I pitied him; he knew it, and traded upon my pity until I
invoked a few choice words from Lao Chang to fall upon him. When the
cook did put in an appearance, he and everybody dead and living placed
anywhere near his genealogical tree underwent a rough quarter of an
hour from the anathematical tongues of my companions. The Old Man--by
virtue of the growth on my chin, this epithet of respect was commonly
used towards me--wanted to wash his face and drink his tea. He was tired
with walking. He was a foreign mandarin. Did the blank, blank, blank
cook, the worm and no man, not know that a foreigner was among them? And
then they fell to piling up the ignominy again and placing to the cook's
dishonor various degrees of lowliest origin common among the Chinese
proletariat, which, thank Heaven, I did not quite understand.
That evening all Chao-chow came to honor me in my room, and to admire
and ask to be given all I had in my boxes. That it was all a huge
revelation to many who came and inquired who I might be, and whence I
might have come, was quite evident. One fellow, dressed gaudily in
expensive silks and satins--probably borrowed--came with pomp and
pride; and disappointment was writ large upon his ugly face when he
learned that I could not, or would not, speak with him.
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