Then the "Ch'a ts'ien,"[AL] always in view from the outset of
their duty, brought us in a manner nearer to each other.
As I came out of the inn at Ch'u-hsiong-fu somewhat hurriedly, for my
men lingered long over the rice, I stumbled over the yamen fellow who
crouched by the doorside. He laughed heartily. Had I fallen on him his
tune might have been changed; but no matter. This unit of the city
humanity was not bewilderingly beautiful. He was profoundly
ill-proportioned, very goitrous, and ravages of small-pox had bequeathed
to him a wonderful facial ugliness. He had, however, be it written to
his honor, learnt that life was no theory. One could see that at a
glance as he walked along at the head of the procession, with a stride
like an ox, manfully shouldering his absurd weapon of office, which in
the place of a gun was an immense carved wooden mace, not unlike a leg
of the old-time wooden bedstead of antiquity. His ugliness was
embittered somewhat by sunken, toothless jaws and an enigmatical stare
from a cross-eye; he was also knock-kneed, and as an erstwhile gunpowder
worker, had lost two fingers and a large part of one ear. But he had
learnt the secret of simple duty: he had no dreams, no ambition
embracing vast limits, did not appear to wish to achieve great things,
unless it were that in his fidelity to small things he laid the base of
great achievements.
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