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That was odd: when young people were joyous, they had to express it physically. But native! She must watch out. She remembered that she had not gone to bed until two o'clock in the morning. She had carried a chair into the room veranda and had watched and listened until the night silences had lengthened and only occasionally she heard a voice or the rattle of rickshaw wheels in the courtyard.
Come along, Jack, and I'll race you to the Reservoir buildings!" Her wiry little Arab was off like a bird, my Waler following close behind, and in this order we dashed under the cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty yards of the 'rickshaw. I pulled my Waler and fell back a little.
The Bishop got into a rickshaw and drove homewards. A heavy weight seemed to have been lifted from his mind. Through the oppressive, hot night air the Canterbury chimes pealed their mellow notes. "Thank God," said the Bishop fervently, "it was not my nephew."
Think of a city of two or three million people without a vehicle of any kind wagon, buggy, carriage, street-car, automobile, or even a rickshaw! And yet this is what Canton appears to be. I didn't see even a wheelbarrow. The streets are too narrow for any travel except that of pedestrians, and the only men not walking are those borne on the shoulders of men who are walking.
Happy is the Kipling selection, "The Phantom 'Rickshaw," if only for that obiter dictum of ghost-presence as Kipling explains about the rift in the brain: " and a little bit of the Dark World came through and pressed him to death!" Then there are the racial styles in ghost stories.
Here the rickshaw is of great service, owing to its light weight and the little room it requires. As a rule, the rickshaw is drawn by one man and holds one passenger; but it has often to contain two Japanese, for the pair of them will fit snugly into the space required for one Englishman. If the traveller wishes to go fast, he has two human horses harnessed to his light chariot.
More than this, he must go in all kinds of weather, and having become thoroughly heated, must shiver in the winter wind or driving rain during waits. The exposure and the overtaxing of the heart are alike ruinous. The rickshaw man's life, I was told in Japan, is several years shorter than that of the average man.
Have you heard the splashing and the chatter of the bath-houses which are the evening clubs of the common people and the great clearing-houses of gossip? Have you heard the broken samisen music tracking you down a street of geisha houses? Have you seen the geisha herself in her blue cloak sitting rigid and expressionless in the rickshaw which is carrying her off to meet her lover?
Raleigh stood, surrounded by the usual crowd of subalterns, muttered an excuse, and left her there. It was nearly a week later that Audrey, riding home alone in a rickshaw from a polo-match, was overtaken by young Gerald Devereux, a subaltern, who was tearing along on foot as if on some urgent errand. Recognising her, he reduced his speed and dropped into a jog-trot by her side.
The first one was made less than forty years ago, but they sprang into favour at once, and their popularity grew by leaps and bounds. The fact is that the rickshaw fits Japan as a round peg fits a round hole. In the first place, it opened a new and money-making industry to many thousands of men who had little to do.
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