Japan -- History -- Meiji period, 1868-1912 -- Fiction
Did I tell you that I stopped over two days in Korea? I had often
heard of the Jumping Off Place, but I never expected to actually see
it! The people live in the most awful little mud houses, and their
poverty is appalling. No streets, no roads, no anything save a fog of
melancholy that seems to envelop everything. The terrible helplessness
of the people, their ignorance, and isolation are terrible.
The box from home was more than satisfactory. I have thoroughly
enjoyed wearing all the pretty things. The hat sister sent was about
the size of a turn-table; a strong hat pin and a slight breeze will be
all I need to travel to No Man's Land. Sister says it's
_moderate_, save the mark! but it really is becoming and when I
get it on, my face looks like a pink moon emerging from a fleecy black
cloud. I had to practice wearing it in private until I learned to
balance it properly.
I shall stay up here through July and then I am thinking of going to
Shanghai with Mrs. Heath's sister, who lives there. I am very fond of
her, and I know I would have a good time. I feel a little like a
subscription list, being passed around this way, but I simply
_have_ to keep going every minute when I am not at work.
They are calling up to me from the tennis court so I must stop for the
present.
SHANGHAI, CHINA, August, 1903.
The mail goes out this morning and I am determined to get this letter
written if I break up a dozen parties. As you see, I am in Shanghai,
this wonderful big understudy for Chicago, which seems about as
incongruous in its surroundings as a silk hat on a haystack! There
are beautiful boulevards, immense houses, splendid public gardens, all
hedged in by a yellow mass of orientals.
Every nationality is represented here, and people meet, mingle, and
separate in an ever changing throng. At every corner stands a tall
majestic Sikh, with head bound in yards of crimson cloth, directing
the movements of the crowd. Down the street comes a regiment of
English soldiers, so big and determined that one well understands
their victories. The ubiquitous Russian makes himself known at every
turn, silent and grave, but in his simplest dealings as merciless and
greedy as the country he represents. Frenchmen and Germans, and best
of all, the unquenchable American, join in the panorama, and the
result is something that one does not see anywhere else on the
globe. I guess if my dear brethren knew of the theatre parties,
dinners and dances I was going to, they would think I was on a
toboggan slide for the lower regions! I am mot though. I am simply
getting a good swing to the pendulum so that I can go back to "the
field," and the baby organs and the hymn-singing with better grace. It
is very funny, but do you know that for a _steady diet_ I can
stand the saints much better than I can the sinners!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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