Selfishness in the slightest degree should not enter
in. But such a man is difficult to find, so I wander on alone, happy in
my own solitude. Here I have liberty, perfect liberty.
I was stopped on my way to Lao-wa-t'an at a small town called Puerh-tu,
the first place of importance after having come into Yuen-nan. A few li
before reaching this town, one of my men cut the large toe of his left
foot on a sharp rock, lacerating the flesh to the bone. I attended to
him as best I could on the road, paid him four days' extra pay, and then
had a bit of a row with him because he would not go back. He avowed that
carrying for the foreigner was such a good thing that he feared leaving
it! Upon entering Puerh-tu, however, he fell in the roadway. A crowd
gathered, a loud cry went up from the multitude, and in the
consternation and confusion which ensued the people divided themselves
into various sections.
Some rushed to proffer assistance to the fallen man (this was done
because I was about; he would have been left had a foreigner not been
there), others gathered around me with outrageous adulation and seeming
words of welcome. Meanwhile, I thought the coolie was dying, and,
fearful and unnatural as it seems, it is nevertheless true that at all
ages the Chinese find a peculiar and awful satisfaction in watching the
agonies of the dying.
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