The Mirror of Kong Ho, Ernest Bramah [popular e readers .txt] 📗

indicate that they recognised the undoubted superiority of the laws and institutions of our enlightened country. Sometimes, it is true, upon a more detailed investigation of the incident, it has presently appeared that either I had misunderstood the exact nature of their sentiments or they had slow-wittedly failed to grasp the precise operation of the enactment I had described; but these exceptions are clearly the outcome of their superficial training, and do not affect the fact my feeble and frequently even eccentric arguments are at length certainly moving the more intelligent into an admission of what constitutes true justice and refinement. It is not to be denied that here and there exists a prejudice against our customs even in the minds of the studious; but as this is invariably the shadow of misconception, it has frequently been my sympathetic privilege to promote harmony by means of the inexorable logic of fact and reason. “But are not your officials uncompromisingly opposed to the freedom of the Press?” said one who conversed with me on the varying phases of the two countries, and knowing that in his eyes this would constitute an unendurable offence, I at once appeased his mind. “By no means,” I replied; “if anything, the exact contrary is the case. As a matter of reality, of course, there is no Press now, the all-seeing Board of Censors having wisely determined that it was not stimulating to the public welfare; but if such an institution was permitted to exist you may rest genially assured that nothing could exceed the lenient toleration which all in office would extend towards it.” A similar instance of malicious inaccuracy is widely spoken of regarding our lesser ones. “Is it really a fact, Mr. Kong,” exclaimed a maiden of magnanimous condescension, to this person recently, “that we poor women are despised in your country, and that among the working-classes female children are even systematically abandoned as soon as they are born?” Suffering my features to express amusement at this unending calumny, I indicated my violent contempt towards the one who had first uttered it. “So far from despising them,” I continued, with ingratiating gallantry, “we recognise that they are quite necessary for the purposes of preparing our food, carrying weighty burdens, and the like; and how grotesque an action would it be for poor but affectionate parents to abandon one who in a few years’ time could be sold at a really remunerative profit, this, indeed, being the principal means of sustenance in many frugal families.”

On another occasion I had seated myself upon a wooden couch in one of the open spaces about the outskirts of the city, when an aged man chanced to pass by. Him I saluted with ceremonious politeness, on account of his years and the venerable dignity of his beard. Thereupon he approached near, and remarking affably that the afternoon was good (though, to use no subtle evasion, it was very evil), he congenially sat by my side and entered into familiar discourse.

“They say that in your part of the world we old grandfathers are worshipped,” he said, after recounting to my ears all the most intimate details of his existence from his youth upwards; “now, might that be right?”

“Truly,” I replied. “It is the unchanging foundation of our system of morality.”

“Ay, ay,” he admitted pleasantly. “We are a long way behind them foreigners in everything. At the rate we’re going there won’t be any trade nor work nor religion left in this country in another twenty years. I often wish I had gone abroad when I was younger. And if I had chanced upon your parts I should be worshipped, eh?” and at the agreeable thought the aged man laughed in his throat with simple humour.

“Assuredly,” I replied; “—after you were dead.”

“Eh?” exclaimed the venerable person, checking the fountain of his mirth abruptly at the word. “Dead! not before? Doesn’t—doesn’t that seem a bit of a waste?”

“Such has been the observance from the time of unrecorded antiquity,” I replied. “‘Obey parents, respect the old, loyally uphold the sovereign, and worship ancestors.’”

“Well, well,” remarked the one beside me, “obedience and respect—that’s something nowadays. And you make them do it?”

“Our laws are unflinching in their application,” I said. “No crime is held to be more detestable than disrespect of those to whom we owe our existence.”

“Quite right,” he agreed, “it’s a pleasure to hear it. It must be a great country, yours; a country with a future, I should say. Now, about that youngest lad of my son Henry’s—the one that drops pet lizards down my neck, and threatened to put rat poison into his mother’s tea when she wouldn’t take him to the Military Turneyment; what would they do to him by your laws?”

“If the assertion were well sustained by competent witnesses,” I replied, “it would probably be judged so execrable an offence, that a new punishment would have to be contrived. Failing that, he would certainly be wrapped round from head to foot in red-hot chains, and thus exposed to public derision.”

“Ah, red-hot chains!” said the aged person, as though the words formed a pleasurable taste upon his palate. “The young beggar! Well, he’d deserve it.”

“Furthermore,” I continued, gratified at having found one who so intelligently appreciated the deficiencies of his own country and the unblemished perfection of ours, “his parents and immediate descendants, if any should exist, would be submitted to a fate as inevitable but slightly less contemptuous—slow compression, perchance; his parents once removed (thus enclosing your venerable personality), and remoter offsprings would be merely put to the sword without further ignominy, and those of less kinship to about the fourth degree would doubtless escape with branding and a reprimand.”

“Lordelpus!” exclaimed the patriarchal one, hastily leaping to the extreme limit of the wooden couch, and grasping his staff into a significant attitude of defence; “what’s that for?”

“Our system of justice is all-embracing,” I explained. “It is reasonably held that in such a case either that there is an inherent strain of criminality which must be eradicated at all hazard, or else that those who are responsible for the virtuous instruction of the young have been grossly neglectful of their duty. Whichever is the true cause, by this unfailing method we reach the desired end, for, as our proverb aptly says, ‘Do the wise pluck the weed and leave the roots to spread?’”

“It’s butchery, nothing short of Smithfield,” said the ancient person definitely, rising and moving to a more remote distance as he spoke the words, yet never for a moment relaxing the aggressive angle at which he thrust out his staff before him. “You’re a bloodthirsty race in my opinion, and when they get this door open in China that there’s so much talk about, out you go through it, my lad, or old England will know why.” With this narrow-minded imprecation on his lips he left me, not even permitting me to continue expounding what would be the most likely sentences meted out to the witnesses in the case, the dwellers of the same street, and the members of the household with whom the youth in question had contemplated forming an alliance.

Among the many contradictions which really almost seem purposely arranged to entrap the unwary in this strangely under-side-up country, is the fact that while the ennobled and those of high official rank are courteous in their attitude and urbane—frequently even to the extent of refusing money from those whom they have obliged, no matter how privately pressed upon them—the low-caste and slavish are not only deficient in obsequiousness, but are permitted to retort openly to those who address them with fitting dignity. Here such a state of things is too general to excite remark, but as instances are well called the flowers of the tree of assertion, this person will set forth the manner in which he was contumaciously opposed by an oblique-eyed outcast who attended within the stall of one selling wrought gold, jewels, and merchandise of the finer sort.

Being desirous of procuring a gift wherewith to propitiate a certain maiden’s esteem, and seeing above a shop of varied attraction a suspended sign emblematic of three times repeated gild abundance I drew near, not doubting to find beneath so auspicious a token the fulfilment of an honourable accommodation. Inside the window was displayed one of the implements by which the various details of a garment are joined together upon turning a wheel, hung about with an inscription setting forth that it was esteemed at the price of two units of gold, nineteen pieces of silver, and eleven and three-quarters of the brass cash of the land, and judging that no more suitable object could be procured for the purpose, I entered the shop, and desired the attending slave to submit it to my closer scrutiny.

“Behold,” I exclaimed, when I had made a feint of setting the device into motion (for it need not be concealed from you, O discreet one, that I was really inadequate to the attempt, and, indeed, narrowly escaped impaling myself upon its sudden and unexpected protrusions), “the highly-burnished surface of your dexterously arranged window gave to this engine a rich attractiveness which is altogether lacking at a closer examination. Nevertheless, this person will not recede from a perhaps too impulsive offer of one unit of gold, three pieces of silver, and four and a half brass cash,” my object, of course, being that after the mutual recrimination of disparagement and over-praise we should in the length of an hour or two reach a becoming compromise in the middle distance.

“Well,” responded the menial one, regarding me with an expression in which he did not even attempt to subdue the baser emotions, “you HAVE come a long way for nothing”; and he made a pretence of wishing to replace the object.

“Yet,” I continued, “observe with calm impartiality how insidiously the rust has assailed the outer polish of the lacquer; perceive here upon the beneath part of wood the ineffaceable depression of a deeply-pointed blow; note well the—”

“It was good enough for you to want me to muck up out of the window, wasn’t it?” demanded the obstinate barbarian, becoming passionate in his bearing rather than reluctantly, but with courteous grace, lessening the price to a trifling degree, as we regard the proper way of carrying on the enterprise.

“It is well said,” I admitted, hoping that he might yet learn wisdom from my attitude of unruffled urbanity, though I feared that his angle of negotiating was unconquerably opposed to mine, “but now its many imperfections are revealed. The inelegance of its outline, the grossness of the applied colours, the unlucky combination of numbers engraved upon this plate, the—”

“Damme!” cried the utterly perverse rebel standing opposite, “why don’t you keep on your Compound, you Yellow Peril? Who asked you to come into my shop to blackguard the things? Come now, who did?”

“Assuredly it is your place of commerce,” I replied cheerfully, preparing to bring forward an argument, which in our country never fails to shake the most stubborn, “yet bend your eyes to the fact that at no great distance away there stands another and a more alluring stall of merchandise where—”

“Go to it then!” screamed the abandoned outcast, leaping over his counter and shouting aloud in a frenzy of uncontrollable rage. “Clear out, or I’ll bend my feet—” but concluding at this point that some private calumny from which he was doubtless suffering was disturbing his mind to so great an extent that there was little likelihood of our bringing the transaction to a profitable end, I left the shop immediately but with befitting dignity.

With a fell-founded assurance that you will now be acquiring a really precise and bird’s-eye-like insight into practically all phases of this country.

KONG HO.