Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of
culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked
roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling down his back; his
short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of
his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton,
tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy
blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from
head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or
his melancholy face, and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless
Mongol. I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what
distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his
heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific?
among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of
remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange
forest trees unknown to climes like ours? And now and then, rippling
among his visions and his dreams, did he hear familiar laughter and
half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly
faces of a bygone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen
this bronzed wanderer.
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