind, and hospitable to 
a fault." 

Gee whiz! It sounded good to me, and I'm sun-dazed if the 
islands don't look the part; and I learn that my poet friend 
wasn't joshing but telling me the truth. I could have listened 
to his talk all day, but with forty-seven eggs a-cooling I had to 
cluck along. The next to fall afoul my path was a different 
stamp of man. Compared with my gentle poet he was a kind 
of sordid sort. Shouldn't wonder if he dealt in real estate, or 
he may have been a politician. 

18 



SEVEN HOURS IN HAWAII 

"Say! my friend," he said, as he caught me by a wing so I 
couldn't get away, "these islands are the only place on earth in 
which to live, if you really want to know. 

"From the states, eh? Want your information right off the 
bat — at first hand — not what you read in books. 

"Say, you're in luck in striking me. I know these islands 
from Kauai to Hawaii. When, twelve years ago, come next 
July, the United States reached out and picked us for her own, 
as one would pick a ripe and juicy piece of fruit, without a drop 
of bloodshed, just looked at us and said 'you're ours,' she didn't 
pick a lemon — not much — however you may feel back there in 
the states about some of the other fruit on Uncle Sam's out- 
hanging branches. 

"We're not so big in territory — about the size of the State of 
New Jersey — but do you know that for the fiscal year of 1908, the 
Honolulu Custom House collected over $1,500,000, and that the 
revenue from our Post-office was over $75,000! That a total of 
$1,700,000 went into the Federal Treasury from Hawaii, and 
that all we cost the government for that period was $380,000! 
All the available appropriations you have given us for new 
light-houses and harbor improvements, which are of interna- 
tional rather than local importance, amount to a little over 
$1,000,000. There is another appropriation of $850,000 for a 
Federal building for Honolulu, but all the appropriations yet 
made or provided for by Congress are more than equalled by 
two years' revenue from the territory. Of course, these figures 
don't include the expenditures for fortifications and naval sta- 
tion at Pearl Harbor, which, while important for Hawaii, are 
also of vital importance to the whole United States. 

"Furthermore, do you know," — and here he caught me by 
both wings and backed me up under a royal palm, — "we bought 
nearly $16,000,000 worth of merchandise from the mainland 
last year. There are not so many of us; only about 200,000 in 
all the islands, and about 45,000 of these in Honolulu. Over 
half our population are Orientals. Of the balance, about two- 

19 




" HE BACKED ME UP AGAINST A ROYAL PALM.' 
20 



SEVEN HOURS IN HAWAII 

fifths are Europeans, two-fifths Hawaiians, full blood and half 
caste, and one-fifth American, but we export from these islands 
$42,000,000 of merchandise per annum — mostly sugar — but we 
are climbing up on fruits, coffee, hides, wool and lumber." 

I gave a squawk — and he loosed his grip. I ducked loose and 
went clucking on my way, and found a star-eyed, rapid-fire 
stenographer. She's catching this stuff right off the bat and 
will have it typed for me to mail to you before I sail. Her 
charms, 'twould take my quondam friend the poet to rightly 
sing ("go on, go on, fair maid, don't stop to blush, those eggs 
are getting chilled"). 

And now, adieu! I'll sing nor sin no more, but put in the four 
hours that's left to me at the other end of my "double life." 
My sordid soul yearns for a little share of that $16,000,000. 

My next stop is Yokohama. You will hear from me in Japan 
if my ship don't sink! 



21 



Ill 



A VOYAGE AT SEA 

The Round-the-World Correspondent Not a Deep Sea 
Writer. But he Had A Lovely Time and Gained Ten 
•Pounds — and When Last Heard From he was Going West. 
The Pictures and Explanatory Notes Mentioned in His 
Postscript are Published Herewith. 

Pacific Ocean, May 17, 1910. 

I can't conceive of a job that's harder for a fellow to get down 
to, than to write up a voyage at sea. I'd never attempt it if it 
wasn't to link this round-the-world literary jag into a symmetrical 
whole . 

Well, to make a start — 

" A voyage at sea is made in a boat" 

Say, there's no hurry about this thing. That start don't just 
please me. While I've no fear of anyone disputing the accuracy 
of the statement — no fear of being accused of plagiarism, there 
don't seem to be much snap to it. There's no use spoiling the 
story with a poor get-a-way. I've got twelve days to write up 
this voyage. We left Honolulu today and won't get to Yoko- 

22 



A. VOYAGE AT. SEA 

hama for twelve days. I'll tackle this thing tomorrow, I'll make 
a brilliant start tomorrow. 

"May 18 — Four hundred miles out of Honolulu, going West. 
There is nothing so restful as a voyage at sea " 

Psh! that's punk. I'll start this thing tomorrow. 

" May 19 — Seven hundred and fifty miles West from Honolulu. 
Our good ship is ploughing the briny " 

Oh, rats! I'll start this thing to-morrow. 

"May 20 — Eleven hundred miles West of Honolulu " 



I'm wanted on deck — I'll start this thing tomorrow. 

"May 23 — Westward, our good ship holds to her course " 

Oh, say! I've got five more days before we land at Yokohama 
to write up this voyage. Somehow, I don't seem to have any 
inspirations. But there's really no hurry — I've got five more 
days." 

. Yokohama, May 28. 

We've just dropped anchor in Yokohama harbor. Everybody 
wild to get ashore. 

It was understood when I agreed to write these sketches on 
this round-the-world business trip that the literary end of this 
"double life" was not to interfere with my business. I've been 
busier than a boy catching grasshoppers ever since we left San 
Francisco. 

I'm no deep sea writer, anyway. If I'm anything of a spe- 
cialist at this writing business I'm a — I'm a land writer. I've had 
a lovely time and gained ten pounds — and a ton of good reso- 
lutions to make good when I get on land. 

P. S. A number of the passengers have taken some snapshots 
and flashlight pictures on this voyage. They have had them 
printed on shipboard and presented me with a handful. I en- 
close a few, with explanatory notes on the backs of them, to- 
gether with these really noble efforts I've made to start a beau- 
tiful description of a voyage at sea. I'll mail them as soon as 
I get ashore. 



23 




At a ball given on shipboard my fair partner and myself took 
first prize in the cake walk. 




And they said I wasn't so rotten in the two-step. 



24 



I 




At a masquerade ball given a few days later, I came out as 
"Foxy Grandpa." 




I've helped the mothers with their kids — 
25 




taken a daily plung in the swimming tank, — 
26 




shot clay pigeons from the poop deck,- 




and on rainy, windy days, there was work inside to do. 

27 



IV 
IN THE LAND OF THE MIKADO 

Kobe, Japan, June 3, 1910. 

I have now been in Japan six days. My Japanese friends all 
seem glad to see me. They are quite able to distinguish between 
a globe trotter and a regular patron. The globe trotter is their 
legitimate prey. He is here today and gone tomorrow, probably 
never to return. 

"Pluck him, and pluck him clean, while he is going through," 
is not exclusively a Japanese doctrine, but they are an exceed- 
ingly quick witted lot, and that doctrine is pretty well recog- 
nized by my friends, the Japs. They look at the fellow who 
comes and comes again from a different angle, and, as time goes 
by, they more and more recognize the wisdom of commerical 
honesty. After a while they may even include the globe trot- 
ter. 

But that is asking considerable. The average globe trotter 
is an easy mark, and carries his target so invitingly displayed 
that it would seem out of the order of things not to take a crack 
at him. 

i •Americans in coming to Japan for the first time look upon her 
railroads as a joke — and so they are. But they are the people's 
joke. The cars, compared with ours, are little, light, dinky 
affairs, and the average speed on express trains is fifteen miles 
an hour. But that is fast enough to suit the Japs. They feel 
that they get more for their money if they are a long time on the 
road. When a fast train. was put on between Tokyo and Yoko- 

28 



IN THE LAND OF THE MIKADO 

hama to cater to the foreign trade, bringing those two cities, 
eighteen miles apart, within an hour of each other, the Japanese 
objected to paying the extra price charged for riding on these 
" fast " trains. They insisted that the price should be reduced on 
that train, as it took less time to make the journey. The last 
thing the Oriental will savvy is the value of time. And the 
trains do arrive — in time. To "arrive" is the Oriental's chief 
aim in his scheme of things. In the case of the railroads in Japan 
the traveling public "arrives" in two ways. They get there — 
in time — and they have some money left at their destination. 
They have first, second, and third class. The chief difference 
between first and second class is the price. First class is nearly 
double second. The royal family and globe trotters use first 
class. Second class corresponds with our regular day coach and 
costs one cent a mile. Third class, used by the great majority 
of the traveling public, costs about 60 per cent, of second class. 
Merchandise is moved on a correspondingly advantageous basis. 
Express companies in Japan are not gilded excuses for charging 
extortionate rates for moving merchandise. The moving of 
merchandise by rail in Japan, in either large or small packages, 
in slow or quick time, is all one business — transportation busi- 
ness — owned and operated by the government. And there are 
no Pullman or Wagner sleeping car companies in Japan. The 
dining and sleeping cars are a part of the railroad business. 

The hotel business in Japan is not operated by the govern- 
ment. Those hotels which are run to cater to the foreign and 
globe trotting trade are run by very enterprising individuals, and 
the prices charged give one a home-like feeling. Rates are from 
$3.00 to $8.00 per day. But the cost of a meal in a dining car 
on the slow railroads is a joke — a real humorous joke, and one 
greatly enjoyed by the people. 

I inclose the bill of fare which was laid before me in the dining 
car coming from Yokohama to Kobe. You will .see it's printed 
in both Japanese and English. The prices on the bill are in sen. 

29 




% 


7 


9 A 7 # * y a. 


Fried Fish 


3 


"" 


/. jc ? ^' 7. 


Ham and Eggs 


4 


9 


^ 1/ ^ |- 


Omelet 


5 


j. 


* 7' 7. ( of j ,v f )X~(7 %A f) Fggs to order 


6 


t' 


— 7 7. =r — 3f* 


Beef -steak 


1 


-v 


f- * fc' — 7 


Stewed Beef 


S 


'■f 


*' !f # )? i^ ;V 


Chicken Cutlets 


9 


■3 


^ * y 


Cold Beef or Chicken . . . 


io 


* 


*/ — 7 i 7. 


Curry and Rice 


i i 


II 


— ,\, 3f +• -* — j? 


Rolled Cabbage 


1 2 

'3 








»4 


7' 


T" X 


Pudding... 


I \ 


♦1 


>• F '/ # ^ f- 


Sandwich 


i (> 


HA 


S X « >* 


Tea or Coffee 


i 7 


tf. 


T 


Cake 


i fc 


'41 


#J 


Fruits 


1 w 




/J << * - 


Bread and Butter 

•2" %?" «r" 

30 



.80 



TABLE D'HOTE 

W ft (ft--. A fiij ffl if. .: je US tft m m <*) v VRM en 

BREAKFAST (courses with Tea or Coffee)- ,ou 

fifti&i'- A" mi/ ( *- ->' *^mm=!- &y»mmm&ft) 

TIF FIN (j courses with dessert & Tea or Coffee) 

I> l N N E R (4 courses with dessert & Tea or Coffee) " ' 

( ay Wttfr® $&.&'$&* \~mc&) A la carte. 

1 7 - — ~f Soup ,, .18 

,. -'8 

,» - 2 5 

... .- „ .15 

., 12 

,, .25 

,. -20 

,. -25 

» -25 

18 

,, .20 



» '5 

(per plate) „ .20 

., -07 

" ■&- 

- .. 05 



IN THE LAND OF THE MIKADO 





*0 


?■ 




5 


's RECEIPT FORM, 

; ~2^3^£ n i__B A 


No. 1C 


m 
& 

'[<■ 
* J 

' tn 

■ £ 

■ -, 
■y 

(hi 
A 


1 Sft Quantity 


"USeugSSeiij 


ft 

"5R 


-X — y' (Soup)' 






1 


y 4 ■■;■■? *■ (Fish) 






i 




t'—- 7 7.7 — %■ (Beef-steak) 


/ 




2.d 




n — 7. t* — 7 ( RoastBeef) 






tj/ i 


7 1 * v 3rs> i-' 3> (Chicken Cutlets) 






1 


'* 


v — 7. 5f"=fr V (Roast Chicken) 








H 


j» a ^. y 7' 7 ( Ham Eggs ) 










^> i + 7 ^r* ( Ham Salad ) 








* 


? A v 3> 1- (Omelet) 








% 


A " — - y 4 7 ( Curry Rice ) 










>-- -7 (Bread; 






1 

7 ! 




IE * Si ?JE (Tea. Coffee) 


/ 




r* 


JK ' -f "(Cake) 










^ % (Fruits) 










- 7r:-", .- 


/ 




^ ^i 
























JE £ (Sake) 










! y # ^ * — (Whisky) 








S'S 


1 7' 7 v -7" — (Brandy) 








* 


"i yv =e y 1- (Vermouth) 






! 


M 


^r 9 yif-A* (Beer) 






; /i 




h 


#c fS 7K (Tansan) 






/ 


.«. 


(ill 


^- 4 ^* — (Cider) 








1 


g J£ • (Cigars) 


f 




2/1 


,V ; : 








i 












I? 








X" 




A 


'•>; 


"JisiZ&StlE = ® Jifcft&fiL 


->"' f 


i°\ 


K 




JkltKAKi HO'J i'i 1 ' 




m; 







A sen is half a 
cent of our mon- 
ey. I also in- 
close the bill for 
a dinner, which 
I picked up in 
passing out of 
the diner. It is 
worthy of note 
that the cost of 
the "luxuries" 
of this meal, as 
listed from the 
top two-thirds 
of the way down 
the bill, exceed- 
ed by a few cents 
the cost of the 
"necessities" as 
noted on the 
lower third. 
Luxuries and 
necessities com- 
bined only 
amounted to 90 
sen, or 45 cents. 

•I had a berth 
in a car like the 
one which was 
patented and 
operated by that 
enterprising 
gentleman, Mr. 
Pullman, now 



31 



AROUND THE WORLD 

deceased, (the patent on whose car is long since expired, yet the 
American traveling public is still paying tribute to the defunct 
gentleman and his patent expired car). That berth cost me $1.25. 
A berth in Mr. Pullman's (deceased) car at home for a like dis- 
tance would have cost me $2.50 or $3.00, be the same more or 
less, but not less than $2.50. 

The railroads in Japan (a monarchy, not, presumably, a gov- 
ernment of, for, and by the people) seem to suit the Japanese; 
and really that is what they are primarily built for— not for a 
few carping globe trotters and foreigners. There is only a 
handful of foreigners in Japan, anyway. The census of January, 
1909, shows, foreigners in Japan, exclusive of Chinese, 6,802. 
Of those 3,471 were in Yokohama, 2,500 in Kobe, and in all 
the rest of the empire only 831. That same census shows 
51,458,037 Japanese in Japan. 

Mr. Jap "arrives" in other ways besides with his railroad. 
He gets there with his land. The total area- of Japan is less 
by 20,000 square miles than that of Illinois, Iowa and Kansas 
together. Japan is exceedingly mountainous. The land that 
can be tilled does not exceed the area of Illinois. I have ridden 
past more alleged "worn out" farms in the United States than 
would equal the total tillable land in Japan. This same land 
in Japan was being tilled and cropped a thousand years before 
the ancestors of the owners of those "worn out" farms had 
ceased going around in breech cloths and hunting and warring 
with clubs, and for several thousand years before those interest- 
ing ancestors' descendants had discovered those now "worn 
out" farms. During the breech cloth and club period of us 
smart westerners, while our present "worn out" farms were 
lying fallow and gathering richness, Japan kept right on 
cropping her land, devoting herself to art and literature mean- 
while, and she has kept it up ever since. 

Today Japan has a population of fifty-one and a half million 
and yet this same land which she has tilled and cropped so long 
is not only supporting that vast population, but her exports for 

32 



IN THE LAND OF THE MIKADO 

the year 1909 of food, drink, tobacco and silk — drawn from that 
soil — exceeded her imports of those four items by more than 
$12,700,000. 

In handling their land the enlightened Japanese have a theory 
and practice. So have we in America. But as compared with 
Japan, in this respect, we are a heathen nation. The Japanese 
reason that as mother earth supplies her children with food, 
and that as in the scheme of nature the earth requires food to 
perform such service, that the residue of the food which the earth 
supplies to man should be returned to the earth when man is 
through with it. Mother earth calls to man for her "quid pro 
quo" and the Japanese heed the call. But we have not yet 
learned to mind our mother. We prefer to rob the land and to 
pollute our streams and lakes, and also the fish along our sea 
coasts, and as a result annually to pay a frightful tribute in ty- 
phoid fever victims in support of our theory and practice. 

There are, in some of our towns and villages at home, ordi- 
nances prohibiting the citizen from using "night soil " on his gar- 
den, but he may dig a cess-pool and contaminate his well. (The 
doctor and plumber must live, must they not?) Our census 
of 1900 shows a population of seventy -six million and deaths 
from typhoid fever for that year of 35,374. Japan's census 
for 1908 shows a population of forty-nine and a half million, 
and deaths from typhoid fever for that year of only 5,404. 
With a population in 1900 only one and one-half times larger 
than Japan's in 1908, we had nearly seven typhoid fever victims 
to Japan's one. Learn nature's ways and work with her and 
she's a genial dame, but rob and outrage her and you'll get 
what's coming to you every time. 

Before going to press with this book I wrote the Census Bureau at 
Washington for mortality statistics for census of 1910. They replied 
that they were not yet available. The census of 1900 shows an appalling 
increase in deaths in the'TDnited States from typhoid fever (which is only 
one of the diseases attributable directly to tainted drinking water and 
food) in each 100,000 'of population, over deaths from same cause as 
shown by" census of 1890- 

33 



AROUND. THE WORLD 

Of course, certainly, why not? 

Our cess-pools (our lakes and rivers) grow no larger, nor can they; but 
the increase in population places a greater strain on them, and their 
menace to public health increases and will continue to do so until we be- 
come enlightened enough to heed nature's demands and learn some way 
to give her back her own, and stop dumping into our drinking water the 
material which nature calls for, with this promise: "Give me back my 
own and with my wondrous alchemy I'll turn it into golden grain to feed 
my hungry children, and at the same time lift the scourge your heedless 
ignorance forces me to lay on you." With all our boasted civilization we 
are only a monstrous ostrich, with our heads in the sand, fooling ourselves 
with the idea that we are out of danger if we can get our sewage out of 
sight ; and we turn a blessing into a menace and a curse, and fill the air 
with our yapping cries of the high cost of living. 

James Hill says that the high cost of living is due to under 
production of food. I think myself that Mr. Hill is right. 
That's one of the causes, aided and abetted by others that James 
wasn't mentioning. In return for our sending missionaries 
over here to teach the Japanese the way of life, before the world 
has run its course the Japanese may have to send missionaries 
to us to teach us how to hang on and live. 

I put in last Wednesday at Nikko. That's one of the show 
places of Japan. Noted for its temples, mountain scenery, cedar 
trees and carved and lacquer work. It's a strenuous task to 
leave Tokyo and "make" Nikko and get back to Tokyo all in 
one day. As I only had a day to do it in I did it in a day — a 
ninety mile journey from Tokyo. Arose at the seasonable hour 
of 4.30 — came within an hour and a half of carrying me back to 
the days of Brindle and the farm. A rickshaw boy took me a 
45-minute ride through Tokyo to catch a 5.45 train, and it took 
five hours to travel that ninety miles. 

The winter rice is being harvested and the land prepared for 
the summer crop. The number of bushels of grain they take 
from an acre of land in Japan would open the eyes of an American 
farmer. 

I had to rush to get through with Nikko. Arrived at 10.30 
and had to leave at 5.30 that afternoon. I got through with 
my business at 2.30 and then started out to do the tourist act, to 
get material with which to redeem my promise— to make good at 

34 







"BEAUTIFUL TEMPLES AT NIKKO. 



35 



AROUND THE WORLD 



this literary stunt as soon as I could- shake that shipboard crowd. 
Beautiful temples in Nikko, the finest in Japan, and nowhere 
else on earth have I ever seen such a stand of timber, so many 
splendid trees growing so closely together! 




" SPLENDID TREES GROWING SO CLOSELY TOGETHER." 

It cost 80 sen for a ticket to go through the temples. In the 
largest one the Buddhist priest had seemingly done a rushing 
trade, selling visitors sacred wine, and he evidently trusted the 
populace. He was nowhere in sight, but the result of the day's 
business, pennies, silver pieces and bills, were scattered over 
the floor in front of the altar. His wine cups and pitcher were 
setting on the floor at one side. The pitcher was empty. My 
guide told me that the priest had probably gone to get more 
wine, that he would be back presently, and that I could get a 
drink for 10 sen if I desired. I didn't desire. We had climbed 
pretty well up the mountain side to get to the temples and my 
time was limited. Only had two hours to do the temple stunt 

30 



IN THE LAND OF. THE MIKADO 

from the time of starting, so I told my guide we would push along 
The next temple we came to (those temples are in a cluster, 
some of them a couple of rods apart) was the temple of the danc- 
ing girls. The temple was open at the side, and sure enough 
there were the "girls" — three sweet-faced old nuns, dressed in 
flowing white silk gowns. "Do they really dance?" I asked. 
He said they would for 20 sen. I came to the center with 20 
sen quicker than I can write it and those dear old ladies danced 
for me They call it dancing. I would call it a motion prayer. 
A graceful swaying of the body, a fan in one hand, a cluster of 
old-fashioned sleigh-bells in the other — the horse chestnut shape 
kind, such as we call "a string of bells." The bells were jangled 
very slowly, at intervals, and the fans were gracefully manipu- 
lated. 

From another temple, which was closed, emerged a priest, 
and he was after some of the foreigner's money. He had a 
prayer to sell. He stood at a corner of his temple, on a narrow 
piazza,- and showed his wares. He unrolled about six feet of 
wall paper with a section of curtain roller at one end. On that 
wall paper was a picture of some Shogun, and above the picture 
the Shogun's prayer, in Japanese characters. In his other hand 
he held a little white paper dodger on which was printed the 
prayer in English. He wanted a yen — that's fifty cents in 
our money — for the two. I read the prayer. It was a good 
prayer. I wanted to buy the prayer without the wall paper. 
The Shogun's picture didn't appeal to me. The priest wouldn't 
sell that way. He said the two had to go together. So I left 
them together. If he hasn't sold that prayer to some globe 
trotter, with the Shogun's picture for a chromo, he still has them. 
The great event of the day was yet to come, and my time was 
getting short. Three hundred stone steps up the mountains, 
side, from where we stood, is the grave of Shogun Ieyasu. He 
was buried there three hundred years ago. No special corres- 
pondent for any magazine on earth ever started out with a bet- 
ter or more determined intention to visit a Shogun's grave than 

87 



AROUND THE WORLD 

your own. It was a hot day, but I pushed ahead and made one 
hundred of those stone steps. The walk is walled in on both 
sides, beautiful moss-and-lichen-covered walls, and such beau- 
tiful trees — such noble trees on each side, and so many of them! 
Two hundred more steps yet to go, and my time was getting 
shorter, — and it was hot, so hot! 

I leaned against one of those lovely walls and mopped my 
brow. Two ladies coming down turned a corner in the walk. 
They were Americans, and as they were passing me I accosted 
them. 

"Beg pardon, ladies," I said, "but have you been up stairs ?" 

The more sprightly one exclaimed, "Have we been up stairs? 
If you refer to climbing this mountain, up those interminable 
steps, simply as 'up stairs,' we have been up stairs." 

"Yes?" I said. "Shogun Ieyasu is buried up top side. Mr. 
Ieyasu was no relative of mine but I started out to sweat at 
his grave. "The fact is," I said, "I am not a regular tourist. 
I am a business man, over here in Japan on business, a"nd I'm 
doing a little corresponding for LaFollette's Magazine," (here 
I proudly handed them nry card on which is printed in the lower 
left corner, "Special correspondent for LaFollette's Magazine." 
I always spring that card when I want to ask a favor or make an 
impression.) "My train leaves in an hour," I continued, "and 
it don't seem possible for me to carry out my laudable intention. 
If you could assure me that the Shogun is resting quietly, and 
that everything seems to be all right up there, I'll report the 
fact to the magazine, make my train, and thank you kindly, 
ladies." 

They assured me that everything was "just lovely" around 
the Shogun's grave, and as everything was "just lovely" every- 
where else around Nikko I hereby report: 

"June 1st, 1910, at Shogun Ieyasu's grave, Nikko, Japan. — 
Up three hundred steps. Shogun resting quietly. Everything 
lovely. Everybody satisfied." 

38 



IN THE LAND OF THE MIKADO 

I thanked the ladies for helping me in this matter, and after 
a few minutes of delightful conversation I excused myself and 




•SACRED BRIDGE ATNIKKO. 

made a rush for my train. 

I got my ticket and was nicely settled in my seat when the 
Japanese gentleman I had been doing business "with came rush- 
ing in with a splendid lunch. There would be no chance of get- 
ting anything to eat before reaching my hotel, at Tokyo, at 11.30, 
and that meant no supper unless I put up with native chow along 
the line, — raw fish and rice eaten with chopsticks. There was. 
no dining car on that train. My friend knew this, and knowing 
how averse foreigners are to native chow, served at railway 
stations, he had thoughtfully and kindly brought the lunch 
which he had procured at the hotel for foreigners. I ate that 
lunch, pulled off my coat, laid it on my grip for a pillow, and, in 
my shirt sleeves, stretched myself full length — the seats in Jap- 
anese cars are built so one can- — and was dead to the world in 

39 



AROUND THE WORLD 

blissful sleep until a little Japanese porter, about as big as I 
was in my shingle mill days, shook me gently and with many 
bows said, "Please, Tokyo next station where you get off." 
What a good thing it is to know "where you get off." Wish I 
knew where I was going to get off on this "double life" of mine. 
I know I am going to "saw off" now and get down to business. 
My Japanese banto is waiting to take me "off" to see some bas- 
ket makers. 



40 



V. 
A RICKSHAW RIDE 

Japan, June 6, 1910. 

Speaking of the horse — he is "a vain thing for safety," and 
we "put bits in his mouth to guide him." The gentleman who 
originally wrote the "hot stuff" quoted above, and whose name 
and fame have come thundering down the ages in consequence 
of first getting on paper (or parchment) chunks of wisdom of 
which the above is a fair sample, didn't have the Japanese rick- 
shaw boy in mind when he pushed his pencil to get off the tru- 
isms noted up topside. 

Far be it from me to slander the horse. He is a noble beast, 
but a lot of bother. After you have fed him and cleaned him, 
watered him, backed him out of the stable, put on the breastplate, 
thrown back the back pad, got the crupper under his tail (in 
safety — I'm speaking of a gentle horse) buckled up the belly 
band, taken off his halter, put on his bridle ("open up there, 
won't ye") ran the buggy out of the barn, led the horse out to 
it, backed him in between the shafts, (carefully, best to say 
"whoa" and pull the buggy up to him — no danger of cracking 
a shaft that way) started a thill on one side, ducked around and 
started the other one, pulled up the buggy or backed him down, 
hooked on one trace, wound the breeching strap ("twice around 
and in the second hole") whipped around and hooked on the 
other trace, wound the breeching strap on that side, buckled 
it, ("was it twice or three times around?") ducked around to 
the other side to see — ("it was two") — unbuckled it and taken 

41 



AROUND THE WORLD 

off a lap and buckled it up again, buckled down the thills, 
snapped the reins on to the bit, taken down the lines, (careful 
not to cross 'em) cramped the buggy ("Whoa! stand still, won't 
ye?") got in, gathered up the lines — after you've done all that 
(you've washed and oiled the buggy and cleaned the harness 
the night before) all you get out of it is a ride — except when the 
horse takes fright at some trivial thing and runs away and breaks 
your neck; or, escaping death, (you get around on crutches in a 
month) you run the risk of losing your immortal soul (" the horse 
is a vain thing for safety") by passing him off onto the other fellow 
as "kind and gentle, sound so far as I know, and never did a 
mean trick in his life." 

Now, the Japanese horse, the rickshaw boy, is different. All 
the above named details he does to himself and to his buggy. 
All you have to do is to step in. No bits in his mouth to steer 
him by— just a word at starting, naming destination, and he will 
turn a hundred corners without a thought or care on your part. 
No bothersome lines to get under the tail. No flies to make 
him kick. Indeed, there are no flies on the rickshaw boy. 
Failing to hitch him when you make a stop, you don't have to 
go looking him up when you want him again. Indeed, there 
are many cases on record of this Japanese "horse" looking up his 
master, loading him into his rickshaw and taking him home 
and putting him to bed. 

I find myself in a rickshaw, behind a rickshaw boy, bowling 
along a country road, just out of Shidzuoka. The farmers are 
working in their rice paddies; everything is fresh and green and 
beautiful. 

We come to a temple. My " horse" looks back to me and asks, 
"Will stop?" A nod of assent is all that is needed, and my 
"horse" and I go through the temple, and he goes through the 
form of worship, and shows me how the bell, hanging at the en- 
trance, is rung to attract Buddha's attention to the worshipper. 
A five minute's stop and we are off again. The clouds obscure 
the tops of the mountains lying at our right. My horse travels 

42 



A RICKSHAW. RIDE 

at a rapid trot. We have a point to make; he has agreed to 
make it at a certain hour, and we have lost a little time at the 
temple. 

The clouds obscuring the mountains break in places and sud- 
denly Fujiyami's peak bursts into view, at that particular 
moment, sunlight, clouds and snow-capped mountain all com- 
bining to make a scene of wondrous grandeur and beauty. 

My coolie, my "horse," holds one shaft of the rickshaw with his 
left hand, and with not a shade of let-up to his rapid pace, turns 
sidewise, points his right hand toward the peak and says, 




1 FUJIYAMI 1 FUJIYAMI!" 
43 



AROUND THE WORLD 

"Fujiyami! Fujiyami! " then faces back to his work, both hands 
now upon the shafts, and bends to his task. Not a fraction of 
a second has my "horse" lost as he turns to make sure that I have 
caught the sudden splendor of his sacred mountain bursting 
through the clouds. 

I am thrilled, but not so much by Fujiyami, as by the act 
of my humble coolie in doing a horse's work, losing not a second's 
time in the hard run he has engaged to do, yet anxious that the 
sudden splendor of the scene shall not escape the notice of the 
load he hauls for hire — a stranger to him, a foreigner wandering 
through his land. 

To tell it sounds most tame, but to experience it without a 
thrill — the man who could, would possess a peanut's soul indeed 
—with apologies to the peanut. 

A crowd of schoolboys just out of school are coming towards 
us — an exuberant lot of noisy boys. They see the foreigner 
approaching. Quickly they range along the narrow road, and, 
as I pass, their bodies bend in unison in a profound bow of greet- 
ing. Swiftly I roll along, while they break their ranks and scam- 
per on their way, a jostling, happy, laughing crowd. 

They might have said, — "Hey, Mister! Yer wheel is goin' 
around," and punctuated the information with a period in the 
shape of a chunk of dried mud, placed on the stranger's anato- 
my wirerever it chanced to hit. I have seen both methods of 
salutation by boys just out of school. Indeed, I confess with 
shame that (many, many years ago) I took part in one of the 
last named kind, and ate my meals standing for a day or two 
afterward, just because I got "told on." I was not compelled 
to stand, but preferred it to sitting down. 

Some years ago, through the courtesy of an Englishman here 
in Kobe, a little 45-ton steamer was placed at my disposal for a 
week's cruise. I coaled and stocked her with provisions, hired 
a navigator, crew, cook and interpreter, and went sailing whither 
I would through the beautiful Inland Sea of Japan. I was "Cap- 
tain Allen" on the bridge, and, with the stars and stripes gaily 

44 



A RICKSHAW RIDE 

flying, sailed out of Kobe harbor. Up' to that time the only 
ship I had ever commanded, and that but poorly, was a two- 
oared skiff (one soul aboard). My chest swelled with pride at 
that new command almost as much as it swells on occasions on 
this trip when I pass out my card with "Special correspondent 
for LaFollette's" printed on it. Sometimes when I haven't had 
a chance for an interval to spring that card, I take one out and 
go off by myself and look at it. 

I steered my craft for — to me — unknown parts away from the 
beaten paths — away, away, under azure skies, in and out 
amongst beautiful islands, and when I gave command my ship 
would drop anchor, and my crew would lower a boat and pull 
me ashore to investigate a town, where a foreigner was such a 
curiosity that the streets would be packed with natives, to note 
his walk, and clothes, and color. They would follow closely on 
my heels, and when I would suddenly wheel to get a snap shot 
at them with my camera, they would turn and run as if I'd trained 
a Gatling gun on them, and, when they saw the harmless instru- 
ment, would sheepishly come back and gather round me. 

In relating my experiences to a Japanese gentleman, both of 
us enroute to New York on our return from -Japan, he said, 
"You were not molested nor insulted on your trip were you, Mr. 
Allen?" "Not at all," I replied, "I was most courteously treated 
wherever I went though received with great curiosity in some 
places." "No," he said, "you were not molested nor insulted, 
nor would you be, go where you might in Japan. But I have 
been stoned by hoodlums in Central Park imNew York City be- 
cause of my foreign dress and odd appearance." I changed the 
subject, as I always do when talking with my Japanese friends 
on Eastern versus Western manners. 

I sail for Shanghai, Westward ho, today. 



45 



VI 
JOHN CHINAMAN'S WHEELBARROW 

Shanghai, China, June 11, 1910. 

As you near the China coast, the mighty Yangstze mingles 
its waters with the sea and for twenty-five miles out turns it to 
a Xanthic hue. At the mouth of the Yangstze is Woosung, 
where ships of heavy draught for Shanghai anchor. Just above 
Woosung the Wong Poo enters the Yangstze, and twenty miles 
up the Wong Poo is Shanghai. 

The sail up the Wong Poo, on the ship's tender, through a low, 
level country, is of no special interest aside from its river life. 

Steamers of medium draught and Chinese junks enliven the 
scene. On each junk, large or small, at either side of its yawn- 
ing mouth-shaped bow is a large bulging eye. The prominent 
eyes give the junk the appearance of a huge, outlandish fish with 
open mouth. To see one of these junks loaded with Chinese 
bearing down upon you, the quadrilateral-shaped sails ribbed 
with bamboo, looking for all the world like huge fins, with its 
high poop deck, its monstrous open jaws, staring eyes and pig- 
t?iled, swarthy passengers, gives you a creepy feeling — as if 
' the Goblins would get ye," if you didn't watch out. 

Ask the Chinaman why he puts eyes on his ship and he comes 
nearer being a Yankee than I have ever seen him in any other 
circumstance. He answers your question by asking one. "No 
have eye, how can see? No can see, how can savvy?" 

Why surely! Certainly! Of course! 

That ought to settle any inquisitive Yankee seeking informa- 
tion. We move on and stop asking foolish questions. • • •. 

I came first to Shanghai eleven years ago. I had a disap- 

46 



JOHN CHINAMAN'S WHEELBARROW 

pointment for a few minutes after landing. I had seen Shanghai 
roosters at home that could stand on the ground and eat corn 
off the top of a barrel. I hoped and expected to find Shanghai 




" I CAME FIRST TO SHANGHAI. 



roosters in Shanghai that could stand on the ground and eat 
corn off the top of a three story building. I not only saw no 
roosters of that kind running around Shanghai, I saw no roosters 
of any kind, and I was bitterly disappointed. I had set my 
heart — I didn't know how much till I got here — on seeing 
monster Shanghai roosters, a few at least, on every street. I 
fear I haven't a deep nature. I fear I am too effervescent, too 
volatile. I hadn't been in Shanghai ten minutes before I for- 
got my disappointment and giggled, (Think of a full grown 
man giggling, and that too, when he should have been mourn- 
ing over the freshly slaughtered corpse of a childhood's dream!) 

The Shanghai wheelbarrows did it. There is something funny 
about a normal wheelbarrow, when you stop to analyze it. 

It isn't a buggy, nor a wagon, nor a gig, nor a chaise, 

47 



AROUND THE WORLD 



nor a truck, nor an automobile, nor a bicycle. It hasn't 
a relative on earth in the vehicle world, and when one man 
wheels another down the street on a wheelbarrow, the object of 
the performance being to pay an election bet, it's a question 
with the spectators which one the joke is on — the fellow who is 
pushing the barrow, or the one who is getting the ride. 

Now the Shanghai wheelbarrow is not a normal wheelbarrow, 
not by any means. If a wheelbarrow were not such a distinc- 
tive thing — so indelibly, unalterably and inalienably a wheel- 
barrow — the Shanghai 
wheelbarrow would 
not be a wheelbarrow 
at all. It would be 
something else. 

The Shanghai wheel- 
barrow with its chauf- 
feur is the most am- 
bitious thing that ever 
rolled or walked. Now 
there was Caesar. He 
was said to be ambi- 
tious. And Xerxes 
and Hannibal and 
Alexander and Napo- 
leon. Those boys were 
ambitious only in a 
way — when you know 
the Chink with his 
Shanghai wheelbarrow. 
The thing that made 

" THE THING THAT MADE ME FORGET MY me for & et m y bltter 

bitter disappointment." disappointment and 

turned my winter of discontent into a rollicking summer of ri- 
otous mirth was the Shanghai wheelbarrows, with their loads of 
passengers and loads of merchandise. 




48 





50 



JOHN CHINAMAN'S WHEELBARROW 

The one in particular that made me forget my disappoint- 
ment had on it a bed spring, a kitchen stove, a parlor suite, a 
bale of hay, a refrigerator, a parrot in a cage, a roll of carpet, 
four large dry goods boxes full of things, three large bags full of 
more things, a feather bed, a barrel of crackers, a tun of wine, a 
keg of beer, a pitch fork, a garden rake, a coil of hose, a saw 
buck, a buck saw, a box of kindling wood, a rolling pin, a kitch- 
en table, a side board, ten dining chairs, a Chinese gong, a sew- 
ing machine, some barbed wire, a threshing machine, a fanning 
mill, a bull dog and a cow, a woman and ten fat jolly kids, a rip 
saw and a sow, a cradle, a — no, I will not tell a lie, there was not 
a piano on that load — and a brave, noble, courageous, dauntless, 
enduring, patient, valiant, ambitious Chink was pushing it along. 
No, I will not tell a lie, there was not a piano on that load, but if 
the owner of all these goods and chattels had suggested it the 
Chinaman would have said, "Maskee, all same same, put her 
on. 

Now a Shanghai wheelbarrow's wheel reaches heavenward. 
Its handles extend East and West and stretch away to the 
South. It has wings but no sides — that is no sides that were 
made with hands. The only sides recognized by this ambitious 
combination of wheelbarrow and Chink, when loading, are the 
boundless West on the left and the limitless East on the right. 

I find no fault with speaking of Alexander and those other al- 
leged ambitious boys as being ambitious. I only ask that they 
be kept in their class and not mentioned in connection with the 
Shanghai wheelbarrow and the China boy who runs it. If one 
of these latter really set out to put on a load, after he had piled 
on to his wheelbarrow everything there is — after everything on 
earth that's loose, together with everything that's spiked down, 
was all loaded on to his barrow — do you think he would 
sit down and cry because there were no more worlds to conquer? 
Not on your life! He'd blandly reach up and pluck a comet 
and use its tail for a binder. 

I was so impressed with the Shanghai wheelbarrow that I im- 

51 



AROUND THE WORLD 

mediately, forthwith, straightway, at once, went out and pur- 
chased one. It cost me only three gold dollars. I had to have 
it boxed up to ship it home. Owing to the elevation of the 
wheel and the spraddle and length of its handles it took a box as 
big to enclose it as the smoke house where we used to cure hams 
back on the farm. The box cost me ten dollars, the freight fif- 
teen, also 35 per cent advalorem duty on the first cost of three 
dollars, and the ready one at figures will at once gather that it 
costme $29.05 landed in Clinton. 

It is worth the money, but I have to handle it with discretion. 
Anyone who comes to my house is privileged to look at the cu- 
rious things I have gathered from the ends of the earth. I'll 
knock off digging potatoes or mowing hay any time — and glad 
of the excuse — to show and explain them to anyone. All but 
that Shanghai wheelbarrow. Only to personages of the great- 
est distinction will I exhibit that, in the manner of the first-class 
as hereinafter described. Not because I have a snobbish dispo- 
sition, and would say to one of goodly raiment and fair fame, 
"Sit thou here on my front porch while I have brought forth and 
show to thee in motion my Shanghai wheelbarrow," and to an- 
other of shabby clothes and lowly walk, "Go thou into my parlor 
and look at and play with my rare satsuma," — I hope I am not 
that kind of a man, but the most delicate of all problems, the 
labor problem, has to be dealt with. If the hired girl problem 
is a delicate one, the hired man problem is more so. 

I used to sit on my front porch, among my guests, and give 
orders for the Shanghai wheelbarrow to be wheeled out from the 
barn on to the driveway for exhibition. Just called out to the 
man to go and get it, and then went back to my guests. I lost 
Michael and Patrick and Timothy and John and Mathew and 
Peter — good fellows too. They resigned! I didn't ask them to 
put so much as an empty basket on it, only to wheel out the 
empty barrow, push it around a bit, and wheel it back into the 
barn. If the Tzar of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm and King 
George get off their thrones and journey over seas to come to my 

52 




"THEY RESIGNED. 

63 



AROUND THE WORLD 

humble home to see my Shanghai wheelbarrow, I'll take a chance 
on losing the excellent man whose services I now enjoy, by hav- 
ing it wheeled out while I stand by and explain the thing in mo- 
tion. But anyone of lesser fame will have to go out to the barn 
with me, where we will look it over and discuss its points. 

Often, when things pile up and life looks hard to me, I go out 
to the barn, alone, and look at my Shanghai wheelbarrow, and 
I think of the wheelbarrow chauffeurs over here in 
Shanghai, and I'm ashamed of even thinking of discouragement, 
and I am strengthened, and edified, and built up. I've made 
some foolish investments in my time but never for a minute have 
I felt that way about my Shanghai wheelbarrow. 



54 



VII 

HOW THE PARSON'S PRAYER AND SOUP GOT 
MIXED— ALMOST 

Shanghai, China, June 12, 1910. 

I shall hunt up a new hotel on my next trip to Shanghai. I 
have always stopped and am stopping today in Shanghai at a 
hotel which is very prosperous. They have made a lot of money. 
The very name of the hotel is suggestive of millions. But they 
mistook me this trip for a globe trotter. 

At tiffin yesterday I ordered a glass of milk in place of coffee. 
They don't know how to make coffee out here. At dinner last 
night my table boy brought me a "chit" to sign which read, "1 
glass milk 15c," and he explained that it was for the glass of 
milk I ordered at tiffin. 

Hotels in the Orient are universally run on the American 
plan — a flat rate for room and meals. 

A bill, or memorandum, or letter, or note, or an I. O. U., is 
called a "chit" out here. If you order cigars or liquors at meals 
the table boy brings you a "chit" to sign for these extras. 

I didn't sign that "chit." 

I turned it over and wrote this "chit" on its back: 

"June 11, 1910. Dear sir: I am paying $9.00 a day at this 
hotel for room and meals. Will "chits" for bread, butter and 
potatoes ordered with my meals also be presented ? I trust you 
are doing well in the Orient. Wishing you a Merry Christmas 
and a happy and prosperous New Year, and hoping you will send 
by the bearer an answer to the above question, because I want 

55 



AROUND THE WORLD 

to know, you know, I beg to remain, Truly yours." 

I didn't sign my name to it. My name would have been en- 
dorsed on the "chit" if I had, and the hotel would have collected 
for the milk. I called the table boy to me, who had been watch- 
ing the strange proceeding, and said, pointing to the manager's 
name on the bill of fare, "Boy, my wantchee you takee this chit 
to number one. You talkee he, Mellican man, in room 82, 
wantchee answer, chop chop. You bringee back answer. Sav- 
vy?" 

"My savvy," the boy replied, and he started off with that 
double barrelled "chit" to do my bidding. Give a table boy in 
China an errand to do and he will do it if it's in the realm of hu- 
man possibilities to perform. I had gotten down to cheese and 
crackers when he came back and said, "Number One talkee, you 
no needee sign". I was glad to know that I didn't have to sign 
that "chit." I'd have been taken with an acute attack of writ- 
er's cramp if I had. But I change my hotel next trip. "When 
they take me for a globe trotter it's time to make a change. 

Speaking of "writer's cramp" have you sprung that notice on 
your readers yet ? It was due with my last article from Japan. 
You'll notice, though, that I took no chances. I wrote about 
Fujiyami's peak and not about its base. 

I sail today for Foo Chow, down the China coast and up the 
Min River. 

Foo Chow, China, June 16, 1910. 

Foo Chow is a tea town, noted also for its lacquer and brass 
ware and its grotesque carved images. The first time I came to 
Foo Chow I was homesick for a little while. Foo Chow has a 
million inhabitants and is built something on the plan of New 
York, i.e., it has outlying "burgs" like Hoboken and Jersey City. 

At that time "Hoboken" was placarded to kill all the foreign- 
ers in the port of Foo Chow — to annihilate them. There were 
about 150 foreigners in the port at that time. 

I was dropped into the port of a summer's morn by a Chinese 

56 



THE PARSON'S PRAYER AND SOUP 

trading vessel, which sailed away. There wasn't another ship 
leaving for twelve days. 

I learned on the next morning after my arrival of the excite- 
ment over in "Hoboken." I wasn't half as anxious that morn- 
ing to buy rare old Foo Chow curios as I was to get a ship out of 
Foo Chow for Shanghai. I was going East that trip. But 
there was nothing doing in departures for Shanghai, up the 
coast, or to Hong Kong, down the coast, and the only way to 
get out of Foo Chow was by boat. 

On that second morning, Dr. Gracy, our Consul at Foo Chow, 
took the American flag together with a retinue of the attaches 
of the consulate, and went over to "Hoboken" and sent word 
to the mandarin of that part of Foo Chow to call upon him. In- 
cidentally he mentioned in his message that he would give the 
mandarin fifteen minutes to pay his respects. 

The mandarin got around in eight minutes — seven minutes 
to spare. Gracy told the mandarin that he, Gracy, was the 
United States of America, and requested that the placards stuck 
up around "Hoboken," advising that the foreigners in the port 
of Foo Chow be exterminated, be taken down, and that in their 
places other placards be posted advising that the foreigners 
should not be exterminated. 

Mr. Mandarin said, "Can do." 

I didn't see Dr. Gracy as he held converse with that mandarin. 
I heard of it on the evening of the day on which it took place. 
But I'll bet Dr. Gracy looked like George Washington crossing 
the Delaware, with the American flag in evidence. I can't 
think of anything looking braver than that — if I could I'd imag- 
ine Dr. Gracy looking like it. 

Dr. Gracy is a rare man. It's only occasionally you meet 
up with such an one. 

The Doctor is not an M.D. He is a Doctor of Divinity. I 
learned that he was this kind of a Doctor in a way which came 
pretty near being embarrassing to. me. The devotional attitude 
a Doctor of Divinity assumes at times, together with a large 

57 



AROUND THE WORLD 

boquet of flowers, and possibly a certain ability on my part to 
look and act as if I were doing something else instead of the 
thing I was doing, saved me, but it was a close shave. 

On this visit to Foo Chow of which I am writing, my mail 
had been sent in care of our consul. Arriving in Foo Chow I 
immediately asked: "Who is our consul and where is he at?" 
I was told that Dr. Gracy was the consul and where to find him. 
Of course, being a total stranger in these parts, I didn't know 
what kind of a Doctor was Dr. Gracy. I only knew that they 
called him "Dr. Gracy." When I went for my mail, Dr. Gracy 
kindly invited me to dine with him on a certain evening at the 
consulate. 

Dinner in the far East is always a good deal of a function. 
The American consulate in Foo Chow is a mansion, cared for by 
a retinue of some forty servants. Arriving at the consulate, 
to keep that dinner date, I was ushered into a large and mag- 
nificently furnished dining room. The table was spread with 
snowy linen. In the center of the table was a tremendous 
boquet of beautiful flowers. The table was spread for but two. 
At each plate wine glasses were arranged in varying heights 
from high ones down to low ones. 

The Doctor explained to me that we would dine alone. He 
was alone at the consulate for the time, his family being away 
at a summer resort. A splendid type of Chinese servant brought 
me a plate of soup. The Doctor was likewise served. In the 
far East, at a foreigner's house (aside from a missionary's), at 
this juncture in the function I am describing, it's a safe bet that 
the next move is to eat. 

Behind that large, magnificent boquet, so large that we could 
not see each other's hands, the Doctor's body sort o' swayed. I 
interpreted the motion to mean but one thing — a dive for the 
soup. 

Automatically my mouth opened as a spoonful of my soup 
approached it. But the Doctor wasn't eating soup, he was say- 
ing grace. Never before in my experience did spiritual and phys- 

58 



THE PARSON'S PRAYER AND SOUP 

ical food come so near getting mixed. 1 closed my mouth quick 
— like a steel trap, but noiselessly. Slowly, and reverently, I 
lowered that spoon full of soup, and bored that superior Chinese 
servant (who was taking it all in) with a stern and stony side- 
wise stare which said, "I always do it this way when grace is 
being asked." And then I bowed my head. I didn't take any 
chances in lifting it too quickly, either. 

After the amen had had ample time to travel around that 
boquet twice I looked over the top of those flowers and said, 
"Doctor, are you a Doctor of Divinity or a sawbones doctor? 
Outside of a missionary's home, today is the first time I have 
heard a blessing asked at meat in the East, and I can assure you 
it sounds good to me." 

The doctor told me that the ministry had been his line prior 
to taking the Foo Chow consulship. A Massachusetts man, 
failing health, a friend at court, and this station in the East. 

"They told me when I came here," the doctor said, "That I 
couldn't run it on 'Puritanical lines' — for instance, that I couldn't 
successfully run a consulate in the East without serving wine at 
dinners. You will find wine glasses at your right, Mr. Allen. 
The servants put them there for decoration, but you will find no 
wine served at my table, nor has there ever been or will there 
be." 

A grand old man is Dr. Gracy. Health came back and he 
still holds down this post. I find him out of town this trip. 
Please send him a copy of the LaFollette's that tells this story. 

To get back to those placards, I was glad to learn that they 
were changed. I never did hanker to be exterminated. Par- 
ticularly not by Chinese methods. They have so many funny 
ways of doing it. One way is to dig a pit and stand a fellow in 
it like a fence post, with his clothes on, and with his head just 
above ground. Then they tamp quicklime in around him and 
give him all the water he will drink. This plan of doing away 
with a fellow is very trying in hot weather, and in July, in Foo 

59 



AROUND THE WORLD 

Chow, (it was July when Dr. Gracy told the mandarin to change 
the placards), the mercury in the thermometer is a cousin to the 
Shanghai wheelbarrow boys — mighty ambitious. It climbs and 
climbs. and climbs, absolutely nothing but the top satisfies it. 
The man who has been used like a fence post, in July, in Foo 
Chow, with quicklime tamped in all around him good and tight, 
would perspire freely, — indeed that is the intention in this mode 
of extermination. The perspiration slakes the lime and it's a 
most distressing way to be exterminated. 

If a million Chinese should really get started to exterminate 
150 foreigners, there's no telling just how they might go about 
it. The)- feel that they "owe the foreigner's one." If they 
chose that fence -post-lime-combination on a few, I'll bet it 
w r ould be my luck to draw a ticket for that way, if I happened 
to be mixed up in the deal. Anyway, I was glad the excitement 
didn't spread. I got away from the port that time with twenty 
tons of curios and I am back here again today. There's no ex- 
citement here now. They are busy with the tea crop. 

I have finished my business here and sail for Hong Kong to- 
night. 



60 



VIII 
BEAUTIFUL HONG KONG AND GRUESOME CANTON 

Hong Kong, China, June 18, 1910. 

Hong Kong has a beauty all its own. It is not like any other 
place I have ever seen. It is built on the side of a mountain, 
and suggests Gibraltar; but Gibraltar is plain, tame and com- 
monplace in beauty and interest compared with Hong Kong. 

Imagine a land-locked bay dotted with ships from every cor- 
ner of the globe riding at anchor ; native sampan boats crowding 
the shores and others threading their way across the bay between 
the larger craft; on the water's edge a splendid city of massive 
well-built stone and brick business blocks, office buildings and 
hotels; well -paved streets of macadam; the city extending up 
the mountain's side for a space, the streets in its level portion on 
the water's edge, three or four streets back from the bund, or 
water front, crowded with rickshaws darting to and fro, evading 
the trolly and the sedan chairs, the latter with their fares com-, 
ing down from or on their way up to the hilly part of the city, 
or to the mansions upon the mountain's side, with which it is 
dotted to its very peak, 2300 feet above sea level, where the 
trollys or rickshaws do not compete; both hilly and level por- 
tions of the city's streets filled with Chinese pedestrians and 
coolies, bearing burdens slung on poles; find yourself in a sedan 
chair about seven o'clock of an evening, borne along by four 
stalwart coolies, bare of foot and limb, with swinging, powerful 
strides bearing you through the populous portion of the city, 
then plunging into a labyrinth of splendidly paved paths, bor- 

61 



AROUND THE WORLD 




A SPENDID CITY OF MASSIVE WELL-BUILT BUSINESS BLOCKS.' 



dered by a most luxurient and beautiful growth of varied trop- 
ical palms, plants and vines — up and up, and up you're borne, 
zigzagging the mountain's side along those bewilderingly beau- 

62 



BEAUTIFUL HONG KONG AND GRUESOME CANTON 

tiful walks, passing mansions many, catching views of the city 
falling away from you and the land-locked bay beyond, finally 
to be set down at one of those mansions and ushered into its 
spacious halls and through drawing rooms with a wealth of Ori- 
ental furnishings, out on to a broad veranda where a view of city 
and bay greets your eye, together with the tropical jungle 
through which you have just passed; the whole scene illuminated 
by a myriad of twinkling lights, for night has fallen now — that's 
Hong Kong! 

Canton, June 19, 1910. 

Canton is not beautiful. It is ninety miles from Hong Kong. 
A terrible, grim and ugly city of some four million Chinese, 
crowded into a limited space, with narrow, dirty, crooked streets, 
seething with Chinese life. The city is built on the edge of Pearl 
River and is intersected with narrow canals. Both river and 
canals are crowded with sampans, in which boats live a popula- 
tion of probably 400,000. 

The Shameen, a portion of the city set off for foreigners, ly- 
ing along the river's edge, has one poor foreign hotel and numer- 
ous hongs (wholesale business houses) and banks, a foreign club 
and foreign consulates. This portion of Canton is composed of 
fine massive buildings and gives one the feeling that he is in 
20th century surroundings. But the rest of the city, built of 
two-story buildings, looks, smells and appears just as it did the 
first time I came to Canton, eleven years ago, and in all proba- 
bility looks, smells and appears just as it did eleven hundred 
years ago. 

Hong Kong has a beauty all its own, and Canton has an ugli- 
ness all its own, and holds to it most tenaciously. 

I have been jarred and shaken more in Canton in contemplat- 
ing the colossal task the Almighty has on His hands, of seeing 
His human family through this vale of tears, than in any other 
spot I've ever visited. 

On one of my former trips to Canton, Dr. Swan, head of the 

63 




JH89. THB CHINESE COURT 

" THEIR PUNISHMENT WILL COME LATER. 
64 





"CHINESE EXECUTION." 




AFTER THE EVENT. 



65 



AROUND THE WORLD 

Medical Presbyterian Mission located here, told me a story of 
mild interest (to people 12,000 miles away). 

During the Boxer troubles, the foreigners in Canton were 
worried. There were about 250 of them, counting missionaries 
in the Chinese part of the city, and others on Shameen. The 
male portion of those foreigners didn't get so far away from a 
gun that they couldn't put their hands on it at any minute. 

The missionaries live within a compound in the city, with a 
wall about ten feet high built around them. 

The Shameen is separated from the city by a canal. Two 
bridges cross the canal. Flimsy iron gates are thrown across 
those bridges. A Chinese guard opens them at the approach of 
a foreigner, or of a Chinese if the Chinese has a pass entitling 
him to go on Shameen. 

These walls and gates never struck me as being any protec- 
tion against four million Chinese, if said four million should re- 
ally get in earnest about doing up 250 "foreign devils" residing 
in their midst. 

During the Boxer troubles the old Empress Dowager, at Pe- 
kin, was desirous of having the Boxer movement extend to the 
Southern province, of which Canton is the capital, and of which 
Li Hung Chang was viceroy. She sent Li a message command- 
ing him to liberate all the prisoners in the Canton jails, hoping 
thereby to extend the movement by letting loose that rough 
element. Li was a staunch friend of the foreigners. While he 
did not dare disobey the royal edict he had a trick up his wide 
and flowing sleeve to circumvent the amiable designs of the old 
Dowager and he had the power to play the trick. He gave the 
order that all the prisoners in the jails in Canton be liberated, 
but he stationed executioners at the exits of all the jails, and as 
those prisoners were pushed out the heads of all were promptly 
cut off, and, Dr. Swan said, in telling me the story, "The streets 
around those jails ran blood that day." Dr. Swan told me that 
the foreigners in Canton esteemed Li Hung Chang very highly.. 
I did not see this take place and it may sound like a fish story 

66 



BEAUTIFUL HONG KONG AND GRUESOME CANTON 

to you, but I give it to you as Dr. Swan, a most estimable, relia- 
ble and Christian gentleman, gave it to me. 

As I have stood on the execution ground in Canton and 
watched one Canton executioner, in one and one -half minutes, 




"OUT OFF THE HEADS OF FOURTEEN CHINESE." 

cut off the heads of fourteen Chinese, I can probably more easily 
understand how Li Hung Chang carried out his plan to protect 
the foreigners. 

The things I have seen and smelled in Canton and the things 
I have been told about Canton, have caused the jars I mentioned 
above. 

I was interested in reading an account in one of the English 
newspapers published in Hong Kong, of a novel entertainment 
given by a Chinese lady. This lady had become discouraged on 
account of the manner in which fate had been pitching things 
her way. She had lost her husband and children. Death had 
claimed them. Life held no more attractions for her. She 

67 



AROUND THE WORLD 

owned a little house, which she sold, and with the proceeds 
bought herself a nice new dress and a good coffin. 

Then she sent out invitations to her friends to join her in a 
social tea, stating on the invitations that for a climax to the en- 
tertainment she would hang herself. The mandarin of the city 
in which she lived tried to dissuade her from carrying out the 
last act of her entertainment. But she was obdurate and car- 
ried out the full bill as advertised, and her friends put her in her 
coffin and burried her beside her husband and children. 

I didn't go to this party. I didn't have an invitation. I 
shouldn't have gone if I had I should certainty have sent my 
regrets. 

The Chinese are a very peculiar people! 

I didn't go to that execution from choice — or rather not from 
a willing choice — but out of courtesy to a gentleman whose 
guest I was in Canton the day it took place, and who very much 
wanted me to go. I wouldn't go to another out of courtesy. 

A Chinese newspaper, the leading one in Canton, with a cir- 
culation of 2,000, and the only one that commented upon the 
execution, had about 2\ inches, single column, concerning it, 
only mentioning the bare facts, the men's names, the names of 
the magistrates who sentenced them, and their crimes — they 
were river pirates. 

Three men were electrocuted (a triple execution) in one of our 
New York State prisons, shortly after I returned home from the 
trip on which I witnessed the Chinese mode. A New York 
paper used up a good part of a page in telling about that exe- 
cution and dwelt at length upon the appalling rapidity with 
which three men were launched into eternity. From the time 
the corps of executioners got started until the men were pro- 
nounced dead, "only seventeen minutes were consumed!" 

I couldn't help but contrast — two and one-half inches, single 
column, one Chinaman with a sword, a minute and a half, 
fourteen men instead of three. Just how much it cost the State 
of New York to put those three murderers out of commission I 

68 



BEAUTIFUL HONG KONG AND GRUESOME CANTON 

don't know. The artist in his line whom I saw execute four- 
teen, got lie a head and there was no occasion to pay a doctor 
to feel their pulse to see if they were dead. They were dead, 
all right — beyond all possible chance of resuscitation. 

I leave Canton tonight (I am always willing to leave Canton). 
Manila is the next town on my list. 



69 



IX 

OUR LITTLE BROWN BROTHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 

Manila, P. L, June 28, 1910. 

I don't feel competent to write about the Philippine Islands. 

They aren't on a direct line around the world, anyway. To 
get to them you have to side step 645 miles from Hong Kong, 
which is on the beaten path, — and, I was going to add, it's a 
foolish thing to do. 

Just as sure as I get started on the Philippine Islands I'll 
say' something foolish — anyway, there's bound to be someone 
who will say it's foolish. The fact is, I've got a lot of friends 
who have such a diversity of opinions about the Philippines that 
I hate to say anything about them for fear I'll hurt the feelings 
of those friends. 

Some of my highly esteemed friends think we ought to pull 
up root and branch and let the Philippines run themselves, and 
to do it now, right off quick. Others say we might consider this 
thing sometime in the future, say in a thousand years. While 
still others say, "What! give up the Philippines, after planting 
our flag and a billion dollars there — to say nothing of the brave 
boys in Khaki? Never! Nev-er! NEV-ER!" And there you 
are. I'm bound to make a mess of it, no matter how hard I try 
not to. 

I've been over here several days. I've talked to manufac- 
turers, hotel men, bankers, school teachers, merchants, railroad 
men, newspaper men, importers, exporters, — oh, I've button- 
holed everything and everybody who can savvy my language 

70 



OUR LITTLE BROWN BROTHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 

for their views of, and their ideas as to, and their opinions con- 
cerning-, the Philippine Islands and the United States' policy 
towards them. 

The general concensus of opinion, so far as I have been able to 
gather it from the Americans in the islands, is, that we have been 
a blooming lot of unwise politicians up to date in our handling 
of the situation. They have all, with one voice, filled me full of 
stories of the unlimited resources of the islands, but in the next 
breath they say, we can never develop the resources without 
labor; and of the Filipino as a laboring proposition — oh, they 
say unutterable things! 

After several days of that same plaint I ran acrsos one chap 
who is up against it hard. He is trying to handle a situation 
where millions are at stake and where labor is essential to pull 
the situation to the center. Should I give you his opinion of the 
Filipino as a laboring proposition, and if you should publish it 
verbatim, you'd have to print it on asbestos paper to be safe. 

After hearing him out I said, "Well, if we should send over to 
Shanghai and bring over a couple of Shanghai wheelbarrow boys 
with their barrows, and let them load every Filipino in the 
islands, good, bad and indifferent, on to. their useful vehicles, 
about four million to a barrow, (he has been to Shanghai and 
didn't seem to think I was proposing impossible loads) and push 
them up to the crater of some volcano, said crater to be very 
deep, with perpendicular walls, and the volcano bilin' good, and 
dump them all in, that would be unjust, unchristian, cruel, hor- 
rible, barbarous, wicked, fiendish and outrageous, wouldn't it?" 

He said it would, but that there wouldn't be anything else the 
matter with the scheme. All of which goes to show that the 
Philippine Islands are a delicate subject to write about, and I 
honestly wish. I didn't have to do it. 

Really, I think we ought not be too hard on our Little Brown 
Brothers. (I'd like to get around, about here, with something 
that would make Mr. Taft and his school of thinkers say that 
I'm a good fellow and a wise man). You see, it's this way. 

71 



AROUND THE WORLD 

The poor chaps have, the islands over, about 465 fiesta days a 
year to celebrate, and only 365 days in the year to celebrate 
them in. 

That's a discouraging situation on the face of it. It's dollars 
to doughnuts that we wouldn't show as much pluck in a like 
situation as does our Little Brown Brother. (You can always 
find something good to write about anything if you look for it, 
and you bet I'm looking, because this is a delicate subject, and 
be careful as I may I feel that I'll put my foot in it). We'd 
chuck the sum, wipe off the slate, and try to figure it out some 
other way. Does Little Brown Brother renig at his job? 

He does not. Absolutely undaunted with the impossibility 
of his task, with a heroism beautiful to contemplate, he goes at 
it and celebrates just as many as he can, anyway. 

The fellow who wrote that silly postcard that has sold so 
largely in the United States, viz., "If drinking whiskey inter- 
feres with your business, give up your business," got his inspira- 
tion from our Little Brown Brothers trying to get away with all 
their fiesta days. And while it may be a little aggravating to 
an American over here, with millions invested to develop the 
islands, to have his help all knock off work to attend a fiesta, 
the value of one inspiration that will help to keep the slaves on 
the mainland good natured is not to be too lightly considered, 
and the sarcasm of that postcard has raised a lot of laughs and 
set many a good fellow to thinking. 

It's a sight to make anyone forget the high cost of living to 
watch Little Brown Brother, with his back number fiesta days 
to be worked off staring him in the face, heroically taking hold 
of the current one to keep the debt as low as possible, (that's 
commendable, ain't it?), and to see him go to the day in hand 
bright and early in the morning, not even taking time to tuck his 
shirt inside his pants, with a chew of betel nut rightly placed, a 
cigarette stuck on the under side of his upper lip, and with his 
fighting cock under his arm, — really, if it wouldn't put me on 
the blink with those of my friends who are so thoroughly con- 

72 



OUR LITTLE BROWN BROTHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 




OUR LITTLE BROWN BROTHER." 



vinced that "The Philippine Islands for the Filipinos" should be 
our settled policy, I would lift up my voice with all the Amer- 
icans I've met over here, and say, "Pending Little Brown 
Brother's getting his fiesta days worked off, let the Chinese come 
in and develop the islands under the guidance of the Americans 
now here, and more who would come to represent the capital 

73 



AROUND THE WORLD 

which would flow in, once we had a settled policy and a labor 
element which could be depended on." That would be a settled 
policy, all right. It's going to take "L.B.B." a thousand years 
and then some, to take care of his fiesta days, current and back 
numbers. 

They tell me over here that the Philippine Islands are the 
original garden of Eden. 

Putting two and two together, and taking all that they tell me 
without any salt, that may be so. It may be that the Filipino 
disregarded the Divine command, "In the sweat of thy brow 
shalt thou eat bread," and, instead, stole a march on the Al- 
mighty and sneaked past the angels with the flaming swords, 
back into the garden, and has been picking his living off a tree 




"BEEN PICKING HIS LIVING OFF A TREE." 



ever since. Anyway, he don't seem to harness up first rate with 
the' aims, aspirations and ambitions of his Big White Brother, 

74 



OUR LITTLE BROWN BROTHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 

who is sweating it out as per the rule laid down in the good book. 

Well, to stop talking and say something about these islands — 
Say! I'm not going to do it. It's not in the contract. I was 
only to write on my trip around the world, and these islands are 
645 miles off the beat. If I were to write about the Philippines 
I'd hurt somebody's feelings — they are a delicate subject. 

This is not my first visit to the islands. I was over here nine 
years ago. I got the gold fever that time. Otherwise I found 
the islands healthful. I never had had the gold fever before and 
I've never had it since. I travelled the length of the archipelago 
on my former visit. Walked a pair of shoes off my feet hiking 
over one of the mountain ranges down in Mindinao. I emerged 
from Mindinao with seven gold mines and a town site. Had 
them all buttoned up with a good tight agreement, and the agree- 
ment duly witnessed by the native secretary of one of the prov- 
inces. It was a beautiful town site. A little wild, but a good 
site. They were nice gold mines, too. There was only one thing 
the matter with them, and that's liable to happen to nine gold 
mines out of ten and I only had seven. There wasn't any gold 
in those gold mines! 

No, I won't write about the Philippine Islands. They are a 
delicate subject, and 645 miles off my beat. 

Singapore is on the line, and I'm going to get there as fast as I 
can. I'll write you from Singapore. 



75 



r 









X 

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND CHINESE ART 

Singapore, Straits Settlement, July 8th, 1910. 

Dropping down almost directly South from Hong Kong to 
Singapore, a matter of some 1500 miles through the South China 
Sea, nearing the equator one would expect to find the water 
getting warmer and warmer. To have a childish fancy come true 
it would be just about boiling at the equator. 

It's a four days' sail from Hong Kong to Singapore. The first 
morning out of Hong Kong the water for my bath, taken direct- 
ly from the sea, was warm — oh, about as warm as it used to be in 
our old swimming hole in Big Creek in Ohio, after a term of warm 
days in July, which same creek was dry save for that hole — any- 
way, it was good and warm. The second morning out it was 
cooler, the third still cooler, and the fourth, just out of Singa- 
pore, 70 miles North of the equator, the water was chilly. 

Thus childhood's fancies go to smash- — the water in the sea at 
the equator don't boil. It's a good deal cooler than at 
Hong Kong, 1500 miles North of the equator. 

Singapore is on the island of Singapore, a flat piece of ground 
14 miles wide and 27 long, lying at the extreme Southern end 
of the Malay Peninsula, at the Southern entrance to the Malacca 
Straits. 

These narrow straits, ten to twenty miles wide, with the 
peninsula on the^East and the island of Sumatra on the West, are 
the world's highway of commerce. 

In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles came rubbering around this 

76 



THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND CHINESE ART 

part of the world, and, with an Englishman's eye for strategic 
points, reached out and picked up this island of Singapore, with 
its 300 naked savages, and presented island and savages to his 
country, much as one would say, "Have a cigar." 

"Thanks", Great Britain said, "we don't mind"; and straight- 
way planted her guns here; and here they are today, command- 
ing the world's highway, with their challenge of "Who goes- 
there?" One has to take off his hat to Great Britain 
in this matter of picking off the strategic points, the world's 
strongholds. 

Most of the strongholds on earth, worth mentioning, Great 
Britain has picked up in this same nonchalant way, occasionally 
cuffing the natives up to a peak if they had the temeriiy to get 
behind a rock or a tree and make up a face at the conquering 
Briton. 

■After taking a bird's eye view of the situation, all things con- 
sidered, I don't know as I could have done more wisely in choos- 
ing an ancestry. 

The other old world nations have been not a whit more virtu- 
ous in this matter of itching for strongholds. They just didn't 
seem to have the savvy. They came snooping around, just as 
willing to pick 'em up, only to find that Johnny Bull was on the 
spot. If in the end John gets licked, one can't help admiring 
Dad's colossal audacity up to date. .» 

Today, Singapore has a population of 280,000. Immediately 
after Mr. Raffles presented this island, with its 300 Malays, to 
his country, they didn't send out a lot of school teachers to make 
clerks, policemen and judges of the natives, nor did they setup 
signs warning the Chinese to "Keep off the grass." John Bull 
is a hard headed old cuss. I'm not saying what John ought to 
have done — that's a delicate subject — I'm only telling you what 
he did. He took the money that campaign of education would 
have cost, added more to it and put it into guns and fortifica- 
tions. Then he got out a lot of nice engraved invitations, in 
choice pidgin English, and sent em over to China. It was a 

77 



AROUND THE WORLD 

cordial bid for the Chinese to come to Singapore, assuring them 
that the "water was fine." 

The Chinese came and built up the Straits Settlements, Sin- 




Ch'mese 



" THE CHINESE CAME. 



gapore, Penang, Malacca and the Province of Wellesley, all on 
the lower end of the Malay Peninsula, a chunk of ground about 
half as large as the single island of Luzon. The Chinese pros- 
pered under, the liberal English government, the Settlements 
prospered, and if it is true that commerce is an instrument to 
lift the world to a higher level of civilization, the world profited, 
because the commerce of the Straits Settlements reaches an- 
nually 559 million Straits dollars, the value of this same Straits 
dollar in gold being 57 cents of our money. The port of Sin- 
gapore ranks second to Hong Kong and is the eighth in im- 
portance in the world. 

Although Singapore is so near the equator, it has a delightful 
climate. In my three days' stay the thermometer hasn't gone 
above 86°. There is always a refreshing breeze and the morn- 

78 



THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND CHINESE ART 

ings and evenings are delightfully cool, and, I am told, this is 
the climatic condition the year round. 

The Chinese have a Buddhist temple, one of the finest in the 
world, at Singapore. My guide told, me it cost sixteen million 
dollars. This guide was a Cingalese, a colored gentleman. I 
engaged him at four o'clock last evening to take me this morn- 
ing — we arranged to make an early start, 6:30 — to visit the 
botanical gardens, a government rubber plantation and this 
Chinese temple. At six o'clock last evening this guide was 
bilin' drunk. He was sober when I engaged him. How he 
managed to get so drunk in two hours I don't know, nor was I so 
interested in finding out, as I was to know if he could possibly 
sober up from such a tremendous jag in twelve short hours, suf- 
ficiently to conduct an American business man, thirsting for in- 
formation, on his quest for knowledge. I expressed my doubts 
on this point to the proprietor of Raffles Hotel, where I am stop- 
ping. Mine host assured me that I need have no fears, that the 
guide was a rare character, that he got just so drunk every after- 
noon, but that he never failed to be on hand to meet an engage- 
ment the next morning. The guide showed up all right, but 
between you and me I think he figured out the cost of that tem- 
ple between four and six last evening and got it too high. 

I never bought a Chinese temple. I never wanted to buy 
one. If I were in the market for a Chinese temple and this one 
was offered to me for anything over eight million dollars I'd 
shop around a bit before buying. But it's a mighty fine spe- 
cimen of a Chinese temple. 

The Chinese aren't so slow. 

On panels in the wall of a long veranda approach to the en- 
trance to this temple are some specimens of Chinese art, ex- 
. pressed in paintings. Compared with Michael Angelo's and 
Raphael's, as works of art, they are not to be considered. But 
for awful warnings to evil doers to flee from the wrath to come, 
Michael Angelo, Raphael, or any modern artist, would have to 
hustle to keep in sight of these Chinese artist's dust, as the whole 

79 



AROUND THE WORLD 

earth's bunch of painters come racing down the world's highway 
of art. 

Of course,, everybody knows that the Chinese can't paint for 
sour apples, if you go ringing in technique, atmosphere, per- 
spective, anatomy, and a few other minor details such as con- 
noisseurs prate about in discussing art. What I'm trying to 
tell you is, that these Chinese artists have gotten right down to 
brass tacks in showing what will happen hereafter, when the 
avenging angel passes out to the wicked what's coming to them 
for the deeds done in the body. In these pictures the punish- 
ment for every brand of wickedness is portrayed. 

A good idea of the character of these "works of art" may be 
gained by describing the last painting, as you pass into the tem- 
ple. It shows what's coming to the butchers who charge the 
people too much for meat. 

If we could only induce the men highest up in the Beef Trust 
in America to come to Singapore and study that painting, it 
would do more good than we accomplished in puckering up our 
stomachs in a preparation for that ineffectual beef boycott. 

A market place is portrayed with an immense chopping block. 
Behind this chopping block his Satanic majesty stands, arrayed 
in a butcher's gown. With a meat cleaver he is chopping up the 
butchers, who, While on earth, charged too much for meat, and 
is passing out to the people juicy cutlets carved from the bodies 
of these wicked men. Technique, perspective — atmosphere I 
was going to add, but it fairly reeks with sulphurous atmos- 
phere — may be wanting in that painting, but you can fairly 
hear the Devil say, "Who'll take home a tenderloin from this 
erstwhile wicked butcher and broil it on hot coals ; who wants to 
take this beef baron's heart and toast it on a fork? Come up, 
come, good people, here's meat and plenty now, without money 
and without price." From the contented, happy look on the 
faces of the crowd to whom the Devil is passing out those cutlets 
they have evidently just run over from Heaven for a call, and 
all have return tickets. But I'm not going to try to look into 

80 



THE STRAITS SETTLEMENT AND CHINESE ART 

the mind of a Chinese artist. I'll earn my money if I describe 
his work. 

I'm going North from here, out through the Malacca Straits, 
past Penang and up to Calcutta, picking up Rangoon inBur- 
mah on my way. 



SI 



XI 
IN BURMAH 

Rangoon, July 15, 1910. 

Once in a great, great while, one runs across a story in busi- 
ness life clear out of the ordinary and which gives one a jolt. I 
ran up against one today — and it's a Sunday-school story, too! 
The characters are real flesh and blood, and not the creations of 
some namby-pamby writer of some Sunday-school stories, that 
often make a real live boy ache to go out, and — well — break the 
Sabbath, for instance. 

The hero in this story is a business man. And a King, who 
was an erstwhile Prince, and a Duke, a Duchess and Princess, 
and members of the Prince's staff, kind of fit in and help the 
story out — like the necessary wadding it takes to load a gun. 

Kings and Dukes and Princes — and sich — are tiptop ma- 
terial out of which to make stories, but in this particular in- 
stance they are only used for a background. This is a boy's 
Sunday-school story. 

I never expected to write a Sunday-school story when I 
started on this trip ; but, you see, I didn't know what I was going 
to run into. One never does. 

This true Sunday-school story I'm going to tell — when I get 
to it, (I'm going to tell about these "heathen" Burmese and 
their temple first; I really need them as a moral to adorn my 
tale), happened here in Rangoon. 

Last night I dropped into Rangoon, which is in Burmah. 
Burmah is quite a big country, pretty nearly as big as the state 

82 . 



IN BURMAH 

of Texas, and there are close to twelve million Burmese in Bur- 
mah. 

They are a cross between a Filipino and a Chinese in ambition 
and willingness to work. They are not such a lymphatic lot as 
the Filipinos, nor so industrious as the Chinese, — about half way 
between. They are chocolate brown as to color, with straight 
hair. They have a rich country in undeveloped natural re- 
sources, with abundant teak and rubber forests, deposits of pe- 
troleum, and gold and ruby mines. There are thousands of wild 
elephants, tigers, buffalo and deer in Burmah, and there is the 
big Irawaddy River. That's sort of a gossippy old stream — at 
least it takes thirteen mouths to express itself to the Bay of 
Bengal. On one of these mouths is Rangoon, the biggest city 
in Burmah. Rangoon has 300,000 inhabitants and is a very 
beautiful city, with many lakes and tropical parks and pagodas, 
one of which is one of the world's greatest sights, a temple 
built to Buddha. 

The legend is that nearly twenty-five hundred years ago some 
of Buddha's disciples came to him and begged a relic from him — 
something that belonged to him. He gave them eight hairs 
from his head. They took these eight hairs, put them in a 
jewelled casket, and started to rear a temple to Buddha over 
them. They started the temple here in Rangoon, but a nat (an 
angel) appeared to them and led them to another location in the 
city, the present site of the great temple. They abandoned the 
temple they had started, took the casket containing the eight 
precious hairs, and over those hairs erected the great Shwe 
Dagon Pagoda, which is the oldest and finest Buddhist temple 
in the world — a marvel of architectural grace and beauty. 

The great feature of the temple is its spire, which rises to a 
height of 370 feet, with a diameter of 450 feet at its base. This 
spire has been gilded many times with gold leaf, which in this 
climate lasts but a few years. They are now covering this im- 
mense spire with solid gold plates. The work of putting on 
these plates has been completed one-fourth of the distance from 

83 



AROUND THE WORLD 

the top down. These gold plates are made of English sov- 
ereigns—a sovereign being $4.84 worth of gold — hammered on 




"SHWE DAGON PAGODA. 
84 



IN BURMAH 

anvils into squares, four by four inches. Thus each square foot 
of these plates contains $43.56 worth of gold. At least five 
million dollars' worth of gold — to say nothing of the cost of 
hammering it into sheets and putting it on — will be needed to 
complete this work. 

These "heathen" Burmese are a pretty sincere lot of worship- 
pers. 

It is not an uncommon sight to see a man and his wife, who 
have journeyed hundreds of miles to worship at this temple 
which they believe to cover eight hairs from Buddha's head, 
the pair not having two rupees' (64c) worth of clothes on their 
backs, dig up somewhere from the recesses of those "jeans," two, 
and even three hundred rupees to help pay for the gold to cover 
that spire! However mistaken they may be in their faith, I am 
constrained to believe that their religion means as much to them 
as our faith in the one true God means to us. It is more of a 
sacrifice for these twelve million Burmese to raise that five 
million dollars than it would be for the people of the United 
States to raise five billion dollars. I haven't any data by me 
to prove that assertion, but I believe it's true. 

If some great crisis should arise whereby we had to raise five 
billion dollars — quickly, to save — oh, — we will say, our Chris- 
tian Sabbath from being taken away from us, on a pinch, if we 
had to, we are better able to raise that enormous sum than these 
Burmese are able to get around with that five million dollars' 
worth of gold which they are giving simply for sentiment, for 
decorative purposes. 

Oh! we'd raise it if we had to. We'd raise ten billion if we 
had to. Just to suppose a case. Suppose the Almighty 
had commissioned the Devil to try us on this point, even as He 
gave him permission to try Job of old. Suppose under these 
circumstances the Devil should come at us with this proposi- 
tion — "Raise for me ten billion dollars' worth of treasure within 
a week or I'll take from you your Christian Sabbath." What 
would America's answer be to that proposition? 

8.5 



AROUND THE WORLD 

Before coming to Rangoon I'd have been enough of a pessi- 
mist to have bet gold eagles to brass buttons that we'd have 
said, "That's a tremendous lot of treasure; guess we'll keep the 
ten billion and limp along with nine commandments." 

Today I'm enough of an optimist to bet gold eagles to brass 
buttons that America's answer to the Devil would be, "You 
get to home out of here; here's your ten billion; we'll keep our 
.Sabbath." 

This true Sunday-school story that I've got up my sleeve — 
that, and watching these Burmese Buddhists (if we haven't got 
as much sand as these Burmese I'd like to know) is what's stiff- 
ened up my backbone. Of course this being a Sunday-school 
story I wouldn't bet. I only use that word in a sort of illus- 
trative way. 

When I started out for business this morning, right after 
capturing a chota haziri — (no, boys, that's not something to 
shoot at, that's a small breakfast that they give you in Rangoon 
before the regular 9 o'clock breakfast) — the last thing I was 
looking for was a Sunday-school story. As I never was in 
Burmah before I asked the proprietor of my hotel if there was 
anything doing in curios in Rangoon? 

"Why," he said, "you must see Hirst. He is headquarters in 
Burmah for curios. His place is only a few minutes' drive from 
this hotel." 

While waiting for my gharry mine host added: " I want to post 
you, Mr. Allen. You can't buy from native merchants in Ran- 
goon without bargaining. Hirst is different. He is absolutely 
one price. Also he is peculiar. If you try to beat him down he 
might refuse to sell to you. He is an old Englishman, comes 
from good stock back home, and has very decided views on some 
things. Five years ago the Prince of Wales (now King George) 
was here in Rangoon with his suite, touring Burmah. They 
stopped at this hotel. The Prince's secretary sent word to 
Hirst that his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, would visit 
his store the next morning to buy some curios. The next day 

86 



IN BURMAH 

was Sunday. Hirst sent back this message : ' My compliments 
to the Prince of Wales, but tell him I would not sell goods on 
Sunday even to the King of England.' Hirst is headquarters 
in Burmah for curios, Mr. Allen, but don't try to dicker with 
him. You don't have to ; his goods and prices are right." 

"Say," I said to that hotel man, as a son of Ham, perched up 
on his driver's seat, came reigning up to the hotel steps, "will 
you kindly request your interpreter to tell this Jim Crow driver 
to push his horse as fast as it can go to Hirst's curio shop? I'm 
in a hurry to see a man in the Far East who has one price and 
who wouldn't sell to anyone on Sunday. Curios are my special- 
ty. I'm looking for curios." 

I was dropped in front of Hirst's store in an incredibly short 
time. The interpreter must have delivered my directions right. 
As he shot them at that driver they sounded as if they would 
make anything go. 

I found Mr. Hirst to be a hale, hearty, jovial old English 
gentleman. I didn't buy everything he had. He has carved 
elephants' tusks, and other art pieces worth thousands of dollars 
for a single piece, and I had to leave something, because royalty, 
or representatives of royalty, might come to Rangoon almost 
any day, and Mr. Hirst must have something on hand to show 
them, for he has a large trade in Burmese curios with the crowned 
heads of Europe. But if his store doesn't look like a whirlwind 
had struck it after he ships out my order, I'm no judge of a 
windstorm. 

It was easy and pleasant to deal with Mr. Hirst. After a 
most pleasant forenoon's business was concluded, I said, "Mr. 
Hirst, I want your story for publication ; will you give it to me ?" 
With a humorous twinkle in his keen eyes he said, "Why, yes; 
if you think it's worth printing." 

In his home this afternoon he gave it to me. I only made one 
bad break. In showing me his private collection he handed me 
a most unique sword and told me its history. As I held it in my 
envious grasp — an old sword always does appeal to me — I said, 

87 



AROUND THE WORLD 

"Er — er — er, this — this sword — you — you wouldn't — sell this 
sword would you, Mr. Hirst?" Did you ever offer to buy a fond 
young mother's baby? Mr. Hirst snatched that sword out of 
my hand and put it back in its place on the wall. He didn't 
swear — Mr. Hirst is a good man — but as his back was toward me 
I heard him telling God all about it, under his breath. 

He has a collection of Burmese spears ; he claims the only com- 
plete collection extant. He has been offered pounds sterling 
enough for that collection to give him a competency, even if the 
number of pounds offered were dollars instead of pounds. 

And here, dear children, is my Sunday-school story — aye, my 
Monday-school, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Satur- 
day-school story — that I ran up against in Rangoon today : 

Hirst is an Englishman, a Yorkshire Englishman. A York- 
shire Englishman and a Mayflower-Plymouth-Rock-New Eng- 
land American are a good deal alike. His ancestors were York- 
shire English farther back than he has ever tried to trace. His 
father was a well to do manufacturer of woolen blankets. In 
1852, owing to a depression in business, his father, together with 
other woolen manufacturers, found themselves with accumulated 
stocks that they had to move. 

Mr. Hirst, then a young man in College, was chosen to go to 
America to try to unload those stocks. He went, and succeeded. 
He came back to England and apprenticed himself to the woolen 
trade. After his apprenticeship he went into business for him- 
self, buying Australian wool, and selling it, largely in the United 
States. After an active business career of thirty years, in the 
wool business, during which time he visited the United States 
four times, at intervals, in the interest of his business, (he is as 
familiar with the geography of the eastern half of the United 
States as I am) he retired, with a competency. 

Owing to unfortunate investments in Australian gold mines, at 
the age of fifty -six he found himself "busted." He came to 
Burmah and prospected for gold throughout Burmah for ten 
years, and at the age of sixty-six found himself where he started 



IN, BURMAH 

his career as a gold prospector — still "busted." He then came 
to Rangoon, and in a most modest way, with a few pounds he 
was able to get together, started life over again, in the curio 
business. 

Here Mr. Hirst told of his struggle for a foothold in a new 
business— the old, old story, a fight for success that young men 
often think too hard, and stop this side of the goal. All the 
resources of an indomitable will, square dealing, close application 
to business, long hours, expenses cut to the minimum, careful, 
patient, laying of a foundation from the age of sixty-six to seven- 
ty-one, (Mr. Hirst is now seventy-six years old) a steady uphill 
pull — and then success. And then the old man stopped, as if 
there were really no more to tell. 

" Oh! but, Mr. Hirst," I cried, springing up, "go on, I want to 
hear the rest. How about the next five years ? How about your 
refusal to sell to the Prince of Wales on Sunday?" 

"Oh," he said, "you've heard that story about the Prince of 
Wales? Well', yes" he said, "that's true. I didn't sell the 
Prince of Wales anything, but I sold that week to a number of the 
officers of his staff; in fact, that was the most profitable week I 
had had in Rangoon up to that date. And things have seemed 
to come my way ever since that week. 

"The story, somehow, travelled back to England," he con- 
tinued. "Two years later the Duke and Duchess of Connaught 
and Princess Patricia came to Rangoon. I was in bed, ailing — 
not feeling quite fit— at the time of their visit. The Duke sent 
me a note saying that they would like to call upon me. I got 
into a dressing gown to receive them. When they came, the 
Duchess apologized and said, 'It is really too bad to intrude upon 
you when you are ill, Mr. Hirst,' but the Duke said, 'I didn't 
want to leave Rangoon without seeing, and shaking hands, with 
the man who wouldn't open his store on Sunday even to do busi- 
ness with my brother, the King of England.' 

"The best carvers in the country work for me. I've placed 
Burmese works of art pretty well over the world in the past five 

89 



AROUND THE, WORLD 

years. The representative of a King in Europe, some time ago, 
was buying some pieces from me for his King. He asked me if 
I thought a certain screen I had 'was good enough for his King's 
palace?' I told him I sold one like it for my King's palace, and 
if it was good enough for my King it was good enough for his." 

Mr. Hirst, I said, I want your photograph. "Why, Mr. 
Allen," he said, "do you know, I haven't got a picture of my- 
self? You'd be welcome to it if I had. I live alone, I'm quite 
alone in the world. I've never wanted a picture of myself, and 
for twenty years there has been no one to want a picture of me. 
I was married at twenty-four, and lost my wife two years later. 
She left me with an infant daughter, who lived with me until her 
death at thirty years of age. I didn't marry again, for two 
reasons. I never saw anyone whom I thought could fill my wife's 
place, and I shrank from giving my little girl a step-mother. 
I've often thought that, perhaps, that was not the wisest thing. 
If I had married again, while my little girl was still too young to 
know the difference, it might have been better for the child, and 
I might have had a son to take this business when I am gone. 
But our life was very happy, while my daughter was spared to 
me." 

'Twas the only note of sadness in his story. A happier, 
jollier, better informed, more wholesome man, one would not ask 
to meet, than J. Whitfield Hirst, English gentleman, doing busi- 
ness in his King's colony of Burmah — a most loyal subject to his 

King 1 honestly believe if the Devil came at us with 

that proposition, we'd send him back home with a flea in his ear. 

I went to my hotel for my camera, and Mr. Hirst went to his 
store. I have some kodak pictures of Mr. Hirst, and a group of 
his ivory carvers, working on elephants' tusks. 

Can you get it thoroughly into your noddles, children, what 
that message to the heir to the throne of England meant to Mr. 
Hirst ? Do you know how dear success in business is, to men who 
are fighting for it ? Can you picture the situation in Rangoon, a 
British city of nearly 300,000? The heir to England's throne 

00 




J. WHITFIELD HIRST. 
91 



AROUND THE WORLD 

expected! Everyone on the qui vive, especially the merchants. 
A few might hope for a royal visit; and once it was made, that 




" GROUP OF IVORY CARVERS." 

shop was stamped with royal favor. This means much to a 
London merchant; but vastly more in far off Rangoon, would a 
visit, and the patronage, of the Royal Prince mean to the mer- 
chant fortunate enough to capture it. A man no longer young — 
seventy-one years old — an old man, putting up his last fight for 
business success. He has fought, and won, and lost, and for 
fifteen years in a new and distant land he has fought to win it 
back. The stress of battle is still with him. Oh! if now the 
Prince would but put the stamp of royal approval on his shop! 

92 ■ 



IN BURMAH 

And then the message comes to the brave old man: — " His Royal 
Highness, the Prince of Wales, will call at your store to purchase 
goods at a certain hour tomorrow." But "tomorrow " is Sunday, 
and Mr. Hirst can't sell goods on Sunday without violating his 
conscience. So this message goes back, " My compliments to the 
Prince of Wales, but tell him I would not sell goods to the King 
of England on Sunday!" 

Somehow or other, it strikes me, there's the making of a mighty 
good story in the bare facts recited above. But I've got to make 
a drive for Calcutta tomorrow, and Mr. Hirst is going up country 
to look at a lot of elephants' tusks he has got wind of. 



93 



XII 

A HOT TIME IN INDIA 



Calcutta, India, July 20, 1910. 

My Dear Judge: 

This is the 
Black Hole 
of Calcutta. 
This is the in- 
script ion on 
that tablet: 
"The marble 
pavement be- 
low this spot 
was placed 
here by Lord 
Curzon, Vice- 
roy and Gov- 
ern o r-General 
of India in 1901 
t o mark the 
site known as 
'The Black 
Hole,' in 

which 146 Brit- 
ish inhabitants 
of Calcutta 
were confined 
on the night of 

the 20th of June, 1756, and from which only 23 came out alive." The pavement 

marks the exact breadth of the prison, 14 ft. 10 in., but not its full length — 18 ft.; 

about one-third of the area at the north end being covered by the building on which 

this tablet is fixed. 

It is exceedingly warm in India at this season. Respectfully yours, 

George Hoyt Allen. 




WEMGS&i 



94 



A HOT TIME IN INDIA 





Benares 


j, India, July 21, 1910. 




7 '-f^m ^ttm 




Dear George: — Sis ! 
boom ! ah ! but its hot 
in Benares. This town 








is noted for its brass- 
ware and Ghats. 
There's the Dasaswam- 








edh ghat and the 
Bachhraj ghat and 
the Chaurathi ghat 




and the Trilochana 
ghat — and others. 
Ghat's a place to 








cremate' Hindus. 
Haven't been to see 








'em, not to-day — no, thanks. 


I'd visit an ice 


plant if I could find one. 


Pish, pew ! but it's hot in Benares. This shoemaker is a wise man. 


That's the only way to dress in Benares. 

Yours 


Dad. 



Lucknow, India, July 22, 1910. 

Dear George: — I'm in Luck- 
now. There is only one place 
that could be hotter'n Lucknow — 
guess where. Si ! We ! Yah ! 
Yes ! Lucknow is a hot town. 
After getting through with my 
business here, all desire to see 
the town was fried out of me. 
Sat down under a punkah and 
watched a barber shave a man. 
Barber's wise man. Knows how 

to dress. Fellow getting shaved, blame fool — too many clothes on. 

So've I. I'm in such a melting condition th' only way to save me'll be 

to dip me up and put me in a pail. Give you pointer. Don't come to 

India in th' summer. Going to Agra to-night. 

. Dad. 




95 



AROUND THE WORLD 



Agra, India, July 23, 1910. 

Dear George: — Made a mis- 
take. Two places can be hot- 
ter'n Lucknow. Agra is one of 
'em. Got here this mornin' — 
they poured me in a tub and 
brought me around to see the 
Taj Mahal. Most beautiful 
building in India. Most beau- 
tiful building in th' world. 
"Should be seen by moon- 
light" — but I'm traveling nights 
and working days. You can 
scrape culture off yourself with 
a hoe after you've seen the Taj 
Mahal. Scheme is — lot of globe 
trotters who've "done" India get together. First one says — "Did you 
see the Taj Mahal at Agra?" Second one says, — "Yes indeed, wasn't it 
beautiful?" First one says, "Yes indeed!" 

What one says to th' other's supposed to be worth th' money. 
Woof ! but it's hot in Agra. 

Dad. 




Delhi, India, July 24, 1910. 

Dear George : — 
Didn't think it possi- 
ble, back in Lucknow, 
that there could be 
more than one place 
that was hotter. There 
was — Agra, and Delhi's 
hotter'n Agra. Got 
here this mornin'. 
They sopped me up 
and took me to see 
the Cashmere gate. If they run me into a hotter town than Delhi, then 

I will know the name of the place. 

Dad. 




96 



A HOT TIME IN INDIA 



■Bombay, 8orl Sunder Slallon 




wanted to be sure of it so I asked him 
Offered to bet it wasn't. He wouldn't bet. 
I'm mistaken. 



Bombay, India, July 25, 1910. 

Dear George : — 
I'm in Bombay — 
at least that's what 
they tell me. It's 
hotter'n Delhi. They 
took me from the 
station to th' hotel 
in a bucket. They 
poured me out on 
th' hotel floor and 
I asked th' clerk, 
"What place is 
this?" He said, 
"Bombay." I 
again. He said "Bombay." 
Mebbe it is Bombay. Mebbe 

Dad. 



97 



XIII 
HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO ANSWER PRAYER 

Bombay, India, July 30, 1910. 

Calcutta is the second city in the British Empire. Bombay 
held that position until the Black Plague scourge put it behind 
Calcutta. Those two cities, Calcutta on the East and Bombay 
on the West coast of the peninsula are almost neck and neck in 
the race for population, each of them having nearly a million 
souls. It's a fifteen hundred mile journey across India by 
direct rail, from Calcutta to Bombay, but a dip to the 
North to take in Benares and Delhi, points I had to make, and 
I had a two thousand mile journey. A hurried look around 
Calcutta was all I had time for. A magnificently built city in 
the foreign quarter, splendid government buildings, fine parks, 
and broad, clean and well paved streets. 

Drop over to the native side of the city and the reverse is what 
you'll find. Dirt, degradation and poverty abound. The in- 
habitants fairly swarm, a seething mass of human misery. 

The native Indian is a dirty cuss — there's no denying the soft 
impeachment. He lives the way he does because he likes to live 
that way. The English have shown the Indians, by precept and 
example, a better way, and they have made considerable prog- 
ress, in spots, in making the Indian clean house; but the biggest 
task on earth today is handling the three hundred million hu- 
man beings in India, and I, for one, am heartily glad that 
England has the job. No other nation in the world would, or 
could, do it so well. 

98 



HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO ANSWER PRAYER 

We have a little problem — for a cent — compared with India, in 
our eight million Filipinos. We wish we hadn't, but we've got 
'em. We would be in business if we had India, and that's what 
England is. And after looking the crowd over from East to 
West, (and I'm told the breed runs the same from North to 
South), I don't feel like throwing stones at the old girl for the 
mistakes she's made. Anyone who has run even a small business 
knows how easy it is to make mistakes. 

I've got my own opinion of the fellow who would jump into 
Calcutta, prolong his visit for a couple of days, push across the 
country inside of a week, slide out at Bombay as quickly as he 
could, and then get up on his hind feet and bray to the world all 
about India. But there are a few things that may fly up and hit 
a fellow in that short time, and he wouldn't have to have them 
hammered into him all his life to learn them. He could, for in- 
stance, tell whether the country was a warm one or not, during 
his sojourn. Also, he wouldn't have to guess twice as to the 
undesirable mode of native Indian life. Of all the desolation of 
desolations that I have ever seen, a native Indian town, with its 
one-storied mud huts, its crooked paths for streets, and its hud- 
dling, dirty, wretched inhabitants has everything that stands 
for desolation beaten. There is a sort of picturesqueness about 
the Filipino, and with all his dirt and peculiarities a certain super- 
iority about the Chinaman, that I find lacking in the Indian; 
and may the Lord be good and lend His gracious aid and wisdom 
to the nation that has three hundred million of these people on 
her hands, is the worst wish I have for England. And, as I 
said before, I'm glad it's their job and not ours. 

I went to a ghat in Calcutta and saw a Hindu burn up his wife. 
The Indians have three ways of disposing of their dead; the 
Hindus cremate, the Mohammedans inter, and the Parsees (who 
are confined to Bombay and its environs) have what they call 
their "Tower of Silence." Here the naked dead body is pushed 
through a hole at one side of the tower, a walled, roofless en- 
closure located on a hill in Bombay. Vultures swoop down 

99 



AROUND THE WORLD 




"TOWER OF SILENCE. 



upon the body, and in a few minutes all that is left is the skeleton. 

The bones are thrown into 
a common receptacle — a large 
well. A part of the Par- 
sees' faith is that all men 
are brothers; so in their final 
resting place the bones of 
all Parsees, high and low, 
rich and poor, are thrown 
together in the same well. 

That cremation I wit- 
nessed in Calcutta was of a 
low caste Hindu. 
The ghat in Calcutta is an enclosure, walled on three sides, on 
the banks of the Hooghly river. A dozen or more scooped-out 
places in the ground, and a shed inside the enclosure to protect 
the mourners in bad weather, describes the place. 

The Hindu and a half dozen of his near kin, all men, had borne 
in the remains on a crude low-legged couch. This couch was the 
bed on which the woman had died. She was wrapped in a red 
winding sheet, the color denoting her sex. A man would have 
been wrapped in a white sheet. A wheelbarrow (American 
capacity) load of wood was piled at the edge of one of those 
scooped-out places in the ground. 

The mourners laid some of the largest sticks crosswise the 
hole, the hole thus giving room for kindling the fire, and 
also, providing a draught. The widower then went to the re- 
mains, and, raising one corner of the winding sheet, anointed 
the woman's chest and throat with some buffalo butter, and 
sprinkled within the sheet a handful of sandalwood chips. The 
mourners then laid the woman on the sticks that had been placed 
over the hole, and they all united in piling the wood on the pyre, 
entirely covering the remains from sight. A bundle of dried 
jute stalks and kindling wood were left. Some live coals were 
procured. The chief mourner grasped a handful of the jute 

100 



HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO ANSWER PRAYER 

stalks, upon which the coals were then placed, and, heading the 
mourners, the procession marched slowly around the pyre. As 
the head was passed the chief mourner touched the wood with 
the smoking jute stalks. Five times the procession circled the 
pyre — the stalks burst into flame and were tucked beneath the 
wood. The mourners all joined in helping to feed the flames 
with the kindling wood. After the fire was started, they knocked 
the couch to pieces with an axe and placed the demolished bed on 
the pyre to be burned with its' late occupant. Four or five hours, 
the superintendent of the ghat told me, the mourners would be in 
attendance before the body would be consumed. Even then the 
bones would be reduced only to charcoal. The remains of the 
cremation, ashes and charcoal, are shoveled up, placed in gunny 
sacks, and when enough have accumulated from numerous 
cremations, the sacks are loaded on to a scow, towed out into the 
river, a few miles from the city, and thrown in. 

I also went to a large ghat in Bombay. They seemed more 
progressive at the Bombay ghat. Iron frame work was placed 
above the place for burning, which allowed more wood to be piled 
on the dead without rolling off. The fire being so confined, an 
hour's time was saved in consuming a corpse. A dozen crema- 
tions were in progress at this one ghat — there are several in 
Bombay — and a dozen different groups of mourners were waiting 
for the fire to consume their dead. 

The superintendent of the ghat was a Hindu, an intelligent 
fellow, who spoke English pretty well. He quizzed me ex- 
haustively as to America's way of disposing of her dead. I told 
him the general mode was interment , but that cremation was grow- 
ing in favor. Our conversation attracted the attention of the 
mourners, and a great many of them gathered around us, while 
I explained the difference between our crematories and their 
own, and the superintendent interpreted my words to the mourn- 
ers. He told me that the expense of a Hindu funeral varied 
from $2.00 to $5.00. A rich Hindu would burn more sandal- 
wood than a poor one. He said however, that the expense did not 

101 



AROUND THE WORLD 

cease when the body is disposed of. The term of mourning may- 
continue for a year, and is given expression by gifts to the poor 
and needy. A wealthy Hindu will sometimes call in the lame, 
the halt and the blind, during his term of mourning, and give 
them a banquet as an expression of his bereavement. So, going 
down the scale, a poor man, who got off with only $2.00 for a 
funeral, would gun around until he found someone poorer than 
himself, and do a little mourning in a similar way. Thus, in- 
stead of putting flowers on the grave of the dead, whom it can- 
not help, these practical Hindu mourners bestow their gifts in 
honor of the dead where they will be of some benefit. I didn't 
get that out of a book, kind reader, I got it from a "heathen" 
Hindu in India, and as it was interesting to me, I thought it 
might be to you. 

What we need is a sort of religious Hague, where represent- 
atives of all the warring religions of the world may meet for the 
purpose of exhibiting their religious trees, just as they grow. 
And as the dead wood appears in the trees, as it certainly would 
by this universal and close comparison, let it be cut out. It 
might send us home to dispose of our dead, not with costly pomp, 
but at an actual expense of a few dollars, and to express our mourn- 
ing in alleviating the suffering of the living, thus adopting the 
practical idea plucked from the "heathen" Hindu's tree. There 
would have to be a tremendous lot of wood cutting in India and 
China, but don't think for a minute we wouldn't have to get 
after our own tree with an axe. 

I've had the good fortune to listen to some of the greatest 
preachers of the age, Beecher, Talmage, Parker, and a host of 
lesser lights. But none of them have ever stirred me in their 
discussions about God quite so thoroughly as did a Hindu guide 
I had in Bombay, as he told me what he thought about the sub- 
ject. My apologies to the reverend gentlemen. They probably 
did their best and it was all my fault. They threw dandy 
curves, but I couldn't have been a good catcher. At least it 
struck me that way as I listened to my Hindu guide. Environ- 

102 



HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO ANSWER PRAYER 

ment, atmosphere, perspective, may have had something to do 
with it. I had two guides in India. One, whom I brought across 
country, fell sick when I reached Bombay, and I got another. 
It was this last guide who poured his gospel into me. 

I hadn't employed him regularly. He struck me for a job, 
but I didn't really want a guide in Bombay. Still be kept 
pestering me for a job. I had bought a little bill of stuff from a 
Hindu merchant, who, I learned later, had charged me regular 
globe trotter prices for it, assuring me, at the same time, that 
his prices were strictly wholesale. It happened to be an article 
I wasn't posted on, a smallish matter anyway, so I made the deal 
and paid for the goods. Getting absolute proof the next day 
that the Hindu had lied to me, I cast about for a christian way 
of getting even with him. 

The "heathen Chinee" hasn't got a monopoly on the "ways that 
are dark and tricks that are vain." The Indians are quite up to 
snuff in this matter. 

The guides pester the life out of the merchants for a "rake off" 
on a sale, if they can show the most remote connection between 
themselves and a foreigner who may have made a purchase. By 
some sort of freemasonry guides and merchants are in cahoots 
to skin the tourist, and once a killing is made it's up to the mer- 
chant to save as much of his plunder as he can from the vul- 
tures — the guides. It's the rule for the foreigner to play the 
merchant's end of the game and to scowl, frown upon, and even 
curse the guides, who force themselves by devious ways into a 
deal. For instance, a foreigner has a guide, and if that guide's 
brother's nephew's son (by marriage) officiously and gratuitously 
brushes a fly off the horse that draws that tourist to a store, the 
tourist sees no reason why the merchant should protect this 
party of the sixth or seventh or even tenth part to the deal. 
He knows that his guide will get a rake off, but he would prefer 
that the merchant, when fixing his price, would load it to pro- 
vide for only one rake off. But the merchant, for reasons best 
known to himself, dreads the after-claps that may result from a 

103 



AROUND THE WORLD 

sale, when the guides come around to collect their "squeeze," so 
he protects himself, so far as he can, by getting all he can for his 
goods, and the tourists' sympathy lies with the merchant in this 
matter. 

Now, my guide, Hubli, wanted a job powerfully bad. He was 
hungry and poor, and had a family, and his family was hungry. 
I didn't want him, didn't need him, but that Hindu who had 
sold me the stuff had lied to me and — under circumstances not 
necessary to explain — it was a peculiarly aggravated case of 
lying; and Hubli wanted a job. So I thought it would be a 
christian act to give him one. 

"Hubli," I said, "you know Hotgi, the merchant?" • 

"Oh yes, master. I know him well. I have conducted many 
tourists to his store." 

"Well, see here, Hubli, I'm going to hire you, but I'm going to 
hire you on commission. Hotgi sold me a bill of goods. He 
guaranteed that he had sold them at wholesale prices. He 
charged me retail prices. I want you to go to his store and col- 
lect the overcharge. I'll give you all you collect, only be very 
arduous, strenuous and persistent in collecting the money. I'll 
give you a letter to Hotgi so he will know that you are in my em- 
ploy." I wrote this letter: 

"Mr. Hotgi — Dear Sir: I have learned today that there 
should be a 40 per cent, rebate on the stuff you sold me 
yesterday. You told me that you were charging wholesale 
prices, but I learn today that you have overcharged me. The 
bearer, Hubli, who is in my employ, is hereby commissioned to 
collect this rebate. He will hand you your receipted bill from 
which please make the proper reduction of 40 per cent, and hand 
the money to Hubli. His possession of this bill and this letter 
will show you that he is in my employ and commissioned to 
collect this overcharge. 

I am, dear sir, faithfully yours, 

George Hoyt Allen." 
104 



HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO ANSWER PRAYER 

The silliness of this unbusinesslike proceeding came over me 
and I had to smile, while penning that letter — but Hubli wanted a 
job. Indeed, he needed a job, he was hungry— and besides, I 
had a sore spot that needed a poultice — there is always a soreness 
when you are lied to. I was building better than I knew. I 
handed the bill and my letter to Hubli, explained the situation, 
and asked him if he thought he could collect anything, adding, 
encouragingly, "You know, Hubli, you are to have all you col- 
lect, only be very strenuous in your efforts to collect. If you 
make Hotgi a little trouble about this thing I won't mind ; indeed, 
Hubli, I give you carte-blanche to make him as much trouble as 
you can." 

Hubli rose to the situation magnificently. Could he collect 
that money ? Could he? — with master's good letter empowering 
him to collect! He'd collect it or there 'd be something doing 
around the part of Bombay where that store was located! And 
there was, dear reader, I assure you there was. 

From afar I followed Hubli in my carriage to see the result of 
my handiwork, to see what would happen when Hubli got to 
Hotgi's store. He got there, and something wasn't long in 
happening. You'd never believe there'd be enough fire and tow, 
mustard and ginger, in one guide to raise such a ruction. I 
thought they would surely have to call out the fire department 
and militia to quell the riot. Adjoining merchants butted in. 
Indeed, it seemed to me that about half of Bombay was stirred 
up. The clash and din and turmoil grew and grew. I sat in my 
carriage on the outskirts of that commotion and enjoyed my 
handiwork. I was satisfied with myself, satisfied with Hubli, 
satisfied with my latest literary production. It had certainly 
made a hit! 

I left that part of Bombay still boiling and drove back to my 
hotel. An hour later, Hubli came to my room. He was a 
pretty well used up guide, but there was enough of him left to 
report. 

105 



AROUND THE WORLD 

"Well, Hubli," I said, "did you collect the money from Hot- 
gi?" 

"No, master," he said, "I did not." 

"Why not, Hubli?" I asked, "Didn't you try?" 

"Oh yes, master," he said, "I did try. If master could have 
been there and have seen the trouble I made Hotgi, master 
would have been satisfied that I tried." (I did and was.) 

"Well, why didn't you collect it? You could use the money, 
couldn't you? You had my written statement that Hotgi owed 
me that 40 per cent. What was the matter?" 

"Hotgi wouldn't pay me, and I raised a great storm around 
Hotgi's store, (he did, I saw it) and finally Hotgi brought out his 
gods and swore on them that he had not overcharged you, and 
then I had to come away. There was nothing to do after that, 
master. I could not collect any money after Hotgi swore on his 
gods that he did not owe it to you." 

"Hotgi lied, Hubli," I said, "but I'm not surprised. I've known 
something of like nature to happen in my own country, and be- 
tween you and me I think Hotgi is just that kind of a fellow. 
But tell me about your gods, Hubli." 

Hubli wasn't a preacher. He was a poor, hungry, Hindu 
guide. But he was on the ground and had raised the question of 
his gods, and I was anxious to get his version. Perhaps the 
environment and the perspective was to blame for Hubli's 
sermon taking hold. There was for me a tremendous perspective 
to Hubli's words: 

"There's only one God, master. Master's God, Hubli's God, 
Mohammedan's God, Buddhist's God, Parsee's God — one great 
God. Different ways of getting to Him, that's all..- I started 
out this morning and prayed to my gods that I could get some 
work to do today. I'm hungry, master, (and he opened his 
jacket and showed me the emptiness of his stomach) my family 
needs bread, and when master gave me that letter I thanked 
my gods, which means the one great God, that Hubli would have 
a chance to earn some money today to buy food." 

106 



HOW HE HELPED A HINDU'S GOD TO ANSWER PRAYER 

'Twasn't much of a sermon, and I don't imagine it will make a 
hit with you, kind reader, but with that black Hindu before me, 
and with all I have experienced in life for a perspective, it, — well, 
it wasn't a fancy -curved ball, it came straight, and I caught it! 

I raised my contributions to missions, appropriated the con- 
tribution, and gave it to Hubli to help his god to answer that 
prayer of faith. 



107 



XIV 

A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW 

Who is a Member of His Household. 

(He married an only daughter.) 

In the Red Sea, August 4, 1910. 
My Dear Mother: — 

Arrived at Aden today and got your good letter. I can't tell 
you how glad I was to get that letter. 

I have had quite a hunt for stuff to fill my orders, but on the 
whole feel very well satisfied. I came pretty near not getting 
your letter at Aden. The ship only stopped there for an hour 
and a half. We anchored quite a way from the shore, at a buoy, 
and there was a strong wind. I was the only passenger to go 
ashore, but I wanted my letters. 

The purser was most kind. He said, " You make a drive for it, 
Mr. Allen, and I won't let the ship sail until you get back." He 
is the business manager of the ship. He signalled a boat, manned 
by four funny looking niggers, and they pulled me ashore. I 
didn't have any trouble in finding our consul, who had a big 
bunch of letters for me. Met him leaving the consulate with his 
wife, to whom he introduced me. They asked me to take dinner 
with them, but there was no time. I didn't want to put that 
purser in a hole, holding up a big P. & O. liner for the only 
"Yank" on ship-board. The Britishers would have been 
"ripping mad, ye know," well! — ra-a-ther! 

108 



A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW 

But I enjoyed my brief visit at Aden. It is only a barren 
spot in Arabia, a port of call for ships, and is strongly fortified by 
the British, who own the port. It commands the entrance, or 
exit at the Southern end of the Red Sea. 

It only rains once in two or three years in Aden, so water is one 
of the precious commodities of the port — largely sea water, 
evaporated. It's a question of coal to evaporate sea water, and 
the coal must be brought to Aden in ships. I saw a train of 
trotting camels, and interesting Arabs, who come in with cara- 
vans of coffee, hides, and fruits raised on the oases in the desert. 

Those funny "niggers" who rowed me ashore and back to the 
ship struck up a weird song. I caught the tune, and, with my 
pocket full of letters, I was so happy coming back that I joined 
in the chorus, which pleased them immensely, and, by the time 
we rowed alongside my ship, on the return trip, we had the old 
tune going good — so good that the passengers looked over the 
rail of the ship to see if a new brand of pirates were after them. 
When they saw it was only the single "Yank" passenger on this 
trip, helping those black Arabs sing, they drew a long breath of 
relief and went back to their dinners; but don't you think for a 
minute that we didn't make a noise! If I had known there was 
that good letter from you in the bunch of letters in my pocket, 
which I was saving to read on shipboard, there would have 
been such a racket that the ship would have trained the only gun 
it carries on the noise — as a precautionary measure, until they 
could analyze what it meant. 

You will gather from the foregoing that your favorite son-in- 
law is feeling good. You bet I am! I'm so glad to get out of 
India that I'd cheerfully attack a man-o-war out of sheer ex- 
uberance of joy. 

My! but that's an awful country! — and hot ? Woof J but that's 
a warm country! 

I struck it at Calcutta and emerged from it at Bombay. You 
don't travel in India like you do in the United States— well, 
hardly! I mapped out a two thousand mile trip across India. I 

109 



AROUND THE WORLD 

planned to travel nights and work days. The railroads in India 
furnish a locomotive and some bum cars, the passengers furnish 
the rest. It is really necessary to hire a servant — a man. Just 
think of your plebian son-in-law traveling with a man! But he 
is a necessity, when traveling in India. I hired him in Calcutta. 
Then I started out with him to buy the necessary things to travel 
across India with. His name was Mogul, and he was a native 
Indian. He was to be my servant, guide and interpreter. He 
was really a very superior servant. He traveled with Chas. W. 
Fairbanks, our ex- Vice -president, when he was in India. I met 
a lot of guides in Calcutta who had traveled with ex-Vice-presi- 
dent Fairbanks. This is the off season for tourists in India. I 
seemed to have the whole peninsula to myself in this respect, 
and all the guides in Calcutta struck me for a job. I didn't 
count 'em — they came in swarms, and they had all traveled with 
ex- Vice-president Fairbanks — anyway, that's what they all told 
me, and I don't think an Indian guide would lie about a little 
thing like that. I picked Mogul out from the bunch, because 
he looked so truthful when he told me that he had guided Mr. 
Fairbanks across India. Aside from his being an excellent 
servant he was a humorist. 

We started out in Calcutta to buy things for that journey — 
bedding, soap and towels, etc. We bought, and bought, and 
bought, until finally Mogul said, "Now, master has everything 
necessary for the journey." 

"Why, no, Mogul/' I said, "I haven't bought any wheels for 
the blamed old car yet." 

"Oh, but master does not have to buy wheels for the car," 
Mogul said, by which token I know that Mogul is a humorist. 

We got started all right, and Mogul made my bed, and lugged 
my grips around, and watched my goods and chattels while I ate 
my meals. We traveled nights and worked days in the intense 
heat. We pushed across India, 2,000 miles in five days, and got 
into Bombay Saturday night. Sunday morning Mogul was tak- 
en with diarrhoea, and was sick, and wanted to go home, back to 

110 



A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW 

Calcutta. He was a stranger in Bombay and was frightened to 
be sick so far away from home. He said, "Master has been very 
kind, but master is the hardest traveler I ever worked with. If 
master will buy me my ticket, back to Calcutta, and pay me my 
wages. I will go home and pray for master that he may have long 
life and happiness." So I paid Mogul his wages, and shipped him 
back to Calcutta. The next day I was struck with the diarrhoea. 
I had just such a bellyache, grandma, as I used to have when I 
was a boy, right after apples were well out of blossom and before 
they got ripe, and I had to go to bed for a day. 

Owing to the hot, dry weather, they were dying in Bombay at 
the rate of 120 daily, mostly from diarrhoea. I am afraid Mogul 
was so busy with his misery that he forgot to pray for "master" 
for a day or two, because that was when I was the worst. But I 
am constrained to believe that Mogul got home all right and re- 
membered his promise. Anyway, I got better. Whether it 
was Mogul's Hindu gods or a bottle of pain killer that helped me, 
I shall never really know. I didn't want to take any chances, so 
I got the pain killer, in case Mogul's memory should slip a cog. 
Monday I was the worst. Tuesday I felt better. I couldn't get 
a ship out of Bombay for a week, and the diarrhoea didn't leave 
me all the time I was there. 

The street cars in Bombay are no good, for practical purposes, 
i.e., to get around on. They ought to be put in a museum in a 
glass case. So I hired a carriage and didn't attempt to walk at 
all, just kept a carriage from morning till night. But I knew 
that as soon as I got on the sea I would be better, and so I am. 
"A Voyage at Sea " is great medicine for anything that ails you. 

You will gather from this letter that I'm feeling bully now, 
and this eight-day voyage from Bombay to Suez is putting the 
stuff into me to make the Palestine trip. 

I pushed across India at that rapid rate in order to make a 
week earlier ship out of Bombay and thus to connect with the 
North German Lloyd line, on which I had bought passage around 
the world ; and if they hadn't lied to me in Calcutta, when book- 
Ill 



AROUND THE WORLD 

ing me across India, about connections in Delhi for Bombay, I 
would have made it. But I missed my ship in Bombay, owing - 
to their misstatements, and it is costing me $180.00 extra to take 
this P. & O. line. I am paying my way from Colombo to Suez 
twice, but it's saving me ten days and I wanted to get out of 
India. That's a measly mean country, and it's the wrong time 
of year for an unacclimated white man to try and travel there, 
anyway. But I'm tough, and got out with nothing more seri- 
ous than I've narrated. 

August 8. 

We will get to Suez tomorrow morning. It hasn't been at all 
trying coming through the Red Sea. We have had a head 
breeze and the ship going against it has made it really enjoya- 
ble most of the time. I have a fine large state-room, with an 
electric fan, all to myself. While I am the only American 
aboard, I haven't struck anything so unpleasant as on my last 
trip through the sea. You recall, in my "Commercial Pil- 
grim," there's an account there of an unpleasant experience I 
had in the Red Sea on a former trip. But there are a lot of very 
nice chaps aboard this ship, and I've had a good time. They 
did try to play a joke on the "Yank," but I've held 'em level so 
far, and as I get off tomorrow I may continue to hold my own. 

The question of how the Red Sea got its name came up in the 
smoking room yesterday. I said that I had read somewhere, 
that a fly, of a reddish hue, covered the sea at certain seasons of 
the year, and hence the name. A colonel in the Indian army, 
going home for a furlough, spoke up and said, "That's a mis- 
take. The real reason for its name is the peculiar fact that the 
water, taken up in a small quantity, really has a slight reddish 
cast to it. While it looks blue in the mass, it shows that pecul- 
iar reddish tinge if a small quantity is put in a glass, or bottle." 

•The story was taken with languid interest. No one rushed 
out to get a bottle to fish up some Red Sea water, and I indus- 
triously and solemnly smoked a bum Indian cigar — best I could 
find in Bombay — and looked straight ahead, through wreathes 

112 



A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW 

of smoke, which I seemed to take more interest in than Red 
Sea water. 

I was comfortably seated, on deck, in my steamer chair, this 
morning, when the Colonel came up with an empty soda water 
bottle and a ball of twine. While tying the twine to the neck 
of the bottle he turned to me and said, "I want to show you, 
Mr. Allen, that peculiarity of the water I mentioned in the smok- 
ing room yesterday." It began to have the look of genuine- 
ness to it, as he was going to all that trouble. He is a very dig- 
nified colonel, all of sixty years of age. It's a deuce of a job, 
grandma, to get some water in a soda water bottle, over the rail 
of a ship going fifteen miles an hour, and as the colonel fished, 
and fished, and the bottle bounced along on the bright blue 
waves of the Red Sea, I kept thinking, "Where's the joke, and 
what's the sell." I'd be a chump indeed to be caught, of all 
places in the world, in the Red Sea, by an Englishman. It was 
right along here, eleven years ago, that an Englishman was going 
to chew me up and spit me overboard for the sharks. Of course 
if he had, the water might have a red tinge to it, because I claim 
to have red blood in my veins, but as none of my blood has been 
spilled in the Red Sea I was naturally skeptical, albeit the col- 
onel was not the stamp of the Englishman I had had the other 
experience with. He is a mighty nice fellow, dignified and 
courteous, an unusually fine gentleman. After a great deal of 
trouble, all of eight or ten minutes of fishing, he managed to get 
about half a teacup of water through the neck of that bottle, 
pulled it up carefully, hand over hand, and it had a slightly red- 
dish tinge to it! Just a suspicion of pink. He triumphantly 
showed it to me and said, "You see, it's a fact, the water has a 
slightly reddish cast, if examined closely." He handed the 
bottle to me for my closer inspection. 

The colonel's wife and a little coterie of English were gath- 
ered around. It was really marvelous — the water seem- 
ingly so blue but now reddish, if examined closely in a small 
quantity. 

113 



AROUND THE WORLD 

"I must have some of that water to take home with me," I 
innocently remarked. "Oh, you are welcome to this, Mr. 
Allen," the colonel said. 

"No, no," I said, "I must get it out of the sea myself." So I 
got up and left the crowd to go and get a bottle, the colonel 
kindly agreeing to let me have his ball of twine. It struck me 
he was entirely too willing to lend me that twine. 

"The Yank had bit!" and it was a happy lot of Britishers 
waiting for him to come back, with his bottle, to fish up some 
Red Sea water. I slid down a flight of stairs to the bar in about 
a second. "Quick!" I said, "give me an empty soda water 
bottle and a bottle of claret." While the "bar-keep" was pull- 
ing the cork to that bottle of claret, I was filling up my soda 
water bottle with drinking water. Then I dumped enough of 
that claret into my bottle of water to make it good and red. 
In about two minutes I was back on deck, where my 
English cousins were gleesomely awaiting my arrival, to fish 
up some Red Sea water, and they were all ready to help me 
tie the string around the neck of my bottle. I solemnly handed 
my soda bottle of blood-red water to the colonel and remarked, 
"Colonel, you didn't get yours on the right side of the ship! It's 
redder on the port side! Here is a bottle I just fished up on the 
port side, and, colonel, if you want it good and red you must, 
before letting your bottle down, .swing it three times around 
your head and say, 'Menie, menie, miney, mo, catch a nigger by 
the toe, and if he hollers let him go.' " 

"Steward! steward!" the colonel yelled, and as the deck stew- 
ard appeared the colonel said, "American cock tails for the 
crowd, steward!" and the colonel counted noses and signed the 
chit. And the toast the courteous colonel proposed, as he lifted 
his glass to me, was, "Here's hoping, Mr. Allen, that America 
and England, the two great English speaking nations, will never 
have any more serious differences than their representatives 
have had on this ship today." 

"I told you," the colonel's wife said to him as those American 

J14 



A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW— 

cock tails were being sipped, "that you'd better not try to play 
that trick on Mr. Allen." 

The colonel had dropped into his bottle, before letting it 
down, an infinitesimal grain of medicine he carried, which, 
when salt water struck it, turned the water to a delicate pink. 

Just why I didn't get caught, I don't know. You know I'm 
naturally gullible, grandma. I think it must have been because 
there's such a good lot in the home at "Willowbank." 

Give 'em all my love, and with a specially large consignment 
for yourself, I am, 

Your favorite son-in-law, 

George. 



115 



XV 
A PEEP AT EGYPT 

Cairo, Egypt, August 10, 1910. 

"And here," he said, "is where Pharaoh's daughter came 
down to bathe, and found the infant Moses paddling his own 
canoe." 

I feel certain that he showed me the exact spot, notwith- 
standing it didn't look just as I thought it was going to. I think 
he pointed out the right spot, because a peddler, around Shep- 
herd's Hotel, where I am stopping in Cairo, tried to sell me a 
little watch charm, which, when he touched a spring, the cover 
flew open, and, sure enough, there was a figure inside of the 
charm, and the peddler told me it was Moses in the bulrushes. 

It don't take a very astute person to put two and two together 
and get four for an answer. That charm was two and the 
guide's bare assertion was two; and two and two makes four; 
always did and always will. 

But, if it hadn't been for that peddler and the watch charm, 
I'd have made that guide dig up his recommendations from globe 
trotters, which he had shown me, and which I had read before 
hiring him, for me to read again. Without the conclusive evi- 
dence of that charm, a second reading of the recommendations 
would have convinced me that such a good guide wouldn't 
deceive me, by pointing out any old place along the Nile, as the 
place where Miss Pharaoh was wont to bathe, instead of the 
really, truly spot. 

I'm mighty grateful to Moses. He might have been found in 

116 



A PEEP AT EGYPT 

the Nile, miles and miles away from the spot the guide showed 
me. As it is, we only had to take a few minutes' walk from 
that place to see the house where Joseph and Mary were in 
hiding when they took their flight into Egypt with the infant 
Jesus. 

It's a great saving of time to have those two places so near 
together. 

The place where the Princess bathed is located in a garden 
which surrounds a palace owned by a Pasha — -a very cheap, 
tawdry sort of a palace, and the garden is very poorly cared for. 

At the exact spot, which was pointed out to me, as being the 
place where Moses was found, is a sheer bluff of some fifteen feet 
in height, with the Nile washing its base. On the edge of the 
bluff is a crude wheel, over which runs an endless chain with cups 
attached. This chain lets down into the river, and the wheel is 
used to raise water for the garden. A decrepit, blind, sore- 
necked old cow works the wheel. When I was there the cow 
was resting from her labors, having been unhitched from the 
wheel while she ate her fodder, and the garden was languishing 
for water. 

So far as I was concerned, I'd rather see the garden languish 
than to see that poor old critter work. 

I looked for the bulrushes. 

The mere fact that I looked for the bulrushes will show the 
reader the receptive state of mind I was in, to take without 
questioning the story the guide told me. 

The Bible narrative, Sunday-school teachers, and picture 
cards that I used to receive when a little boy, had left a picture of 
that spot on my mind which I've carried with me for the greater 
part of my life. Those picture cards showed a graceful Princess, 
minus shoes and stockings, some maids-in-waiting, a Hebrew 
damsel standing some distance away, and a little baby kicking 
up its heels in a miniature Hiawatha's birch bark canoe, the 
canoe floating in the Nile, with a luxuriant growth of bulrushes 
surrounding it. 

117 



AROUND THE WORLD 

There wasn't any bluff to the river's bank in that picture. 
The ground sloped gently to the river's brink, and the Princess 
stood at the water's edge just ready to feel of it with her foot, to 
determine whether or not it was of that temperature described 
as "fine." 

The manufacturer of that watch charm the peddler tried to 
sell me, had caught the idea so far as the shape of the canoe and 
the baby kicking up his heels went, but the bluff, the water wheel 
and the cow saddened me somewhat. 

But my philosophy of life is not to let little things mar the 
pleasure of the hour, and I had sacrificed some precious time to 
see the place where Moses was rescued from the bulrushes. It 
doesn't pay to be too captious about little things; and, anyway, 
those pictures I got at Sunday-school were probably drawn from 
the imagination of some artist. They must have been, because 
there was that charm, and the peddler's vehement assertion 
that it was Moses in the bulrushes, (he looked like a truthful 
peddler) and here was the guide with a pocketful of recommend- 
ations, some of them from eminent American globe trotters, 
vouching for his veracity and reliability — and he had led me to 
the spot! 

I'm sorry for the people who have such a suspicious nature 
that they let seemingly unreconcilable details spoil a situation. 
The Princess may have slid down that chain, and the cow might 
have drawn her up after her bath. 

The guide didn't tell me that that same cow was there when 
the Princess came down to bathe, but that might easily have 
been — it was such a very, very old cow. 

But the guide didn't work that possibility into his story. It 
was a little theory of my own that I worked out myself, to help 
me in my momentary sadness at parting with a mental picture 
which I have carried around with me since childhood. 

I'm glad I didn't give voice to that theory to my guide. He 
might work it on his next customers for fact. As he has to cater 
to all sorts of people, he might possibly queer himself when asking 

118 



A PEEP AT EGYPT 



for more recommendations by springing that addition to his 
story onto a globe trotter. 

I say possibly. Perhaps I do the globe trotters an injustice. 
After having looked over the recommendations of the guides I've 
hired, I will withdraw that insinuation; and on second thought 
I'm sorry I didn't put the guide wise to that theory that I self- 
ishly kept to myself, albeit with the best intention. I don't 
believe the globe trotters would question his veracity if he were 
to dress up his story by 'saying that the Princess did slide down 
the chain and that this same cow was there to pull her up out of 
the water, — at least not enough to spoil his chances of getting a 
recommendation for his conscientiousness, veracity and re- 
liability. 

Oh, by the way, I didn't see any bulrushes, but that might 
easily be. It may be that the bulrush crop is a failure this year. 

My guide, at parting, asked me to give him a recommendation. 
It sometimes takes considerable literary ability (to say nothing of 
certain qualifications of another sort) to write a tiptop recommen- 
dation. Being pressed for time I didn't use any more grey 
matter than I had to, in working up a recommendation for Abu 
Surgus. All of those he had were such good ones that I just 
picked out one and copied it, signed my name to it, and he took 
it and with profuse thanks added it to his exceedingly large 
bundle of documents of appreciation. 

"Abu Surgus," my recommendation read, "is a truthful, 
painstaking, conscientious and reliable guide. The visitor to 
Cairo could not do better than to place himself in Abu's hands." 
Then I did break out into a little originality and added, "How- 
ever limited one's time may be he will make. a grave mistake if 
he does not visit the historic spot at the Nile's bank, where 
Pharaoh's daughter was wont to bathe, and where the infant 
Moses was found in his little ark, floating so peacefully amid the 
beautiful bulrushes." 

I trust my recommendation will help Abu. I really feel 
kindly towards Abu. He might have run me through a lot of 

119 



AROUND THE WORLD 

temples that would have taxed me too much to write about in 
my limited time, because Egypt is really a hard nut to crack in a 
literary way, if you really want to know. But I've always 
thought it would be interesting to see where Moses was in the 
bulrushes, and that's what Abu showed me. I'd have written 
him a bully recommendation if I'd had more time. 

Of course I went "to see the Pyramids. They are just out of 
Cairo at a suburb called Gizeh, about eight or nine miles from 
Shepherd's Hotel. I took a trolley part of the way and then I 
took a camel — I mean a trolley took me part of the way and a 
camel took me the rest of the way. 

The trolley line runs to within a mile of the Pyramids, where it 
terminates. At the terminus are two hotels and a photograph 
gallery. Donkeys or camels will take you out to the Pyramid 
field, where are the three greatest pyramids and the Sphinx. 

These three largest pyramids stand, tit, tat, toe, three in a 
row, just as the pictures show them, about 100 rods apart. They 
stand upon a plateau, a rise of about 100 feet from the level of 
the surrounding country. These are not the only pyramids. 
Extending over an area of about fifty miles are no less than 
seventy. But the row of three, headed by the great Cheops, are 
the greatest, and the subject of the pyramids is usually dismissed 
from one's mind after these three are considered, unless one 
chances to be an archaeologist. 

I supposed that those pyramids were built with regularly laid 
blocks of stone, tier upon tier, each tier receding in uniform 
measure until the apex was reached. I had it fixed in my mind 
that each ledge was about three feet wide. This is not the fact. 
The steps are not uniform at all. Some ledges are but six inches 
wide, some two feet, while again a stone will come flush with the 
one beneath it. To glance up the incline of Cheops it does not 
look like a staircase, not at all. Instead, it looks more like a 
choppy sea. While Cheops can be climbed with the help of the 
guides, the second pyramid in the row is impossible of ascent, as 
the stones are laid so as to give no foothold whatever. 

120 



A PEEP AT EGYPT 





"A CAMEL TOOK ME.' 



As we neared the pyramids, Abu pointed them out to me and 
told me that there were the pyramids. He is a very "consci- 
entious, painstaking and truthful guide." 

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AROUND THE WORLD 

I don't know as there is anything particularly new and ex- 
citing to write about those pyramids, but I will say that they have 
held their own amazingly well. I don't know that I have ever 
seen anything man has made that has worn any better than those 
pyramids. 

I wouldn't have you think I am flippant and wanting in re- 
spect for those grand old stone piles. Indeed I am not! I 
brought away indisputable proof that I'm not wanting in re- 
spect. I believe that I'm the only tourist who has ever visited 
them, since cameras were invented, who can show a photograph 
of himself at the pyramids without one of them showing for a 
background. I fully intended to do this thing myself. But 
when it came to the act of posing, I didn't have the nerve to use 
one of those pyramids for a back ground, so I stood behind the 
pyramid. Any admiring friends I may have left on earth, after 
I get through with this "literary job," may have one of these 
pictures of me at the pyramids by addressing me at Clinton and 
enclosing 10c. (stamps taken). The rapt look of' awe on my 
face as the photographer made his exposure, with the pyramid 
betwixt me and his camera, is worth the money and worthy of a 
frame. The pyramid shuts off the view — otherwise it's an 
excellent portrait of the author. 




THE PYRAMID SHUT OFF THE VIEW." 
122 



A. PEEP AT EGYPT 



"That," said Abu, "is the Sphinx." 

"What!" I said, "that little thing down there in a hole V ' It 
seemed to hurt his feelings (he is a sensitive as well as a "con- 
scientious, painstaking and truthful guide," — I'm sorry now that 
I didn't say in my recommendation that Abu is sensitive) to hear 
the Sphinx called, "a little thing!" But, when a fellow has, all 
through his life, seen pictures of that Sphinx looming up along- 
side one of the pyramids, when getting on the ground he has his 
eyes turned at the wrong angle when looking for the Sphinx's 
head. Situated in a depression about 100 rods away from the 
great pyramid of Cheops, on the barren sand dune, when I first 
caught sight of the Sphinx my surprise and disappointment were 
genuine! The guide book tells us it is 70 feet high. It didn't 
look half that to me. I thought the head would at least be 
about as big as a school-house, and looming up in the air, 
somewhere. Was fully prepared to get a crick in my neck 
looking up at it. But no crick was necessary, and the thing 
looked as if its head would almost go through a school-house 
door. 

This is my first visit to Egypt, except seeing it from a steamer's 
deck as my ship passed through the Suez Canal. I had always 
said, "Next time I will stop off and see Egypt and Palestine," 
and this is the next time. I am now prepared to put down on 
paper some of my "first impressions." — that invaluable informa- 
tion which a traveler is able to serve up to a patient public after 
he has given two or three whole days to "do" a large country. 

Egypt, with its wealth of 7000 years of history, lends itself 
beautifully to be thus written up hy a hurried business man, 
who has just two days to attend to his business and to "see 
everything" in Cairo. I'm fortunate in not having such an 
attack of mental dyspepsia that I can't write a word! 

If one is so unfortunate as to have but one day to devote to 
."seeing Cairo," my advice would be to get a well recommended 
guide, — (you won't have to lose any time finding him; you can't 
find any other kind) — and put yourself in his hands. That's 

123 



AROUND. THE WORLD 

what I did. Get Abu Surgus if you can. 

After looking over this little lunch I've given you on Egypt, it 
seems to me I ought to be excused, especially as I've got to pack 
my .grip and catch a train in a few minutes for Port Said, to 
connect with a boat from that port for Jaffa. But I will stop to 
add that Cairo is a tremendous town containing half a million 
inhabitants and crammed full of mosques with minarets. 

There's the mosque of Sultan Hassan, the Mohammed AH 
mosque, the mosque of Sultan Kalaun, the mosque of Arme, the 
mosque of El Azhar, and the mosque of El Muayzad, the mosque 
of El Hassanen, the mosque of Mohammed Nasir, the mosque 
of Sultan Barkuk — (however piffling the preceding part of my 
sketch on Egypt may be, I'm getting there now, all right) — the 
mosque of El Hakim, the mosque of AkrSunkur, — (some class to 
this stuff!), — and the mosque of El Burdeni; — also there are 
some more mosques. And the town is crammed full of antiqui- 
ties; and there are tombs, and mummies and museums; and also 
a town full of mad Egyptians because Roosevelt came here and 
"insulted them," (or they think he did) because he told them 
some unwelcome but wholesome truths. 

f had always supposed that Egypt was one land where they 
didn't have to use fertilizers to raise crops, because the Nile 
deposited a coating of mud each year on the soil, which took the 
place of that useful article in all other farming communities. 
But that's a mistake. The land is heavily fertilized. Strings 
of donkeys and camels are constantly carrying out fertilizer 
from towns and cities — in fact, don't seem to be doing much of 
anything else. And it's a land of more different kinds of ap- 
paratus for lifting water from canals and from the Nile, to 
irrigate the flat country, than one could handily imagine. Men 
and women, and cows, bulls, donkeys, camels, and goats are all 
employed to furnish power to work these numerous and varied 
appliances. And always the four-footed beasts of burden are 
blindfolded when hitched to the water wheels. Round and round 
and round they go, with bandages over their eyes, They would 

124 



A PEEP AT EGYPT 

stop unless continually urged if they were not blindfolded. But 
blindfold and start them and they will keep going unattended by 
a driver, until the bandages are removed. And Egypt is a land 
of cotton, and a land of corn, — and of one style of hat for the male 
population, the Turkish fez. With thousands and thousands of 
years of history behind it and with great aspirations before it, 
Egypt is yet rife with ingratitude to old England, who pulled 
her out of chaos and set her on her feet. 



125 



XVI 
THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL GUIDE. 

Jerusalem, August 17, 1910. 

Jaffa is a town of some thirty thousand,. and is the natural 
gateway to Palestine, for travelers from Egypt or Europe. 

Jaffa has no harbor. Ships anchor in the open sea and land- 
ing is made by rowboat. When you get to Jaffa the first thing 
that strikes you is that Jaffa is the old town of Joppa, where 
Jonah went to take a ship for Tarshish, instead of going direct to 
Nineveh as the Lord had commanded him. You recall the story. 

The experiences Jonah had on that trip from Joppa to Tar- 
shish were unique and thrilling. 

There is nothing of particular interest in Jaffa. It's a mangy 
smelly town, and after you are shown the house said to be that 
of Simon the tanner, where Peter had his vision, which was sent 
to make a less hidebound Christian of him, and Tabatha's foun- 
tain, you are ready to take up your march toward Jerusalem. 

A little narrow-gauge railroad runs from Jaffa to Jerusalem, 
and there are two trains daily, morning and afternoon. 

Anchoring off Jaffa on a Saturday morning, it was evening be- 
fore we were landed, too late to catch the afternoon train for 
Jerusalem. Sunday morning I found myself, in company with 
three Englishmen, in a compartment of one of the passenger cars 
of the Jerusalem-Jaffa line, bound for Jerusalem. 

These Englismen were coming out from London to help Parker 
in excavating for the ark of the covenant, and we four had the 
compartment to ourselves. One of the Englishmen was a Ia- 

126 



THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL GUIDE 

boring man; the other two looked as if they might be civil en- 
gineers. The laboring man smoked a pipe and didn't talk much. 
Indeed, he didn't talk at all. But the rest of us got into an ani- 
mated conversation about the Jonah and whale story. 

It beats all how three minds will disagree about the details of 
a story as old as that of Jonah and the whale, and one that every- 
one knows all about, too — or, are supposed to. 

Nineveh, Tarshish and Joppa got pretty well mixed up. One 
of the three stoutly maintained that the whale swallowed Jonah 
and carried him to Nineveh, and that it took three days to get 
there. Another one contended that the whale swallowed Jonah at 
Joppa, took him three days out to sea, where Jonah was vomited 
up and rescued by some men in a ship, who afterward threw him 
overboard because he was Jonah. The other one couldn't call 
to mind Tarshish or Nineveh in the story, but he did know that 
Joppa fitted in somewhere, and that what one didn't want to be 
was a "Jonah." To set us all straight, it being Sunday morn- 
ing, I announced that we'd have a Bible reading right then and 
there ; so I got a Bible out of my grip and read the book of Jonah. 

Somehow or other, after the reading, there fell a strange si- 
lence on the three of us who had done so much talking ; but the 
chap who hadn't said a word removed his pipe from his mouth 
and remarked, "Well, there's no one as 'as been able to tell a 
bigger fish story, any'ow." 

As we were then passing through that part of Palestine where 
Samson was said to have tied firebrands to the foxes' tails and 
sent them through the Philistines' grain, we all looked out of the 
windows, and nothing more was said about Jonah. 

•If the Philistines had as good a stand of grain as the natives 
garnered this year off that same land, there was a big loss of grain 
in that conflagration. 

They are not a very progressive lot, though. The same meth- 
od of threshing is employed today as that used when Boaz made 
love to Ruth. I would have felt better about it if the scene of 
that love story could have been laid'on this fertile plain, about 

127 



AROUND THE WORLD 

fifteen miles out of Jaffa, rather than around Bethlehem. 

The land around Bethlehem, where Boaz had his field and 
threshing floor, doesn't look today as if it could possibly raise 
white beans, while the crops raised on the land where Samson 
and the foxes got even with the Philistines shows it to be just 
the kind of fertile land one would like to picture that whole- 
souled good fellow, Boaz, as owning. 

On this latter field we passed the threshing floors, and I got a 
snapshot at them with my camera from the rear platform of our 





"WE PASSED THE THRESHING FLOORS." 
128 



THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL GUIDE 

train as it passed by. The ground is packed hard, and the grain 
as brought in from the fields is spread over the ground, while 
oxen drawing crude, low-wheeled carts are driven back and forth 
over it. When the straw is thoroughly cut into chaff in this 
manner, it is piled in windrows to await a favorable breeze, 
against which men throw it with shovels, thus separating grain 
from chaff. 

On we rode, past orange groves and vineyards. At this sea- 
son the landscape is parched and dry, as no rain falls for several 
months, making it perfectly safe to stack the grain outdoors and 
thresh it in the manner described. 

Jerusalem, perched up in the mountains, is reached shortly 
after noon. A coating of drab dust covers everything, the few 
poor olive orchards and meagre vineyards surrounding the city 
partaking of the general drab hue. 

In this dry season, the thought that would strike the traveler 
first, in coming upon a city like Jerusalem in any other part of 
the world, would be, that mineral wealth was the reason for the 
the city's being; but, as King Solomon's marble quarries (and a 
very indifferent grade of marble they yield) come the nearest to 
answering to mineral wealth, and as the only water sup- 
ply is from cisterns, filled during the rainy season, and as what 
little thin soil there is to be found in the vicinity of the city has 
so many stone boulders and ledges sticking up through it, the 
traveler would consider that in this case — not its natural re- 
sources but its history and associations are the reasons for find- 
ing so well-built and solid a city on the site occupied by Jerusa- 
lem. For it is a solid, well-built city, — built of stone, of course. 
When they want to put up a building in Jerusalem they have 
only to put their hand out to find the material with which to 
build; and a wall-enclosed city of some 90,000 souls stands today 
on the ancient site of the city of David. 

Coming down from my hotel the next morning after my arri- 
val, I found several guides who were solicitous to show me the 
wonders and glories of the Holy City It being the off-season 

129 



AROUND THE WORLD 



for tourists, guides were a drug on the market. Starting in 
with their regular price, $3.00, for a day's service, they kept bid- 
ding against one another until the ruinous price of 80c was 
reached. As all guides, ordinarily, look alike to me, I would 
probably have closed with the 80c man if a very bright-looking 
lad of seventeen, who had stood at one side listening to all the 
bids, hadn't stepped up at this juncture and said, "Mister, I will 
go with you today and be your guide for the pleasure of your 
company." 

"Say! young man, what's your name?" I inquired. 
"Solomon." 

"Solomon," I replied, "I'll hire 
you on your own terms. You 
look to me as if there were pos- 
sibilities in you, Solomon. Aside 
from the tempting offer which you 
make, the subtle, I might say 
delicate, the almost elusive fra- 
grance of the flattery contained 
in the words with which you proff- 
er your services, make a decided 
hit with me. Come on, let's get 
busy. You're sure you under- 
stand Jerusalem and the points 
of interest, Solomon?" 

"Yes, sir; where do you want 
to go first?" 

"Well," I leplied, "take me to 
the pool of Siloam. I'll have 
a look at that first." And we 
started. 

" Have you a family ? " Solomon 
asked me, as soon as we were 




"SOLOMON " 



under way. 

"Yes," I replied, "I have a wife and son." 

130 



THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL GUIDE 

"I hope they will live long and that God will bless them," 
said Solomon. 

" Thank you," I replied. "You're welcome," Solomon said. 

And then Solomon got confidential, and said: 

"When I was a little boy, ten years old — that was seven years 
ago — a lady came to Jerusalem from your country. Oh! she 
was a beautiful lady, and very rich. She had a dozen nurses 
to take care of her. She took a great fancy to me, and wanted 
me to be with her all the time. Wherever she went she took me 
with her, and she would buy me chocolates and other sweets, 
and every night she would give me five dollars. When 
she got ready to go back to America, she wanted to take 
me with her, and tried to get my mother to give me to her. 
She promised to take me to America and educate me and make 
me her heir. But my mother wouldn't part with me — you 
know a fond mother's love," Solomon said, glancing up at me 
and placing his hand on his heart. 

"Yes, I know," I said, "at least I've read about it. Go on 
with your story, Solomon." 

"Well," he continued, "my mother wouldn't part with me, 
and the lady went back to America without me. But, before 
she left Jerusalem, she gave me her card and told me if I ever 
needed money, or anything else, to write to her in America and 
she would see that I got it. Well, a short time after she left, I 
thought I could use some money, and, as I was only ten years 
old at that time, and hadn't learned how to write English, I 
got an Armenian scribe to write to her for me And, do you 
know, that rascally Armenian ran off with that card, and with 
the letter which I had told him to write, so I have lost that 
lady's address in America, and I suppose, of course, that Armeni- 
an has been writing to her, in my name, all these years and get- 
ting money from her, and that she thinks she is sending it to 
me." And Solomon looked up at me with a pensive air— re- 
signed to his hard luck — but with an expression hard to see in 
one so young. 

131 * 



AROUND THE WORLD 

"How old was the beautiful young lady, Solomon," I asked? 

"About twenty-seven years old," Solomon replied, without 
any hesitation. 

"Solomon," I said, "that's a mighty touching tale. But own 
up now, Solomon, just between you and me, that you've been 
lying to me. And I want you to tell me where you got your 
plot. Did you work it out of your own head, or did you get it 
out of a book? It's a new one to me." 

We were making pretty good time and had gotten to the walls 
of the city at this point in our conversation. I had handed Sol- 
omon my card, at his request. He said he liked to have the 
cards of people he guided; was making a collection of 'em. 

He studied my card for an instant, and then, looking up from 
it to me, he said, "George, just between you and me, I'll tell you 
the truth, — that's a true story I told you and it really happened 
to me." 

I roared. Solomon was an entertaining guide, and, at my ev- 
ident appreciation of his powers to please, his pensive look gave 
place to a sympathetic laugh. We had gotten outside the city 
walls by this time, and I was finding it a hot and rough walk. 

"How far is it to the pool of Siloam, Solomon," I asked. 

"Oh, about twenty minutes' walk," Solomon replied. 

"Do you know, Solomon," I said, "I don't believe I want to 
see it bad enough to take a twenty minutes' walk to get there. I 
thought I wanted to see the place where the man couldn't get 
into the water after the angel stirred it, because someone got in 
ahead of him; but I guess I'll cut it out, Solomon, if it takes 
twenty minutes to get to it from here." 

"Why," said Solomon, "It isn't the pool of Siloam you want; 
it's the pool of Bethesda. That's inside the city walls. Come 
on back and I'll show it to you." 

"Solomon, you're right," I sheepishly replied, my Bible com- 
ing back to me upon Bethesda being mentioned, "I got mixed 
in my pools." 

132 



THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL GUIDE 

So Solomon led me back into the city, to the pool of Bethesda. 
It looked to me like a good-sized cistern down among the ruins 
of old Jerusalem. The Greek Catholic Church of St. Anne is 
on the premises, under the protection of the French. 

In the vestibule of the church is to be seen the story of Christ 
at the pool of Bethesda, told in sixty -two languages, each in- 
erpretation having its own frame. And a pleasant-faced young 
monk is on the ground to sell the tourist post-cards and also ex- 
quisitely wrought watch charms, made in Paris, the size of a 25c 
piece, with bas-relief figures on them representing Christ com- 
manding the impotent man to take up his bed and walk. 

The great objective point in Jerusalem, however, the one place 
that draws pilgrims from the ends of the earth, is the church 
of the Holy Sepulchre. Five hundred and fifty -three Austrian 
pilgrims are in Jerusalem today, in one party, and the one place 
that they have visited in a body is this church. They are here 
under one management, gathered from one locality in Austria. 
Farmers, merchants, artisans, housewives, domestics, farm hands 
make up the party. The prosperous, well-dressed merchant and 
his spouse, the thrifty farmer, whose clothes are good enough 
till they are worn out, and the domestic in sunbonnet and calico 
gown, composed that party of five hundred and fifty -three as 
they slowly marched past my hotel, up through David street, 
solemnly chanting a hymn, enroute to visit in a body this holy 
shrine, and, after that great event of the pilgrimage, to separate 
and visit other points of interest in small companies, as their 
several inclinations suggested. 

Five hundred and fifty -three pilgrims in one party might sug- 
gest that this is not the off-season for tourists in Jerusalem; but 
it is, just the same. The winter months, the rainy season, "when 
the land bursts into bloom," is the time to come to see it at its 
best, and that is when the tourists come, and the hotels fill up. 
And Solomon will go with you then for the pleasure of your 
company — and a consideration 

These pilgrims, and other parties like them, are entertained 

133 



AROUND THE WORLD 

at various hospices by monks, and are poor picking for hotels 
and guides. 

But Solomon and I were having a good time, and as I was to 
pay for Solomon's services, by showing myself to be a good 
fellow, when he ran me into a store selling Jerusalem souvenirs 
and introduced the proprietor to me as his uncle, I thought it 
about time to begin to make it pleasant for Solomon, so I said 
to the proprietor, "Solomon is a mighty interesting boy. That 
was a very unusual experience he had with the American heir- 
ess"— 

Solomon came up close to me and said in an undertone, 
" Don't tell him that story." 

I waived Solomon to one side. If there's one thing I enjoy 
more than another it's to pay my debts, and I was making it 
pleasant for Solomon — and at the same time getting a little 
fun out of it, on the side, for myself. 

The story seemed to be news to Solomon's uncle, though he 
didn't appear to be much startled. He seemed to take it as if 
he knew Solomon pretty well, but couldn't quite recall the iden- 
tity of the beautiful American heiress who had so sweetly flitted 
in and out of Solomon's life. 

When I got down to where the "fond mother's love" had to 
be dealt with, Solomon's uncle said "Well, his mother does think 
a great deal of him," whereupon Solomon jumped up as if he 
had been shot out of a gun and exclaimed, " There, didn't I tell 
you that was a true story i " I apologized to Solomon for doubt- 
ing it for a minute, and after telling the Uncle the whole story, 
we fellto planning Solomon's future. 

I suggested that the uncle put up cash enough for Solomon 
to go to America and hunt for his heiress, and when found to 
marry her. 

The uncle thought that was a little risky. He said that Sol- 
omon was only seventeen now, while the heiress was twenty- 
seven, seven years ago, and ,aside from the disparity in their 
ages, she might now be married. 

134 



THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL GUIDE 

I told him that wasn't so bad as it sounded. That if she was 
twenty-seven years old seven years ago, it was a cinch that she 
was still twenty -seven, and that she would hold that age down 
for at least three more years, at which time Solomon would be 
twenty, which would only leave seven years difference in their 
ages, and, that Solomon's love could easily leap that chasm of 
years. As for the thought that she might be married, it should 
be banished. I felt sure that if Solomon found her, he'd find 
her still single — and waiting for him. 

It was lunch time before Solomon's uncle and I got through 
with Solomon's future, and we decided that, for the present, 
Solomon had better stay right here in Jerusalem and stick to 
the guide business. I guess that was the wisest thing. He 
has rare qualifications for this profession. I comforted Solomon 
(whose eyes fairly sparkled at the thought of going to America) 
by telling him that his heiress might get tired of coughing up 
cash to that rascally Armenian; that she might tumble in time — 




WENT WITH SOLOMON IN THE AFTERNOON FOR THE PLEASURE OF 
HIS COMPANY." 

135 




"AND EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE THOSE ASSES 




WOULD STOP TO LAUGH AT SOLOMON'S JOKES." 
136 



THE TOUCHING TALE OF A TRUTHFUL GUIDE 

get wise to the imposition, and blow into Jerusalem most any 
day looking for the lad she loved. "Then, Solomon," I added, 
"think what an advantage for you to be on the ground to ex- 
plain matters." 

I told Solomon, as we parted at lunch time, to meet me at 
two, that I would go with him in the afternoon for the pleasure 
of his company. 

There is no doubt about it, that boy Solomon is all right, and 
has the makin's of a first-class guide in him. We chartered 
donkeys for that afternoon, and every once in a while those asses 
would stop and laugh at Solomon's jokes. I only regretted that 
I couldn't have kept him with me during my stay in Jerusalem, 
but, the next day, his family started for a few days' pilgrimage 
somewhere, and Solomon said his mother would never stand for 
his not going along — and I don't blame her. As he needed a 
little spending money for that trip, I didn't hold him strictly 
to his offer but loosened up a little. 

Solomon has, more or less, the ability to read humanity, I 
think. He told me when I paid him that he sized me up as being 
a safe subject to make his offer to. 



137 



XVII 
FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICO 

Jerusalem, August 18, 1910. 

The man who journeyedjfrom Jerusalem to Jericho passed 
many places on the road admirably suited to the Biblical thieves. 
A three horse team, starting at six in the morning, brings you to 
Jericho at eleven a.m., with a short rest half way, at the Inn of 
the Good Samaritan. The inn has all the oriental settings of 
Bible times. A low, one-story stone building, and a walled 
compound, the latter for the travelers' beasts. Mine host was 
a typical Arab and told me he was making good at the Inn of 
the Good Samaritan. 

•Three rooms constitute the inn. One is a common court 
where travelers arriving in the night may find repose, by throw- 
ing any bedding they may have with them on the floor and re- 
posing on it. The next room is for refreshments, where coffee is 
served; and the third room is a curio shop. After regaling my- 
self with a cup of coffee, mine host waved his hand toward the 
room of curios and said, "Will you walk into my parlor, said the 
spider to the fly?" No reason why the present proprietor of 
the Inn of the Good Samaritan shouldn't make good! 

The road to Jericho lies through mountains. About half way 
between Jerusalem and the Inn of the Good Samaritan Bethany 
is passed, which is today a handful of ruins. A stop of a few 
minutes was made to show the traditional home of Lazarus. 

All along the way, bands of Bedouins, with laden asses and 
camels carrying provender and grain drifted by. Upon reach- 

138 



FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICO 

ing Jericho we found two or three hundred inhaditants living 
in poor mud houses, and two fairly good hotels. These hotels 
are supported by tourists from Jerusalem to Jericho, who, hav- 
ing gotten to Jericho, must have a meal before driving on to the 
Dead Sea, six miles away. The Dead Sea is the lowest spot be- 
low sea level on earth, and with water so dense that it rivals 
that of great Salt Lake in density. It bears one up like a cork, 
and tastes bad, to which statement I'll bear witness. 




" IT TASTES BAD." 

From the Dead Sea, its a five -mile drive to the River Jordan 
over the beaten path. And once you've taken a swim in the 
River Jordan you'll be cured of ever wanting to swim in that 
river again. It's better to stand on the bank of that sacred 

139 



AROUND . THE . WORLD 

stream and think of the things you'd naturally think about 
while standing on Jordan's bank, than to undress and try in that 
way to absorb the situation more thoroughly. Being of an in- 








I WANTED TO SWIM IN IT.' 
140 



FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICO 

tense nature — I guess that's what you'd call it — -I wasn't satis- 
fied to just look at Jordan. I wanted to swim in it. It was an 
easy thing to stand on the bank and dive in, but after my swim, 
I sank into mud above my knees in clambering out. From the 
Jordan, I drove back to Jericho for an eight o'clock dinner, a 
few hours' sleep, and an early start next morning for Jerusalem. 

One of the most pathetic scenes I have ever witnessed is the 
wailing place of the Jews. Not with loud lamentations, not 
with howlings and perfunctory groans, do the Jews gather at 
their wailing place in Jerusalem. Where do we get our ideas 
that fasten untruths in our minds, such as the wrong impression 
I have just noted and which I brought to Jerusalem? The 
wailing place is a narrow street, or court, skirting the walls of 
what was once the site of Solomon's temple. Here the Jews 
congregate Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, read from 
the lamentations of Jeremiah, also the 79th and 102nd Psalms, 
and reverently and quietly kiss the stones of that wall. You 
will, during these meetings, witness devout old Jews and Jew- 
esses with tears streaming down their cheeks devoutly praying 
for the restoration of Israel. 

My idea had always been, that when I got to Jerusalem I 
would be guided outside the city to a hill, and there shown the 
traditional spot on which Christ was crucified, and near to it 
His place of burial. Not so. I was led through various narrow 
streets, well lined with shops and crowded with people, finally 
to come to a flight of steps. Descending these steps I reached 
a paved court, and immediately before me was the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre. Now, a church inside the populous city cov- 
ering the spot on which the Saviour was crucified, didn't seem 
to me in keeping with the Bible account. Once inside the church 
the first thing pointed out was the Stone of Unction, a slab 
of marble about seven feet long supported by pillars a foot high. 

This stone is placed here, because this is the spot, it is said, 
where our Lord's body was laid when He was annointed for His 
burial after being taken down from the cross. A few feet to the 

141 




"THE WAILING PLACE OF THE JEWS." 



142 



FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICO 

left another spot is pointed out, where, it is said, the Virgin 
Mary and the other women stood as they witnessed the an- 
nointing. 

Inside this very building one is also shown the place where the 
cross is said to have been placed, and a couple of feet away a 
brass plate, about five inches wide, is slid to one side, to show 
where the rock was cleft by the earthquake. In another part 
of the church is a tomb, built on the place, we are told, where 
was the original tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, in which the 
Saviour was laid. Within this church, conveniently to hand, 
the pilgrims are shown the places where pretty much everything 
happened on that stupendous occasion of the crucifixion, bur- 
ial, and rising from the dead of the Saviour of mankind. 

Latins, Greeks, Mohammedans, Armenians, Syrians, all 
claim portions of this church covering these supposedly authen- 
tic historical places; and the Turkish government stands guard 
over them all to keep them in order, and to quell the ructions 
which frequently arise, occasioned by the clashing of so many 
sects, laying claim to this one place on the earth's surface that 
has the power to draw pilgrims from all over the globe. 

There was nothing in the location that appealed to me. I 
wanted to get away from it as fast as I could. I could feel more 
reverent in any other place in Jerusalem. Indeed, simply to 
be in the Holy City was enough to satisfy a longing which I'd 
always had to visit Jerusalem. 

But as to this church of the Holy Sepulchre, I could figure out 
to my own satisfaction, that while this city, this very city, stands 
upon the site where stood an older city through whose streets 
walked the Saviour — the place on the surface of the earth where 
Christ capped His mighty works by laying down His life and 
rising from the dead — yet to have a particular building pointed 
out as the centre of the whole divine tragedy and wrangled over 
by half a dozen jealous sects — well, I found the quarters were 
too cramped to hold the emotions I experienced upon being in 
Jerusalem, and I wanted to get outside the church and look at 

143 



AROUND THE WORLD 

the surrounding hills which I knew Christ had looked upon. 

Of course I wanted to see Bethlehem, and to Bethlehem I 
went. It is an hour and a half's drive directly South of Jeru- 
salem. And here, again, several denominations own the Church 
of the Nativity, built over the alleged site of the stable where 
Christ was born. The exact spot, however, where they claim 
the manger was located, is owned by all the sects in common, and 
they have their different hours to worship there. But the town 
itself, was near enough to the manger to satisfy the desire that 
made me want to go to Bethlehem. 

In Jerusalem, upon the following day, after seeing Bethle- 
hem, while driving out past the Damascus Gate to get a view of 
the city's environs we passed a walled-in garden, and on an iron 
gate to that garden was a sign, "The Garden Tomb." 

"What is 'The Garden Tomb?'" I asked my guide. 

"Why," he said, "that's Gordon's Calvary," and then I got 
another jar. 

It seems that while through the centuries jealousies and wars 
and bloodshed have centered around the traditional site of Cal- 
vary inside the present city walls, where a man must use* all the 
imagination he has, and then borrow some, or else accept the 
stories told him on faith, without the exercise of his judgment, 
in order to feel that he is anywhere near Calvary — while, dur- 
ing all the centuries all this was going on, yet just outside the 
city walls, and corresponding to the Bible description stood a 
hill that looks like a skull. And it seems that General Gordon, 
after cinching Egypt for England, came over to Jerusalem for 
a holiday, and, in looking around, saw the situation, and forth- 
with got up a syndicate of English gentlemen who bought the 
land surrounding that little hill. In clearing away the debris 
of ages, in a cliff just under the hill that looks like a skull (any- 
one can see it), they found a tomb hewn out of the living rock. 
And so they put a garden around that tomb, and a wall around 
the garden, and the sacred shrine is under the control of a few 
estimable gentlemen who live in London, England. 

144 



FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICO 

The English certainly beat the Dutch, or any other nation, for 
seeing and cinching situations. After picking up and fortify- 
ing most of the strongholds on earth, they have quietly come 
over here to Jerusalem and got a wall around the site of Calvary. 
I shan't be at all surprised if I discover, when I reach the gates 
of the New Jerusalem, that St. Peter isn't a Jew at all, but an 
Englishman! And if, when working my way in with a crowd — 
after getting safely past the portals through which all humanity 
aims to pass — if I remark to the keeper of the gate, "They are 
coming in strong today, aren't they, Peter?" I don't believe 
I shall drop with surprise if he comes back at me with, "Well, 
ra-ather! " 



145 



XVIII 
A LETTER THAT EXPLAINS ITSELF. 

Naples, Italy, September 2, 1910. 

My Dear Wife — I've been in Naples, "dreamy Naples," for 
a week; and now what I want to see is New York; hustling, 
wide-awake, get-up-and-dust New York. My only reason for 
wanting to see New York is that I can get to Clinton from there 
in so short a time. I sail tomorrow and will land in New York 
the 14th, in time to catch the evening train for Clinton. I'll get 
home at midnight. Leave the front door unlocked, the light 
on in the hall, and a lunch on the dining table. I'll come in 
quietly and not wake the family. 

Will I be glad to get home ? Oh, no : I guess not! 

This is the same old town — picturesque dirt, and happy Ital- 
ians. Got our old room at the same hotel on the bay. Those 
same boys you saw fishing off the quay two and a half years ago 
and whom you thought were Italian statuary placed there by the 
government, are in the same places and still fishing. 

No, none of them have caught a fish yet. 

The street musicians come in every night, as ever, at dinner, 
and sing: 

"Likie you Vesuvio, Likie you Pompeii, 
Likie you the Grotto blue, Likie you Capri. — 

And every last dealer in postcards in Naples, who has caught 
sight of me this trip, has stopped me to ask, "Where is the 
missus?" 

It isn't worth while writing much, I'll be home so soon, — 
in a couple of days after you get this. 

146 



DEC 



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