a most impressive occurrence has transpired, as mrs. paton would say. just as i was coming out of mrs. yet's house this afternoon who should be passing but professor ballington!

i had not yet dropped my black chiffon veil, and glancing down from his great height of six feet, he looked me full in the face.

at the same instant he saw the word, "diphtheria," in the great black letters on a scarlet ground, and stopping he exclaimed:

"why, miss pearl! this is a surprise! do you know where you are—what risk you are running? diphtheria is contagious—very!"

"i know," i replied, "but some one has to mind a little chinese baby in there. its father is in the hospital, and its mother is shut in a room upstairs with diphtheria, and there is no one to stay all afternoon with the baby if i do not. he's a chinese baby, and of no account in america," i added. (i came within one of telling him that i was the only one who could call him pet names in the language he could understand; wouldn't aunt gwendolin have taken a fit?) "i just had to come," i pleaded, seeing his look of disapproval. "each man and woman is born with an aptitude to do something impossible to any other, an aptitude that the world has no match for, mrs. paton says; and i have just found out that my aptitude, impossible to any other, is to mind this chinese baby; no one else can match me in this!"

he looked less severe, almost kind, and half as if he could scarcely keep from laughing. then he said, "have you disinfectants? they are very necessary."

i shook my head, and he said:

"come with me to a drug store and i will supply you with a stock."

and i, decked in my grandmother's cast-off clothes, walked along the street, and into the "palace drug store" with the elegantly dressed and caned professor.

he didn't seem the least ashamed of me; indeed, he was so polite that i forgot for the moment that my dress was anything odd—forgot it until i saw a young man clerk looking at me in an amused way; then i dropped my thick veil.

the professor insisted on my taking a certain kind of lozenge to hold in my mouth while i was in the infected house, and ordered quantities and quantities of disinfectants carried there, giving me instruction as to how they should be used.

when we were walking back to the house of mrs. yet, the professor remarked that the chinese were a people worth studying.

"have you heard any of their poetry, miss pearl?" he questioned. and before i had time to reply—perhaps he thought he had no right to make me give an answer to that question, he is a "great philologist"—he continued: "could anything be more exquisite than those lines to a plum blossom?

"'one flower hath in itself the charms of two;

draw nearer! and she breaks to wonders new;

and you would call her beauty of the rose—

she, too, is folded in a fleece of snows;

and you might call her pale—she doth display

the blush of dawn beneath the eye of day,

the lips of her the wine cup hath caressed,

the form of her that from some vision blest

starts with the rose of sleep still glowing bright

through limbs that ranged the dreamlands of the night;

the pencil falters and the song is naught,

her beauty, like the sun, dispels my thought.'

"a certain collection of chinese lyrics," he continued, "'a lute of jade,' moved a london journal to observe that,[pg 120] the more we look into chinese nature as revealed by this book of songs, the more we are convinced that our fathers were right in speaking of man's brotherhood. here's another to a calycanthus flower:

"'robed in pale yellow gown, she leans apart,

guarding her secret trust inviolate;

with mouth that, scarce unclosed, but faintly breathes.

its fragrance, like a tender grief, remains

half-told, half-treasured still. see how she drops

from delicate stem; while her close petals keep

their shy demeanour. think not that the fear

of great cold winds can hinder her from bloom,

who hides the rarest wonders of the spring

to vie with all the flowers of kiang nan.'

"this is wang seng-ju's tiny poem," he added, "i presume a great many people in this greatly enlightened america never ascribe any sentiment to the chinaman:

"'high o'er the hill the moon barque steers,

the lantern lights depart,

dead springs are stirring in my heart,

and there are tears;

but that which makes my grief more deep

is that you know not that i weep.'"

the moon had appeared in all her full-orbed glory, although it was early twilight, and the professor looked at me so earnestly while quoting those words that i actually believe i blushed.

"'there yet is man—

man, the divinest of all things, whose heart

hath known the shipwreck of a thousand hopes,

who bears a hundred wrinkled tragedies

upon the parchment of his brow.'

"ou-yang hein penned those lines," he added, raising his hat in adieu. but before we parted i made him promise to write out for me the chinese verses he had quoted; and it is his beautifully written lines i have copied. i am going to learn them off by heart. how i would love to recite them at one of aunt gwendolin's "drawing-rooms!"

the professor had gone but a few paces when he returned to inquire what hospital poor lee yet was in, saying[pg 122] that he would go around and see how he was faring.

"this is such a very selfish world," he added, as if half to himself, "i sometimes fear those poor foreigners that come to our shores get woefully treated."

that was lovely of him! after all, men are brothers under their skin. that was what their great man, christ, taught—that all men are brothers; he did not except the chinese, as some americans want to do.