126 THE SEA. 



Children, retreats for poor and destitute widows, shelters for the maimed and blind, medical 

 dispensaries, leper hospitals, vaccine establishments, almshouses, free burial societies," and so 

 forth. So much for the heartless Chinese. 



The sailor certainly has this compensation for his hard life, that he sees the world, 

 and visits strange countries and peoples by the dozen, privileges for which many a man 

 tied at home by the inevitable force of circumstances would give up a great deal. What 

 an oracle is he on his return, amid his own family circle or friends ! How the youngsters 

 in particular hang on his every word, look up at his bronzed and honest face, and 

 wish that they could be sailors, 



" Strange countries for to see." 



How many curiosities has he not to show from the inevitable parrot, chattering in a 

 foreign tongue, or swearing roundly in English vernacular, to the little ugly idol brought 

 from India, but possibly manufactured in Birmingham ! * If from China, he will probably 

 have brought home some curious caddy, fearfully and wonderfully inlaid with dragons and 

 impossible landscapes ; an ivory pagoda, or, perhaps, one of those wonderfully-carved 

 balls, with twenty or so more inside it, all separate and distinct, each succeeding 

 one getting smaller and smaller. He may have with him a native oil-painting ; if a 

 portrait, stolid and hard; but if of a ship, true to the last rope, and exact in every 

 particular. In San Francisco, where there are 14,000 or more Chinese, may be seen 

 native paintings of vessels which could hardly be excelled by a European artist, and the 

 cost of which for large sizes, say 3^ by 2 feet, was only about fifteen dollars (3). 

 "What with fans, handkerchiefs, Chinese ladies' shoes for feet about three inches in length, 

 lanterns, chopsticks, pipes, rice-paper drawings, books, neat and quaint little porcelain 

 articles for presents at home, it will be odd if Jack, who has been mindful of the " old 

 folks at home," and the young folks too, and the "girl he left behind him," does not 

 become a very popular man. 



And then his yarns of Chinese life ! How on his first landing at a port, the 

 natives in proffering their services hastened to assure him in c ' pigeon English " (" pigeon " 

 is a native corruption of "business," as a mixed jargon had and has to be used in trading 

 with the lower classes) that " Me all same Englische man ; me belly good man ; " or " You 

 wantee washy? me washy you?" which is simply an offer to do your laundry work;f 

 or " You wantee glub (grub) ; me sabee (know) one shop all same Englische belly good." 

 Or, perhaps, he has met a Chinaman accompanying a coffin home, and yet looking quite 

 happy and jovial. Not knowing that it is a common custom to present coffins to relatives 

 during lifetime, he inquires, "Who's dead, John?" "No man hab die," replies the 

 Celestial, "no man hab die. Me makee my olo fader cumsha. Him likee too muchee, 

 countoo my number one popa, s'pose he die, can catchee," which freely translated is "No 



* The reader may have heard of mummies manufactured in Cairo for the English market. The idol trade 

 of Birmingham has often been stated as a fact. 



f Eeaders who have seen Mr. Edouin's impersonations of a Chinaman may be assured that they are true to 

 nature, and not burlesques. That gentleman carefully studied the Chinese while engaged professionally in San 

 Francisco. 



