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XIV
"MISSOURI" MEETS A MISSIONARY
I found "Missouri" in Shanghai on my return from Pekin, and he seemed to be in a dejected mood. Something had evidently gone wrong with him.
"How do you like Shanghai, 'Missouri'?" I asked.
"Fine," "Missouri" said. "Good town – lot of go."
"Had any rides on these Shanghai wheelbarrows?"
"Missouri" only grinned and didn't go off into wild, exuberant enthusiasm, by which token I knew there must be something the matter with "Missouri."
There are some Americans whom even a Shanghai wheelbarrow don't particularly interest. But there are some Americans who can't see anything particularly interesting in lots of things; who go mooning along through life; who, if you told them the moon was made of green cheese, would get into an argument with you on the subject and tell you there must be some mistake about it. But from what I'd seen of "Missouri" I didn't put him down for that kind of an American; and I knew there must have something gone wrong with him or else he'd have warmed up over the wheelbarrows in Shanghai.
"Business bum, 'Missouri'?" I asked.
"Nope," said "Missouri." "Done better than I expected to."
"What's the matter, 'Missouri'?" I asked. "Your false teeth aren't aching are they? You seem to lack enthusiasm. Anything gone wrong since I saw you last? Bad news from home? Long on mules and the bottom dropped out of the market? Has the treasurer of the Epworth League at home run off with the funds, or has your bank cashier run off with your safe?"
"Say, Mr. Allen, the bank's all right. Mules and horses are O. K. Everything is lovely so far as the outcome of my trip is concerned in a business way.
"But that Epworth League is no joke. You see, my town is looking for me to bring home a report on the missionary game out here in the Far East.
"As I've told you, I'm a fairly good proposition where I live – an easy mark when it comes to digging down and boosting anything worth boosting.
"Women who are interested in foreign missions and the preachers in our town set quite a store by me, and I was given that commission to look up the missionary in Tokio and report on his work, and you know all about how I came out on that enterprise.
"I got tied up in Japan, so I didn't go to look his field over – thought I wouldn't have any trouble to get next to missionaries out here, and when you told me how you came out with that missionary in Kioto, I thought it would be a cinch to take back a report from some of these posts.
"Say, Mr. Allen, I'm never going to get funny again as long as I live, if I ever have anything more to do with the 'cloth.'
"After you left me to run up to Pekin I got things shaped around here in Shanghai where I could spare a day, so I looked up the missionaries in the city directory, and by a little inquiry, located one who was said to be a hot tomolie in his line. Didn't have a letter of introduction to him, but banked on my general appearance to carry me through.
"I found my man and told him where I was from. I noticed he was a solemn-looking individual. I lit into him in a more or less free-and-easy way, and that's where I got in bad with that particular dispenser of the gospel to the heathen.
"I told him that I was a business man and that I wanted to learn something of the missionary work to tell about it when I got home.
"From what you'd told me of your experience in Kioto, I rather expected he would enthuse somewhat.
"But he didn't enthuse.
"He made a diamond of the index fingers and thumbs of his hands, held them in front of him, and waited for me to proceed. I looked at him – I looked at him twice. And then I told him of my effort in Tokio.
"I said: 'I started out to do this thing in Tokio; started one Sunday morning, but got tied up in a saki house, where I met a delightful bunch, and didn't get away from that saloon till five o'clock in the afternoon, and I have yet to come in personal contact with the missionary work in the Far East.'
"I meant to say something that would jar his hands out of the position they were in, but it didn't work that way.
"He kept them held just so, and his mouth took on something of the same shape. For about a minute as I looked at what was in front of me I couldn't think of anything but the two of diamonds. Between you and me, that missionary is a two-spot, all right.
"Then I elaborately explained about the automobile breaking down in front of the saki house, and how the keepers of the saki house had befriended us, but the whole story didn't warm him up.
"I discoursed along and tried to overcome the bad impression I had made. I did my level best to make that chap see that while I didn't have any letter of introduction, that it might be well to consider strangers, because we've Holy Writ for it that by so doing a good many have caught angels unawares.
"But that fellow couldn't see any angel in me. He acted as if I had hoofs and horns.
"I was having the time of my life to get through that missionary's crust. I did enough mental and 'charming personality' work to sell a trainload of mules to a business man.
"It was a one-sided confab, but I didn't propose to give it up. I said to myself: 'I've pulled over harder deals in my life than mellowing up and bringing this missionary around.' I went along careful like, discoursing and discussing (if one man doing all the talking could be called discussing) – I'd cash a stranger's check at our bank on half as good a showing as I was making – and I rather thought I was getting by.
"He had shut his mouth, and while he held his hands in that same position, with his mouth shut, he didn't remind me so much of a two-spot. He looked more like an ace, and I thought I was winning.
"And then I let go one that gave him the opening he'd evidently been waiting for. I told him that I hadn't found the cordial relations existing between the business men of the Orient and the missionary cause I had expected I would find – and then he said something. What do you think that missionary said to me, Mr. Allen?"
"I haven't an idea, 'Missouri'. What did he say?"
"Humph!" snorted 'Missouri'. "He said: 'You have probably gathered your information of the missionary work in the Far East from your bar-room associates'."
I laughed. "Hard luck, 'Missouri'. Did you tell him about the funnel and anæsthetic?"
"I did not," disgustedly. "I left him encased in his armor plate of self-righteousness."
"Oh, forget it, 'Missouri'," I said. "The missionary work is a tremendous undertaking. There are thousands of missionaries scattered over the world. You can't pick out thousands of men for any great work, in religion, business, politics, or war, without occasionally drafting one whom the French so graphically describe as 'damphol.' That particular missionary has evidently missed his calling."
"Um," "Missouri" pondered meditatively. "Just what sort of a calling would fit that kind of a man? I wouldn't undertake to make a banker of him. I wouldn't trust him with a big mule deal. He'd scare trade away from a country store" —
"Forget it, 'Missouri.' Let's take a wheelbarrow ride and you can use my Kioto experience when you get home – just tell it to your good people as if it had happened to you. Or, if you have time when you get to Canton, go and call on my friend S – .
"He is a missionary. I won't let him know that you are coming to see him, and I won't give you a letter of introduction to him – you won't need a letter.
"Go at him just as you did at your 'two-spot' – you won't fool him – he'll see back of it. You wouldn't have fooled me in Yokohama if you'd declaimed it instead of writing it to me. You're something of a josher, 'Missouri,' but you don't exactly impress even the ordinary run as a gleaner of your views from bar-room associates.
"S – would have made a whale of a business man if he hadn't given his life to missions. He's a whale of a business man as it is. I misjudge him, and I misjudge you, if he don't work you for a contribution to foreign missions that will make the Board in New York throw up their hats when they hear of it, and show you a story to take back home that will make the tight-wads in your community loosen up when the hat is passed around for foreign missions."
As we jounced along over the bridge in front of our hotel and along the bund on a Shanghai wheelbarrow, passing mixed cargoes of merchandise and passengers on those same homely vehicles, and as I explained to "Missouri" how those were only little loads, how up north they piled on more and more and then rigged them up with sails, the absolute ludicrousness of it all made "Missouri" forget his grouch, and he promised me that he'd try to look up S – in Canton – and I thought I saw where Missouri mules might be hitched to Foreign Missions – and that's some motive power.
XV
A STO-O-RM AT SEA
Since starting my series of travel letters, word has come to me that some of my readers are disappointed that I shied at a description of seasickness – an eminently looked-for and expected dissertation – and instead went off on a tangent about false teeth, which was not in the regular line of letters of travel; and I also learn that the hope is entertained that I will not close this series without describing a storm at sea, the which is a regular, fit, and greatly-to-be-desired adjunct to such a series of letters as I am writing.
I have written on former occasions a description of St. Peter's Church at Rome, taken a running jump at the Pyramids, and once, just once, I wrote a rhapsody – about the Hawaiian Islands – most beautiful spot on earth. But I've always promised myself that I'd leave a sto-o-rm at sea alone.
But when an exacting public drives, a hack must needs travel, and if I must come through with a storm at sea, right here and now is the time and place to do it, as we are in the midst of a typhoon.
Now a typhoon is conceded to be the most colossal kind of a storm, and right here in the China Sea, between Hong Kong and Manila, is the place where they grow the biggest typhoons – this is headquarters for typhoons – and we are now in the midst of the biggest of its kind. So while I have the data right at hand where I can pick it fresh from the hat – get all the local coloring – I'll do the regular and conventional thing, albeit under protest. Ah me! ah my! ah mo! ah me! I say, and then some more. I wish you might be with me now and hear the billows roar. A storm has struck this good old ship, the waves are mountain high, the billows rise, and rise, and rise, and mount up to the sky, while gullies in the vasty deep the valiant ship must try. Down, down she goes, and still down, down, into the depths of hell, and then she strives to rise again on ocean's mighty swell. She climbs, and climbs, and climbs, and climbs – almost she makes the top – the billow breaks – comes crashing down – the ship is in the sop. Ten thousand tons of briny sea come crashing on her deck; another blow like that I fear the gallant ship will wreck. Forked lightning splits the inky sky, with blinding flash on flash, while thunder-bolts shoot up the ship with awful deafening crash. Up through the billows, up she comes, she whoofs, and groans, and creaks – a mightier billow still in store the ship's destruction seeks. She rides the crest, then plunges down to greater depths below; the greedy sea laughs in its glee, then thunderous billows throw o'er bow and poop of fated sloop – they stab her through and through, they wash the captain overboard, likewise his mate and crew. The bos'n and the cook are gone, also the nine-lived cat – on all the ship no soul is spared, no, not one lonesome rat. The ship is lost! Where is the scribe – the boy, oh where is he? Astride the bowsprit, pen in hand, writing a sto-o-rm at sea.
MORAL: Genius should be coaxed, not driven.
XVI
THE ISLANDS "DISCOVERED" BY DEWEY
I arrived in Manila – not seasick – I never was seasick in my life (I've mentioned that before, haven't I?) – but anyone who read my last letter with that degree of attention necessary to get the meat out of letters of travel will have gathered that there was a bit of a blow coming over from Hong Kong, and that it was a rough crossing.
Those of my readers who regret that the bowsprit and I reached Manila are no friends of mine, and any invidious remarks they may make about my last letter are of no consequence to me.
The Philippine Islands are a tropical group. There are about 3,000 of them. They lie between five degrees and twenty degrees north latitude, and one hundred and seventeen degrees and one hundred and twenty-seven degrees east longitude, and they contain 120,000 square miles of land.
The Pacific Ocean washes their eastern boundaries and the China sea the western. The largest islands are Luzon and Mindano – Luzon with about 40,000 square miles and Mindano with 36,000. About 400 of the islands are inhabited.
They are quite a big chunk of land, as big as New England, New York, and New Jersey. Winter never comes; three crops of corn can be raised on the same piece of ground in a year, and six crops of corn fodder.
While they are mountainous, they are not so mountainous as Japan, and have broader valleys of rich, fertile land. They are pretty nearly as large as Japan, without its new possessions of Formosa and Korea, the difference in area being about 170,000 square miles in Japan against 120,000 in the Philippines. They are just a little shy of having 9,000,000 inhabitants, who are chocolate brown in color, have straight hair, and in stature are about the size of the Japanese.
Admiral George Dewey of the American navy discovered these islands May 1, 1898. No one except the natives knew anything about them until that momentous date in history.
We were at that time at war with Spain, a decrepit old nation which hadn't progressed beyond torturing bulls for pastime, when Admiral George, walking his fleet out for a constitutional one morning before breakfast, out here in the China Sea, saw something flying the Spanish flag.
George had got word that we were at war with Spain, and anything flying the Spanish flag was fair game for the doughty George, so he shot it up.
He lowered a boat and rowed off to pick up his game, and found the Philippine Islands.
None of my readers who were old enough at the time to remember anything will fail to recall how the United States went mad with joy over the discovery.
Here this old earth had plugged along until A. D. 1898 and it was supposed that all lands had been discovered except the North and South Poles, and it was pretty well believed if they were ever discovered it wouldn't go very far toward reducing the high cost of living – it was pretty thoroughly believed that it wasn't a good farming country around either of those poles – but to discover, dropped right out of the blue, a veritable Garden of Eden, a land flowing with milk and honey, as big as New England, New York, and New Jersey – our nation went mad, delirious with joy. You all recall it.
When George came sailing home from that wonderful cruise we were for making him President of the United States, and I guess we might have done it if he had known whether he was a Democrat or Republican.
As soon as his flagship was seen in the offing on his return, we went off in a small boat to meet him, clambered on deck, and the first question we popped at him was, "George, are you a Democrat or a Republican?"
George said he didn't know – he thought he was a Democrat. Then on second thought he said he was a Democrat.
But things were in such shape at that time that the slightest suspicion of doubt in a candidate's mind as to whether he was a Democrat or Republican spoiled his chances for the Presidency.
Well, I guess!
Why, a fellow out for the Presidency in those times would wear a great big feather plume stuck in his hat and you could hardly see the plume for the prominent words, "I Am a Democrat," displayed on it.
He might buy a new hat, but the same plume would be stuck in it. And vice versa some other chap seeking the Presidency – while he couldn't wear a plume in his hat saying "I Am a Republican" (the fellow with the plume had that device copyrighted), he would have something else just as effective – a newspaper, or a tariff bill, or a sombrero, or something with which he would proclaim from shore to shore, "I Am a Republican."
While it was tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum which you were, a term of years of that blatant, persistent advertising declaration was necessary to cop out the Presidency.
George had been so busy discovering new lands that he wasn't hep to this, so when we shot that question at him, he said he didn't know. He knew he was a patriot, and all coons looked alike to George, so that was what he said.
Shucks! With that answer George didn't have any more show for the Presidency than a rabbit.
While we couldn't give him the Presidency, we gave him the most popular outburst of a country's gratitude – the most hilarious, spontaneous, delirious paean of praise ever awarded any discoverer of new lands – Christopher Columbus was a piker.
We bought George a house – he shook the sea, married a wife and settled down and lived happily ever after.
We were so grateful to Spain for locating the islands for George that we paid her $20,000,000, because she needed the money.
I got so excited over the new find that I packed my grip, hit a prominent official in Washington for a free pass on a transport to the Philippines – on the grounds of my being an ultra patriotic American – and made a bee line for the Pacific coast. When I got to San Francisco I learned that the next transport for the Philippines wouldn't leave for a week. There was a liner leaving for the Orient that day, so I forfeited my pass and bought a ticket on the liner – I was in a hurry to see these islands. When I got here, shortly after George had discovered them, the Filipinos tried to stuff me with a story about a fellow by the name of Magellan having discovered the islands way back in 1521 – blamed if they didn't try to knock out George's patent with a claim of priority.
I looked the islands over from Luzon to Mindano – had a "lovely" time.
I told the Filipinos I didn't take any stock in that alleged Magellan discovery. On their own story about it that discovery was nearly four hundred years old, and, even if it were true, it was moth-eaten, rust-worn, and had no cutting edge.
If they had been discovered nearly four hundred years ago it was high time that there should be some evidence of that discovery to prove it – they hadn't made any use of the discovery.
Manila was the toughest city in the Orient. Dirty, cholera and plague-ridden, out at the elbows and down at the heel, and that general description would apply all over the islands.
But the Filipinos set some store by that Magellan myth. The shock of a real discovery set them off and stirred them up, and they set up a republic, alla samee melican man, and proclaimed Aguinaldo President.
Aguinaldo was running around in the woods somewhere, current historians didn't seem to know just where, and wasn't having any marked success with his Presidency; and, after some argument, was persuaded to quit the Presidency and go to farming.
XVII
WHITE FILIPINOS, AGUINALDO, AND THE BUSY MOTH
In my last letter I believe I changed my style somewhat and became an historian. I realize I'm serving up several different styles of narrative in these letters, and know it's taking a chance to adopt the historical. History is dry stuff, but another chapter of it seems necessary to clear the situation at this mile-post I'm passing – the Philippine Islands.
You can't get the President of a republic running around in the woods, and as goodly a land as the Philippines in chaos, and then go off and leave it without some further word of explanation than I gave in my last letter, in which I left the President safely anchored on a farm.
The Philippine Islands at this time were in a fearful mess. The natives were half child, half savage. Dirt, vice, degradation, war, pestilence, everything but famine, were the rule – you cannot starve these people; they live in a land of perpetual summer: clothing not a necessity; and they can pick their living off the trees.
Under the stimulus of being named "Little Brown Brothers" to the nation which had discovered them, they bucked up and went to it; and they have made the most wonderful progress in the past sixteen years!
From the worst city they have made Manila the best city in the Orient. There is not another city in Japan, China, or India that can equal it in cleanliness and healthfulness, with well-paved roads running through it, and leading out from it in all directions. One of these roads they have made, a hard macadam, none better anywhere, reaches clear across the Island of Luzon, from Manila Bay to the Pacific Ocean, 110 miles. They have actually eclipsed their big white brothers in respect to roads.
We wait until population and improvements in the way of well-tilled farms strike us, and then, after a great while, in rare instances, after enough wagons and horse flesh have been worn out hauling produce over muddy soft dirt roads to build a good road several times, we get wise and build a good road. Not so our progressive Filipinos. They put the road through first. Then, when the country settles up, and the natives decide to come down out of the trees and till the land, there will be a good hard road to haul their produce over.
We ought to be jarred out of our rut – get discovered.
That 110 miles of road runs largely through rich bottom land, the major part of which is as innocent of cultivation as Adam and Eve were of clothing before the Lord caught them stealing apples.
Occasional villages of nipa palm shacks, stuck up on bamboo poles, are passed, the chief industry of the owners of the shacks being to roost in them out of the sun and rain, when they are not out gathering something to eat that Nature provides without labor. But they have made good roads.
There is not another city in the Orient that equals Manila in hotel accommodations; in an up-to-date telephone system; in electricity and ice; in rapid transit by trolley, carriages, and automobiles; in a fire department, and a live and enterprising press.
These Filipinos are truly a wonderful and progressive people!
I've been so busy stepping over the ground in seven-league boots, jumping from premise to conclusion, that I haven't, perhaps, dwelt enough on details.
The inhabitants of the islands are not all of the same color. There are two colors – white and chocolate brown. The latter is the popular shade – you might say they are the style. The whites are the most dejected, forlorn bunch I've ever seen. They give me the jimjams, the willies, and I want to get away. The Filipinos' wonderful progress dates back sixteen years, from the time the white population began to make its appearance here, and the casual observer might draw conclusions.
But conclusions are the last thing in the world an historian should tamper with. He should confine himself to reciting facts, and let statesmen and politicians draw conclusions – and their pay.
The white population is leaving the islands – those who can get away. Those who can't, whose fortunes are tied up in the islands, put one in mind of a lot of ship-wrecked voyagers, who, with all hope of succor abandoned, are waiting for their ship to sink.
They have expatriated themselves (it amounts to that), and for sixteen years have become acclimated – invested their lives and fortunes in the islands. But they are not the right color – their color is against them.
Back in the old district school days in one of McGuffey's readers (was it the Fifth?) there was a very eloquent speech by some statesman (name has slipped my memory), entitled: "Whither Are the Cherokees to Go?"
It was an impassioned appeal. The reading of that speech used to swell my little chest till the buttons on the little bob-tailed jacket we used to wear in those days, called "a round-about," gave way. Won't someone make a speech for these white Filipinos? They ought to have an advocate somewhere, even though they are white. They aren't to blame for that. The Lord made them that way.
I've been to see Aguinaldo at Cavete, about twenty-five miles from Manila, over a good automobile road. I went in company with Dr. Fitzsimmons, of the Manila Municipal Commission, and Mr. Watson, of the Manila Cable News. Mr. Watson acted as interpreter, as Aguinaldo does not speak English.
We found Aguinaldo at a neighboring village, where he had just been initiated into the order of Masons.
He invited us to go to his home, where we paid him a short visit. I found Aguinaldo a very courteous and genial gentleman, and when I told him that he was spoken of as the George Washington of the Philippines, he modestly protested at the honor of such a comparison.
When I reminded him that he, like Washington, had retired to the farm, he reminded me that Washington took up agriculture after his people had secured their independence, while the Filipinos were still looking for theirs.
I asked him if he thought it for the best interests of the Filipinos to have the islands turned over to them at this time, and he thought it was. I told him it was a great object lesson to the Filipinos to see their foremost countryman turning his attention to the soil, the islands' chief source of wealth, and he told me that many of them were doing the same thing.
After some general remarks we left Aguinaldo on the piazza of his home, which, in comparison with the average Filipino's residence, was commodious and palatial.
He is very much in earnest in tilling his 3,000 acres; and we gave hearty assurance of our most earnest wish that he would come out victorious in the battle he was waging against a pest of moth which was disputing with him the title to his crops.
