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Updated: May 25, 2025
The oddities and the local color in Shanghai, Hongkong, and Canton; the soothing motion of palanquins; the sloping-eyed, yellow complexioned and pig-tailed people of China; a devastating cyclone encountered in the Yellow Sea, and the wondrous sunset which followed it; the gyrating waterspout which was seen off the Gulf of Siam, a not infrequent experience where so many active currents of wind and water meet; the many living pictures well-remembered of the islands of the Malay Archipelago engraven upon the brain at Singapore, Borneo, Sumatra, Penang, and Java, the latter containing more active and extinct volcanoes than any other known region, all these seemed very real, though only silently rehearsed in dreamland.
The curé in shovel hat and cassock; the workmen for whom Sunday happens not to be the jour de repos hebdomadaire ordained by law, in their blue sarreau; the peasants from outlying villages the men in queer shell-jackets with a complication of buttons, the women in dazzling white caps astonishingly gauffered; the lawyer in decent black, with his white cambric tie; the fat and greasy citizen with fat and greasy wife and prim, pig-tailed little daughter clad in an exiguous cotton frock of loud and unauthentic tartan, and showing a quarter of an inch of sock above high yellow boots; the superb pair of gendarmes with their cocked hats, wooden epaulettes and swords; the white-aproned waiters standing by café tables all these types are distinct, picked out pleasurably by the eye; they give a cheery sense of variety; the stage is dressed.
And Ah Sing will smile blandly and duck his pig-tailed, shaven head, and wish each member "good morning" back again. It is sometimes very funny to hear the matin chorus of a dozen people crying out their volley of salute to ceremony; and to hear again the Chinaman's conscientious reply to each in turn down the long table "Good mo'ning, Mr. White; good mo'ning, Mis' White; good mo'ning, Mr.
They looked at each other, they looked at the butler, they looked again at the little pig-tailed figure, with short skirts and beaming, childlike face, and their faces became blank with astonishment. "Bon jour, mademoiselle!" began the lady uncertainly. "Good day to ye!" said Pixie in response, and at that the bewilderment became more marked than ever.
In another instant the ladders were placed against the walls, and numbers of pig-tailed fellows, with broad hats, holding their shields above their heads, began to climb up, in spite of the hot fire which the marines and blue jackets poured down upon them.
No one would have eaten Filboid Studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers' shops to clamour for an immediate supply. In small kitchens solemn pig-tailed daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive ritual of its preparation. On the breakfast-tables of cheerless parlours it was partaken of in silence.
"Dick," he said when he faced his employer, "here 'tis time t' start an' there ain't a damned bit o' grub put up fer me! Ef ye don't make that pig-tailed Chink pay 'tention t' my wants, I quit! I quit, I tell ye!" And he emphasized his vehement protest by whirling the bags over his head and flailing them upon the floor.
Into the hall, meant to accommodate two hundred, three hundred people were packed. The men in their rusty black, the women in their simple white or flowered dresses, the children brushed and pig-tailed, had all brought their Sunday manners and serious, attentive faces. On the low platform presently appeared the Rev. Adelbert Bysshe and Squire Hardy.
He hoisted himself with some little difficulty to the top of the wall, and saw off under the beech trees two schoolgirls small, insignificant, pig-tailed creatures, with heads of blond and black, with their arms twined about each other's necks, no doubt telling each other the silliest secrets. But that girl with the red hair was she a countess? was she a queen? Children perhaps?
Then what price Melchard?" he asked, "and malingering pig-tailed wenches that hide their faces and sob on their daddies' shoulders?" "It was that frightful Chinaman, Dick. Yes, I was afraid then. I was afraid afraid you'd " "Take him on? Nothin' doing," he answered. "I should've stood just a dog's chance against the village hero, my dear girl, and the Malay made just one bite of him.
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