The-Hong-Kong-Weekly-Press-1895-06-20 — Page 9

Hongkong Weekly Press AND China Overland Trade Report All

Page

June 20, 1895.) '-

comers, à proceeding which resulted in a bonfire of twé houses on the Kinkiang hills, and a brand new republio in Formosa. Lastly, having brought matters to this successful issue, the officials concerned wash their hands of all re- sponsibility, and profess themselves to be utterly unable to give any redress.

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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.

own house, in the quiet streets of suburban re- sidences, where there were very few people to mark the outlandish appearance and dress of her companion. She had met him chiefly at the houses of friends, and in her own home, in the company of people who were too well bred to stare or show astonishment, and who took Lew- Ching as a matter of course.

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As for the Japs, they will no doubt b› quité able to take care of their own interests, and by "Now their appearance together at the a due display of determination easily overcome Barford station caused a profound sensation, all opposition in Formosa. Still more easily could and not, Mabel felt, a sensation that was com- Her Majesty's representatives overcome all the plimentary. Every one stared, including the dificulties at Kuling, by following the old-ticket collector. Street urchins, with the terrible fashioned policy of informing the Taotai of Kin-facility boys have for seemingly springing out kiảng that if he cannot protect British subjects of space to gather round anything unusual, in the peaceful exercise of their rights they will collected about them. take steps to do so themselves. Unfortunately out for a holiday stood close beside them, and A trio of servant girls this is out of date, and the policy which takes when they had realised the scene before them, ita place, namely, that of bringing pressure to burst into rude laughter. bear on the Taungli Yambu, never seems to result in anything to the purpose. Twios al- ready, in consequence of ministerial representa- tions at Peking; the Tsungli Yamên has wired the Viceroy, Governor, and Tuotai to settle the Kuling case at once, to release the prisoners, and to give all due protection to foreigners; but the local officials have simply each time ignored these instructions. As yet, they have not apprehended a single one of the agitators, placardists, in- cendiaries, or thieves, though duly furnished with names; nor have they released from prison any one of the innocent middlemen, writers, and village olders who had the misfortune to be on the foreigners' side in this transaction. Ás a preliminary to any action on their part, they insist that the property be unconditionally given

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fashionably dressed English girl, who evidently took every eye. Some of the commoner of the and unmistakably belonged to the better classes, men stared at her with looks of familiarity and of insolence. Presently Low-Ching went away luggage & cad stood beside her, pipo in mouth, to get the tickets, and as she remained by their

and smiled in her face.

"This smile was the most horrible thing that had yet befallen her in connection with Lew. Ching. It frightened her. The expression on the face of this low-class man had more effect on her than all her mother's words and more than all the entreaties of Lindsay, or than any com. ment he had made on the Chinaman!" home is described as follows:-

And so it goes on. The arrival at Low-Ching's

Standing back from the road Mabel could see a house which might very well be English, built of what looked in this light of grey brick, and with white eaves; it seemed surrounded by mimosa-trees, the air was full of the exquisite scent, and the little fuzzy yellow balls of their blossoms gleamed through the leaves,

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It was quite a relief to get on to the platform downstairs and leave behind them the people who had swarmed into the station from the street, but as she and her husband stood by the door, having their tickets clipped, some one brushed against her dress, and some rice fell out The ticket collecter noticed it, and looked at Lew-outer door was thrown open; they were now The inmates were expecting them, for the Ching and herself, and again Mabel knew that standing in a courtyard dimly lighted by a the look was not complimentary.

couple of lanterns hung over a carved archway "There was a lurking insolence in the man's facing them. glance; she felt an intense longing to be quit of oleanders stood at the side of the wall, together Boxes of rather sickly looking Barford and its people, to be in some place where with some cacti. she was not known as she was here, where every looked bare and uninviting; a Chinawoman had The place, to Mabel's eyes, eye would not say to her How strange! She admitted them, and Low-Ching addressed her hated the rice for falling down and betraying in his own language. Though his wife could her, for she tried to persuade herself that it was not understand the words, she knew that the this that the people stared at. It was an idiotic tone was one of disappointment or complaint. custom worthy of savages, this throwing of rice; Of course, the instructions so painfully obtained she felt irritable. from the Yamên, and telegraphed with so much Lew-Ching had been married in parade, are like so many other things in China exquisite robe of a dull shade of pink, but he a most -marely intended for " look-see," as Peking had put on for the journey an old and shabby, can still make its wishes respected in the pro- coarse silk dress of dark blue edged with black vinces when it has a mind to. But as long as gimp, which had become brown and threadbare the Ministers of Foreign Powers are shut up to with use. The loose dark garment gave him a spending their time and strength in procuringslovenly, dingy appearance, and brought out the from the Famôn instructions of so little value sallowness of his skin. As a fact it was the that any twopenny Taotai feels himself at dress he had worn on the voyage from China. liberty to snap his fingers at them, just so long Somehow in putting off his gay-coloured and will foreign nations fail to command respect in delicate robes, he had lost the romantic look China, and so long may riots be expected as the which had taken the girl's eye, and had been one order of the day.-N. C. Daily News.

of the many factors leading her to this end; he now no longer had the princely and dignified air, that subtle charm of mystery which together with his foreign ways bad distinguished him from the Englishmen, and had lent a false charm to him, in the mind of this girl, that ill-regulated mind of hers.

Shanghai, 11th June. The following telegram, dated Chungking, 6th June, reached Shanghai last evening. The position is evidently serious:-" At Chêngtn, Kisting, and Yochou the Protestant and Catholic mission property has been utterly destroyed. Smaller cities, have suffered similarly. The * officials refused protection till the mob had completed their work.The Viceroy Liu is chiefly to blame. Twenty adults besides children are still in the Chêngta yamên. Suchou and other places, are seriously threatened. Urge foreign nations to aet promptly."

REVIEWS.

*S

"As he took the tickets and stood beside her, he looked merely a yellow-faced Chinaman; al! charm was gone,-bis very expression was less pleasing. If he had looked as handsome as he had sometimes done, she might have forgiven the sensation he was creating, in pride at his appearance; the sort of angry pride she had felt that night at Mrs. Newcomes' when he had stood beside her in his exquisite foreign dress carry ing the stephanotis--but here he was simply a Chinaman and nothing more.

"But she stifled her irritation, that intense desire to quarrel which she had felt so often lately, and male herself very pleasant to him.

"At Charing Cross, she thought. there would be less notice taken, no one, she told herself, A China-minded any one's else concerns in great cities like London or Paris. Whenever she had been in town she had, she remembered, seen some strange or foreign sight, some poor distraught woman chattering to herself as sho hurried through the streets, some foreigner in the dress of his country, a Brazilian Gaucho in his huge hat and leathern leggings, or a Japanese lady, and these people she remembered she had met in Regent Street and other places teeming with life, in the very arteries of the vast city, and no one seemed to care or to feel enough interest to turn round and look at them.

Her Celestial Husband. By DANIEL WOOD.

BOFFE. London: T. Fisher Unwin. This is a tragic tale of an English girl married to à Chinaman, told with much dramatic power. Mabel Conyers lived with her mother and younger sister in a London suburb. man from Hankow, with introductions to people in the neighbourhood, is received into the social cirele in which the Conyers moved. Lew Ching, for so the Chinaman was called, was attracted by Miss Conyers' beauty. Mabel, hav. ing broken with her latest lover, and having sufered previous disappointments, has become thoroughly disgusted with the life at Barford, and in order to get away from it, almost in desperation, she accepts Len-Ching's attentions, and, in spite of the protests of her friends, marries him. The sad awakening commences at once. A Chinsman as a curiosity in society and the same man as the husband of a handsome English girl were not regarded in the same light. The following is a description of the bride and bridegroom's going away :—

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"As it happened Mabel had never before been with Low-Ching at any such public place as a railway station, open to the common herd, except on such occasions as when they had been to the theatre. Then it had been night and the China- man been very little noticed. She had never been out walking with him but twice and then their walk had been in the neighbourhood of her

"Then, in the archway before them, appeared the figure of an old Chinawoman hobbling along, and partly on leaning partly on the shoulder of an attendant crutch in thickness.

a walking-stick, almost like a

blear-eyed and with wrinkled yellow skin; her "To Mabel's eyes she was a hideous vision,

fastened with ornaments. hair was thin, but was elaborately dressed and

"It is my mother," said Lew-Ching,

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her son, who returned the greeting with respect; She came forward unsmilingly and greeted then she turned her head to the girl beside him and surveyed her. Her ugly brown eyes looked from beneath their drooping lids at the beautiful English woman, but there was no expression in them beyond that of a passive dislike. All three women, the mistress and the two others, stared gesture made her son walk beside her. She put at the girl, and then the old woman with a hér old band, so much like a bird's claw, on his shoulder, and still leaning on the stick led the way, her English daughter-in-law and the China- women following.

"Once more Mabel felt that curious sensation of being outside herself, of looking at herself from a distance. Her sensations were a mixture of rage at her position and at the insolence of her husband's mother, and anger against Lew. Ching himself, for all the slights and humilia- tions she had suffered since, she had left homo. The same rage which she had felt against him at being left alone with the coolies, in the Chi- uese quarter, she felt at this moment. Why could be not be more human? What she was feeling was a rage against life, and against her husband for having entrapped her. She no longer felt even that desire to conciliate him, to stand well with him, that she had had,-this last action of his, in which he appeared to discard her at his mother's bidding, made her more angry than anything she had suffered since leaving home. Then she reflected that in the old days she had never felt these cousuming, overmastering rages which so ofton swept over her now, and then suddenly she remembered that it was in one of these passions that she had taken the irrevocable step that had led to this.

"As different from you as a cat or a dog.' As her eyes fell on the eld crippled woman lean- on her husband's arm, Mrs. Conyers' words recurred to her.

"But when the train drew up at the stationing and she and her husband alighted, there wa exactly the same interest created, and again Mabel noticed that the looks bent où her were not merely looks of astonishment.

As the girl followed in the train of these Chinese people, the humiliation she felt expooded anything she had suffered before. To be con- temned by the peoplo, her own countrymen and women on board the Orestes had been bad enough, but she had, as it wore, come on it gradually; she had been warned, and if she had not at the time of her marriage realised the truth of what her mother und Lindsay said, the The spectacle of a pig-tailed Chinaman in possibility of adverse public opinicu had been at the company of an extremely good-looking audleast placed before her, and even in Barford she

They secured their luggage and passed through the barrier. The space by Smith's bookstall was as usual fully occupied by the crowd of meu to be found there any hour of any day, passing, repassing, reading, lounging, smoking.

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