Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 43

Letter from B J. Bettelheim

معدل

to be refused to the union-jack, which was granted to the tri-enioresi esckade, and let me tell yon, by the bye, the unɔon-jack, at this time, wis to me tantamount to the flag of Protestantiam; I trust in God, we shall ma have to strike it, while the rosary and distaff of the scarlet lady remain hoisted. Mr. Forcade had so many things to teli me, and I was so totally ears, that I forgot I had a mouth, and only found it again when I gave him a promise of a loan, which I made as gladly as he frankly applied for it, he having been at that time two years and up- wards without remittances from Macao. I should not have mentioned this at all, were it not to prove once more that even a cup of water offered in the name of a disciple does in no wise lose its reward. Un- der God, I think this incident, so insignificant and small, did great things towards our settlement in Lewchew. For the very morning af ter I had gained the goodwill of Mr. F., the Sabine, a French frigate moored in Napa roads; and I make no doubt, it was the Bishop's kind mention of me, that procured as the most unqualified benevolence from the captain and officers of that ship, as well as of the whole French squadron that soon after arrived under Admiral Cecille.

But I must not run ahead of my story, and will therefore take you back again on board the Starling, where we were soon beset with crowds of capped and uncapped natives, all wondering, and perhaps somewhat more than wondering, at the idea of my becoming a settler in Lewchew. The preceding day we had notified our intentions to the first messenger who brought as usual (as we now know to be usual) the long card from the governor of Napa, but which I took for nothing Jess than a card from the king, so immensely large and long was it; yea, the very messenger, say what he might, would not pass off with me for any less personage than the King. So much for my implicitly believing Capt. Basil Hall's narrative, and the notions of a fairy land his book is calculated to form in the mind of every unsuspecting reader. Lewchew was to me a realization of the magic stage on which old Arabian or Hindoo tales are said to have been acted. The testimony of senses, I thought must be cautiously listened to; everything must be better than it appears to be, and I scolded my prosaical taste, for not being able to divest myself of the ideas current in the old world, and to penetrate the mystical veil, which I imagined does and must cover all things around me. So dangerous is it to poetize a country without expressly writing on the frontispiece of the work, "a Novel or Ro- mance;" for it then takes a plain reader like myself, who happens to be transported into such an illusory paradise, much time before he can conscientionaly believe his own eyes and ears.