Puslapio vaizdai
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purely foreign houses out of business; and this is not true of hotels alone. I have never traveled more comfortably, never been so packed and unpacked, so escorted to my bath of a morning, so put to bed at night, so pushed in perambulators, so coddled and cajoled, so generally taken care of, since I was an infant. And I like it. It seems to agree with me, and I have been steadily improving in health and spirits ever since I landed.

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It is beautiful, too, this country, in a miniature way. The temples, the shrines, the mountains, the gardens, the tea-houses, the geishas, the street costumes-all novel and charming. I like it all, and I do not believe the people have any desire or are in any condition to go to war with any one, least of all with the United States, and such is the judgment of all the foreign residents I have met.

The Japanese prints one sees are fascinating. I saw them making modern reproductions in Tokio by hand impressions from wood blocks, some of them taking as many as seventy-five printings to complete a picture at the rate of 150 impressions a day, and then selling them for one yen (fifty cents) each.

I have left my Japanese guide behind. He was a constant comfort and delight. His English was especially entrancing, as, when discussing our proposed visit to a mountain district, he said, “Of course if those weather is bad, that cup of joy will not be full." But all their English is amusing, and savors of a study of synonyms or "The Century Dictionary." In Tokio we passed a sign reading "Honest Sincere and Self Respecting Umbrella Store"; and on the bill of fare at the hotel we were rather startled to find the announcement of "Ham and Chawed Eggs." Unappalled by this suggestion of predigestion, I found the eggs simply shirred.

PEKING, THE GREAT WALL, AND PORT ARTHUR

DAIREN, June 19, 1911. WE found Peking dry and dusty, and the distances were immense; but taking it all in all, it is the most impressive capital we have yet visited. We traveled up to Nankow, about fifty miles north of Peking, and I was carried in a chair through the Nankow Pass up to the Great Wall. I arose at 4 A. M., and we started at 4:30, just at daylight, and went up in the company of strings of camels returning to Mongolia; mules, donkeys, and ponies bearing all kinds of burdens; dogs, pigs, sheep, and pedestrians representing all phases of Asiatic life; priests and coolies, Tatars, Mongols, Manchus, and Chinese-all traversing the

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great caravan route to Central Asia, little changed since Marco Polo passed that way, or Kublai Khan marched through with his hordes. The wall itself is in excellent preservation, twenty feet or more high, wide enough for two "chariots" to drive abreast on its top, and as long as from Boston to Salt Lake City, crossing rivers and plains and zigzagging along the crests of mountains four thousand feet high.

For Dairen read Dalny, and you will know where I am. The Japanese have changed the name of this place, as of everything else within their jurisdiction in Manchuria and Korea. Here they are building a strictly modern city on the foundations so extravagantly laid by the Russians. Indeed, it has all the appearance of an American "boom" town. The broad streets, avenues, circles, and parkways stretch for miles through sparsely settled areas. Here and there are magnificent banks and administration offices, between which are vacant lots and low one-story houses and dwellings. Through the middle of the town is a great cut filled with railway-tracks, crossed by a magnificent stone bridge which puts some of our structures to shame. Indeed, all the streets, roads, sewers, and bridges here are wonderfully well done, fit for any European city; but the houses and the population have not yet come. When they do come, they will be all Japanese. There are no foreign concessions here, as at Shanghai, Hankow, Tientsin, and Yokohama. The Japanese are proceeding on the policy of "Japan (and Korea and Manchuria) for the Japanese," and they are crowding everybody else out. All the old-established merchants in Japan are feeling and complaining of it, and here they are not to have an opportunity of securing a foothold.

We came here that we might visit Port Arthur, forty miles distant, where to-morrow we spend the day. This region has the reputation of being very warm in summer, but so far we have not found it awfully hot. The thermometer in my room has not been seen over 82. To-day it is 76 at noon, with a delightful, cool breeze blowing in from the water, which is as blue as at Naples. It is a refreshing change from Chinese waters, which in the rivers and along the deltas are as brown and muddy as the Missouri.

June 20. We have just returned from Port Arthur, where we have had a most interesting day. I have never seen the scars of war so ghastly and unhealed. The Japanese have not attempted to restore the landward fortifications, but have left them just as they were after the capture, bones and all. Never have I seen a landscape so seamed with trenches, so pitted with the

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WWe've sight-seed by the hour;

E 've been all through the British Isles;

We 've took what ma and Jane both styles
A "continental tower."

We've walked all kinds o' foreign streets,
But this I 'm bound to say:

I've yet to find a place that beats
Smith Sidings, U. S. A.

There's London, where your head is jarred,
And soot comes rainin' down.

I would n't give our big front yard
For all o' that there town.

That Colosseum back at Rome?
Can't equal, for a day,

The half-mile track we got at home:
Smith Sidings, U. S. A.

Ma-well, you know how women be;
They 're awful fond o' clothes.
She 's sort o' flustered with Paree,
And talks it through her nose.

Vienner 's nice; and so 's Berlin;
And Switzerland 's O. K.;
But I'm darn glad that I live in
Smith Sidings, U. S. A.

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Our gal went out as simple Jane,
And come back as Jaynette;
She learnt a lot o' manners vain
I'd ruther she 'd forget.

She catered to that foreign speech.
It somehow ain't my way;

I warn't ashamed o' plain "John Leech,
Smith Sidings, U. S. A."

I never seen no avenue

That beats what we live on. I never heared no parley-voo

To beat, "Well, howdy, John?" I never et no dish that 's worth What 's served in ma's café.

For me, there's jest one spot on earth: Smith Sidings, U. S. A.

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Drawn by Robert L. Dickey TABLE D'HÔTE LUNCH

SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE
BY D. B. VAN BUREN

AWAKE, ye choirs, with tuneful voices sing
The praise of him who set before the king
That pie articulate, whose golden rind
The plumy warblers of the woods confined-
That bold artificer whose subtle art
Before the monarch placed the storied tart.
With hunger-lighted eye the king sits down,
Loosens his waistcoat, lays aside his crown;
His trenchant blade the savory crust

divides,

But mocking Fate his destiny derides; For, lo! their bounds enlarged, the feathered throng

Greet the expectant monarch with a song; While from the pasty's cavernous depths there floats,

Instead of gravy, flood of liquid notes.

Where many a massy bar and lock complex
The enterprising burglar sore perplex,
The monarch sits, forgetful of his state,
With tightened belt cries out upon his fate,
Which sends him hungry from the festive
board,

The hapless victim of a jest abhorred.
And now he reckons up the minted gold,
And now he damns the cook for caitiff bold.
Meanwhile, the queen, of sustenance
amerced

By that infatuate cook whose jest accurst

But I'm the parson's daughter, and I have At one fell stroke the royal feast destroyed,

to-do-just-right.

With bread and honey fills the aching void.

Mark how her taper hands, with eager

grace,

The wide circumference of the loaf embrace;
The ready jar, subservient to her wish,
Pours out its amber treasure in the dish,
A golden flood, as sweet as that which filled
With nectar from Hymettus' flowers
distilled

The downy loins of those industrious bees
Whose labors ministered to Attic ease.

Next bend your steps without the palace walls:

Observe the garden and what there befalls. See how the blue-eyed maid, with patient toil,

Hangs up the garments, freed from stain and soil.

The monarch's shirt flings wanton to the breeze,

And next, in order due, the queen's chemise. No gold and tissue lend extraneous grace; An all-sufficient nose completes her face, Her humble toil she lightens with a song, And breathes the scented air, nor dreams of wrong,

Nor notes the bird whose plume of ebon dye

Proclaims the wandering corsair of the sky. Who devious course through blue empyrean bends.

With watchful eye the world beneath
attends,

He sees the maiden helpless and alone,
And marks her fair proboscis for his own.
In long-descending spirals from the blue,
Drops down that bird malign of sable hue.
His darkening shadow on the maiden falls,
His aspect sinister her soul appals.
Too late she scans the sides of his intent;
His beak already from its place has rent
Her nose, but late her ornament and pride,
She weeps to see down that dark gullet
glide.

His odious vict'ry won, the bird obscene,
Preening his plumage, struts about the

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