A Yankee in the Far East

This temple was built centuries ago, to keep alive the name and teachings of a man who taught and wrought a score of centuries before this wonderful temple was built – the mystic past steals over you as you look, and you turn and walk away – wondering, wondering, wondering.

XXIII

THE RANGOON BUSINESS MAN WHO DROVE HIS SERMON HOME

There is a business man here in Rangoon who, to my mind, has put one over on the missionaries, by seeing their game and beating them at it with a sermon – a sermon with more ring and go to it than anything of that kind I've struck in the Orient – or out of it.

They are really a godless lot out here in the Orient, as we look at godliness; or, at least, profess to.

They haven't any more respect for the Sabbath day on this side of the world (except in a few spots where the missionaries have made a dent in the situation) than a lot of crows have for a farmer's rights in a field of growing corn.

Now, this business man I am writing about was born and brought up in England. He had it drilled into him when he was a boy that we should remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; and the teaching stuck.

He is a character.

Between the ages of seventeen and fifty-six he got started in life; got rich; retired; and lost his fortune; and when he was fifty-six years old he was broke – down and out.

He came to Burma, prospected for gold until he was sixty-six years old, and the net result of that ten years of gold prospecting was – still broke.

As he had a character just like Gibraltar, he was able to borrow a few pounds sterling, and with it started life all over again in business here in Rangoon.

He got to going to the good; and at the end of five years, when he was seventy-one years old, he had a name and some fame in his line of trade.

At that time the heir apparent to a mighty throne came through Rangoon, touring Burma with his staff.

He heard of this man, and wanted to buy some of his goods. He decided on a Saturday afternoon, that the next day at eleven o'clock he would call at this man's store and inspect his stock with a view to purchasing.

As this potentate was a mighty gun – none bigger – he prepared the way to his proposed visit by sending one of his numerous staff to this man's store Saturday evening, to inform him that at eleven o'clock of the next day his Royal Highness would be around to buy some goods.

It's right at this point in the narrative that this man got there with his sermon. He said: "Present my compliments to his Royal Highness, but tell him I wouldn't open my store on Sunday to do business even with the King of England."

Get that?

Ever been in London, dear old "Lunnun"? They set great store by selling royalty in England. There's a fellow over there in London doing a smashing business in oysters just because he can put up over his door "Purveyor of Oysters to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales."

Well, this little-big sermon got back to England, and the result was that in the next five years this man sold goods to royalty pretty well over the world, and got rich. And he is here today; and he tells me that while he has played the game of business for the love of it, he is eighty years old now and is going to wind up. Being without wife or children, he is going to leave his wealth to orphan asylums.

XXIV

THE GLASS OF ICE WATER THAT JARRED RANGOON

To come to Rangoon and not go to see the elephants work the teak timber that comes down the Irawadi River would be like going to Venice and not have your picture taken in St. Mark's Square with the doves roosting all over you; or to leave the pyramids without a photograph of yourself with the great pyramid of Cheops for a background.

I plead guilty to the dove picture – it's on our mantle at home – had it taken to please my wife, who was with me on that trip.

The great satisfaction I take in that picture is its proof of my self-sacrificing nature.

Having visited Venice several times before I took my wife there, I knew all about that "picture-with-the-doves" game.

Just before the photograph fiend in Venice, who will photograph an American with the doves for $2.00, an Englishman for $1.00, and a German for 20 cents, made his exposure, I bought my wife a cornucopia of corn that venders sell for a cent, with which to feed the doves.

The woman in the picture behind the cloud of doves is my wife. The man at her side, minus any doves on him to mar his seraphic smile, is myself.

The photograph of me at the pyramids, taken on a former trip, would be a pretty good picture of me, too, if my natural modesty hadn't got the better of me, which modesty prompted me to get behind the pyramid when the photographer made his exposure.

This photographer is on the ground and does a rushing business photographing globe trotters at the pyramids. The pyramid being betwixt me and the camera made a failure of the picture so far as being a good one of me is concerned; but I'm ready to bet good money that I'm the only world tourist who can show a photograph of Cheops without a globe-trotter in the foreground. It's a good photograph of the pyramid.

But really one shouldn't leave Rangoon without seeing the elephants work the teak logs.

The human intelligence of the animals, coupled with their great strength as they push the logs into place, accurately measure distances, walk back and forth to study the problem of how best to place a log, and then roll and put it into place, is one of the sights worth seeing in Rangoon; which, in itself, is a town worth seeing.

A city well laid out with wide streets running at right angles, extending several miles along the river front, and a mile inland.

Many beautiful lakes are in the suburbs, and tropical parks abound: and it is the third city in British India.

It's an old, old town. Its chief attraction to draw visitors from the ends of the earth is the great Shwe Dagon Pagoda, the oldest Buddhist temple in the world, the foundation of which was laid 588 B. C.

And Rangoon has trolley cars and water-works, and electric lights, and an ice plant.

And ice is a precious commodity in Rangoon. In fact, ice is a precious commodity in any Oriental city excepting Manila.

In Manila they have caught onto the idea that ice is not a deadly poison or precious stones.

I attribute it to the influence of the white Filipinos living there, who are wonderfully like Americans in taste, habits and general all-around desirableness.

Ask for a glass of ice-water at a hotel in Rangoon, or Hong Kong, or Pekin, or Yokohama, or Calcutta, or Bombay and watch what happens.

Your table boy will bring you a high glass of tepid water and drop a piece of ice in it as big as a hickory-nut, and the only thing in the whole transaction worthy of note is the boy's self-satisfied air of having done his whole duty.

I have demoralized the whole running-gear of the best hotel in Rangoon – I'll be known among the hotel fraternity of Rangoon in future as the "ice man" who visited the town in 1914.

Becoming weary of watching that little nugget of ice in a large glass of tepid water, doing its best to chill the water as it rapidly diminished to the size of a two-carat diamond, finally to dissolve entirely in an heroic effort to make good, I called the table boy to me and ordered him to empty the glass and bring me the several receptacles in the dining room that held ice for all the guests. Fishing enough nuggets from the lot to pack the glass full of ice, I ordered it filled with water – looked up at the boy and said: "Savvy? Ice-water!"

I leave town today for Calcutta – that glass of ice water has jarred Rangoon.

XXV

THE CALCUTTA SACRED BULL AND HIS TWISTED TAIL

Did one of your old readers, kind friend (I think it was McGuffy's Second) way back in childhood days have a little poem in it all about a lot of little girls playing a wishing game? It's over forty years ago that I read that little poem, and I can only remember one little girl's wish.

She said: "I wish I were a flying fish, o'er ocean's sparkling waves to sail, a flying fish, that's what I wish, 'mid Neptune's blue to lave my tail."

Not having read that little poem for over forty years, and not having the book with me out here in Calcutta, I may not have quoted the lines verbatim, but as near as I can recall it, that's what she said.

That little girl didn't know what she was wishing for or she'd sooner have wished to be a devil bug.

The flying fish has got that old saying, "Between the devil and the deep sea," beaten to a frazzle.

The life of a flying fish may look all right to the unsophisticated, but things are rarely what they seem, and a flying fish's life is a hard lot.

Chased up out of the water to escape the jaws of some horrid sea monster seeking to make a meal off it, it spreads its silvery wings o'er "ocean's sparkling waves," when a seagull comes along, and – good-bye little flying fish.

Now if I'd been one of those little girls playing that wishing game and had known as much as I know now, I'd have wished to be a sacred bull here in Calcutta.

That's one fine job – the life of a Calcutta sacred bull.

I stepped out of my hotel today onto one of Calcutta's best streets, with a pavement twenty feet wide, filled with pedestrians, lined with splendid shops.

Calcutta is a town of one million inhabitants and is the second city in size in the British Empire.

Just at the side of the entrance to a fine jewelry store lay a great big fat and glossy sacred bull, with a garland of roses round his neck, placed there by some devout Hindu.

The natives would stop and fondle and brush the flies off him. Stopping to look at the novel sight, and giving the fine old fellow a few gentle strokes, I turned to my guide and asked him to tell the natives who had stopped to witness the foreigner's interest, to make the bull get up. I wanted to see what he would do.

A native pushed him in the flank and ribs, but Mr. Bull only smiled, and as plain as words his actions said, "No, thanks, I'm perfectly comfortable here."

"Twist his tail," I said; "that will start him."

The native gave his tail one twist. The bull looked around with a surprised air and anyone could see that he said, "That's a new kind of a caress," but he didn't get up.

"Twist it harder," I said.

Three turns of the tail brought him to his feet, and he walked leisurely along the crowded thoroughfare, perfectly at home, wearing his garland of roses as naturally as a girl would wear a string of beads, receiving a gentle pat from the native passersby – even an English girl put out her hand and gave him a stroke in passing.

He was a great big, glossy, docile pet, expecting and getting a wealth of love.

I am told that when he is hungry he goes to a green grocer's store and makes a meal off the grocer's cabbage, with no protest from the grocer, after which he goes to a confectioner's shop for a dessert – and gets it.

There are scores of sacred bulls in Calcutta. They have their special stamping ground. Let one bull poach on another one's preserve and there is a bullfight then and there. Not a Spanish "bullfight" – seven or eight trained athletes against one bull, with death for the bull a foregone conclusion – but a real, genuine, interesting bullfight, with the victor's tail in the air.

And it's a dull person who can't understand that that bull is saying to the vanquished one: "You stay where you belong. I'll do the sacred bull business around this neck of the woods."

XXVI

THE GUIDE WHO WOULDN'T SIT IN "MASTER'S" PRESENCE

I call him Lal.

The rest of his name is too long for week-day use. He is my interpreter, my guide, my servant, my counselor, and my friend.

I have hired him for a two weeks' trip across India. He is considerable of an erudite gentleman – speaks several languages.

I speak only one, and I do queer things to that one lots of times.

But Lal doesn't try to impress me with his superiority just because he knows a lot more than I do – quite the reverse.

His wages are a rupee a day, out of which he feeds himself. That was his own price. I'm paying him all he asks. I've been told that I'm paying him too much, that he has stung me. A rupee is thirty-two cents!

But he is a superior guide. He admits it himself. To prove it he showed me a sheaf of recommendations from American globe-trotters whom he has guided across India in days gone by.

A good many of those recommendations are frayed at the edges through much showing, but I wouldn't mind having some of those names on a blank check, with privilege to write the rest of the check myself.

Lal tells me he is the "Professor" of the guides.

I hired him yesterday. He calls me "Master." That's regular. All servants and guides in India call their employers "Master."

With a two weeks' trip to plan across India, with a map of India, hotel guides and railroad time-tables, pencil and paper spread out before me in my room this afternoon, I said: "Draw up a chair, Lal, and sit down. Here is a two hours' job before us."

"Excuse me, 'Master'," Lal said, "but if 'Master' will excuse me I will not sit in 'Master's' presence."

Get that?

Royalty, don't you know?

Lal got "Master" in only three times in that sentence. I've known him to bring it in four times in a shorter one.

In addition to Lal's numerous duties – standing between me and the natives, brushing my clothes, looking after my laundry, making my bed in sleeping cars, and watching my goods and chattels while I take my meals in the dining car, and a score of other such duties, Lal was looking after "Master's" dignity.

Lal, old boy, after that gentle reminder, I'll know my place.

If there's nothing else to do, I'll let Lal fan me. I believe it's one of the prerogatives of Royalty to be fanned by vassals.

These Indian guides are a class by themselves. Many of them have traveled far.

Picked up by travelers for a tour across India, they are frequently taken to England and through Europe. For instance, Lal has been to England and Boston. In speaking of India he says: "My India," "my Calcutta," "my Bombay," and there isn't much about India he doesn't know.

They travel third-class, which is ridiculously cheap in India. The tourist, of course, pays his servant's railroad fare and must land him back to point of hiring him.

Lal's home is in Calcutta. I will have finished with him at Bombay and will have to send him back to Calcutta, across India, fifteen hundred miles, and that item of expense will be sixteen rupees six annas – all of five dollars and twenty cents.

It's hard lines to pour out money in this way on Lal – but Royalty is expensive anyway.

XXVII

ROYALTY VS. "TWO CLUCKS AND A GRUNT"

To go across India from Calcutta one of the necessary things to consider is a railroad ticket.

After my vassal and I had planned an itinerary we called a victoria, or rather Lal flagged a Hindu driving a team hitched to one.

It was rigged for a footman at the rear. The footman was there, too, ready to open the door for "Master" when he wished to enter or alight.

This truly regal, royal outfit cost twelve annas for an hour's drive, and that's twenty-four cents.

You can work the Royalty racket in Calcutta cheaper than you can hang over a lunch counter and eat baked beans in America.

Now Cook's tourist agency has booked me from Hong Kong to New York via steamer, first-class, over the Peninsular and Oriental line, P. & O., for short.

That means steamer from Hong Kong to Calcutta via Singapore, Penang and Rangoon.

I have to pay my railroad fare across India to Bombay, and from that port privilege of P. & O. direct to London, via Aden, Port Said, Gibraltar and Marseilles, and home from London via any American or British line I choose from London.

Cook's take care of a traveler they book in this way, and their representatives look out for you on arrival and departure from ports.

In my role of Royalty I bade my vassal, Lal, to hoist himself up on the driver's seat, and to tell the driver to go to Cook's.

Laying my itinerary before a booking clerk at Cook's I said: "Please book me to Bombay over this route."

As I was traveling first-class by water, which they knew all about, and as I preserved my regal tread from my carriage door right up to Cook's counter, the clerk said: "Of course you want first-class, Mr. Allen?"

"Of course I don't," I came back at him; "you stung me last trip across India for first-class, and you know the only difference between first and second here in India is the price, just double second, and the number on the door of the compartment. You'll book me second, please."

This Royalty act is all right here in India, but you want to know where to draw the line when it affects your pocketbook with nothing to show for it.

The man saw I was wise, grinned, and issued me a second-class ticket, and third-class for my servant; and the evening of that same day saw me starting for the railroad station in another victoria, Lal and the driver up front, footman on behind, the lord my duke (meaning me) in the "tonneau" with bedding, grips, steamer trunk, camera, coats, etc., etc., all royally placed in the same vehicle.

When a traveler starts out from Calcutta to take the train for a night's journey, if it don't look as if he was breaking up housekeeping and going somewhere, I've never asked for bacon and eggs in the woolly West and heard the shirt-sleeved waiter yell: "Two clucks and a grunt," and then collect more for the viands than it costs to be moved across the second city in the British Empire in royal entourage.

XXVIII

ONE WINK, SIXTEEN CENTS, AND ROYALTY

The seasoned traveler in India, planning a night's journey, don't arrive at a station a minute or two before his train leaves, as we do in plebeian America. Rush and hurry should form no part of Royal journeys.

It isn't dignified.

You should get there at least half an hour before the train starts, especially if you are playing Royalty on a second-class ticket.

As your equipage draws up to the station your footman alights and swings open the carriage door, your guide descends from the driver's seat and summons low-caste vassals who load your impedimenta on their heads.

The cavalcade starts with you bringing up the rear.

You find the station-master, the string of your menials now following on behind.

Locate your station-master, or at least an official who will answer the same purpose, and tip him a wink, not forgetting to accompany it with half a rupee, and tell him you want a car for Benares.

This man is a Hindu who can write but can't read – I am quite certain he can't read.

He leads "Master" with his string of retainers to a car of four compartments, four berths in each compartment, the berths running with the train, with a toilet room for each compartment. He opens a door. Lal tells the string of porters to put "Master's" baggage into the compartment – no matter how much, put it all in, boxes, bags, bedding and trunks.

Then this functionary who has been the recipient of a wink and half a rupee (don't forget the coin when working the combination), who can write but who cannot read, fills in a placard which is hanging outside the compartment. This placard, before the recipient of the wink and half rupee begins to toy with it, is a blank which reads:

Lower Right Berth reserved for —

Upper Right Berth reserved for —

Lower Left Berth reserved for —

Upper Left Berth reserved for —

This official who has received a wink and half a rupee – never, never forget the half rupee, because half a rupee is sixteen cents – fills in the blanks on the placard which now, in its completed state, reads:

Lower Right Berth reserved for Mr. Allen.

Upper Right Berth reserved for Mr. Jones.

Lower Left Berth reserved for Mr. White.

Upper Left Berth reserved for Mr. Brown.

He hangs up the placard outside of the compartment, wishes "Master" a pleasant journey up to Benares, and closes the door.

Lal starts the electric fan, makes "Master's" bed, lays out "Master's" pajamas, and arranges "Master's" belongings promiscuously over Jones', White's and Brown's berths – Lal, a seasoned guide, is onto his job.

These last-named gentlemen get left – yes, sir, they get left. The train pulls out before they get around, and I am deprived of the pleasure of their company.

But if there is one place where a fellow can dispense with company it's on a hot night's run in a railroad carriage through India.

It's when I step out of the car at Benares the next morning that I learned that the fellow back in Calcutta couldn't read, for, blessed if the outside of that compartment I have occupied all night isn't labeled No. 1 instead of No. 2.

But that really makes no difference.

The compartment labeled No. 2, when you get inside, is just like compartment labeled No. 1, on the other side of the partition in the same car.

I conscientiously told that fellow I held a second-class ticket, and if he could read, Royalty is so cheap in Calcutta that you can buy a whole night of it with sixteen cents, and the number on the outside of the car, and the price charged for it, is all the difference between Royalty and Plebeian in India – and Plebeians have the laugh on Royalty – they have always had it on them for that matter.

XXIX

THE ENGLISHMAN AND MARK TWAIN'S JOKE, "THAT'S HOW THEY WASH IN INDIA"

In my home town I was once asked to give a travel talk in a large stone church, the occasion being a rally for the Christian Endeavor Society.

It had been announced that there would be no charge for admission; furthermore, it had been thoroughly advertised that the young ladies of the church would furnish a delectable spread to the audience in the church parlors just as soon as I got through talking.

The town turned out en masse.

As the parson was leading me to the rostrum, the lights went out and there was Egyptian darkness.

After an anxious wait of five minutes, it being a hard stunt to get such a fine audience together in the classic, intellectual center in which I live, even with a chromo offer, the parson, fearing it would leave, made a little speech in the direction where he hoped the audience was – he couldn't see it – it was an act of faith.

He begged our good people to be patient under the trying circumstances, explained that the burned-out fuse would soon be replaced, that an electrician was even now on his way to the church, and told them that a good thing was in store for them – he assured them, "Mr. Allen is still with us."

Five more minutes passed and darkness still brooded.

Again the parson gave the audience, which he hoped was still there, the same little speech, assuring them again, "Mr. Allen is still with us – there's a good thing coming."

At the end of fifteen minutes he repeated it again, assuring them a good thing was coming – the coffee began to boil in the church kitchen, the aroma floating through the auditorium – the lights came on and there hadn't one guilty man escaped. The audience was still there.

Kind reader, you'd never guess what I was thinking about during that trying fifteen minutes.

Well, I was trying to think of an appropriate story to open my speech with, to illustrate the situation – something about where the lights went out.

I thought, and thought, and THOUGHT, but could not fetch it, but the next morning I thought of a corker – I am descended from the English.

All my ancestors came from England and settled in New England. New England was chiefly inhabited by Indians at the time, but, I suppose, there still lurks a trace of English in me.

That old joke about the English being slow is no joke – it's a sad fact.

If further proof than my inability to corral that illustration inside of fifteen minutes were necessary, I've demonstrated it coming through India this trip.

The universal way of washing clothes in India is for a native, they call him a dobe, to take his clothes to the bank of a stream, conveniently near a large stone.