"We came to the village of Nan-kow, at the entrance of the Nan-kow Pass, and stopped there for dinner. Our ride had given us a good appetite, and though our cook was not very skilful in preparing our meal, we did not find fault with him, as we did not wish to run the risk of waiting while he cooked the things over again. The Chinese inn at Nan-kow is not so good as the Palace Hotel at San Francisco; in fact, it is as bad as any other hotel that we have seen. They don't have much pleasure travel in this part of the world, and therefore it does not pay them to give much attention to the comfort of their guests.
ONE:"Then the real acting of the piece began, and I wished ever so much that it had been in English, so that I could understand it. The story was a supernatural one, and there were badgers and foxes in it, and they had a woman changed to a badger, and the badger to a woman again. Gentlemen who are familiar with Japanese theatres say there are many of these stories, like our Little Red Riding-hood, and other fairy tales, acted on the stage, and that the play we saw is one of the most popular, and is called 'Bumbuku Chagama,' or 'The Bubbling Teapot.' One gentleman has shown me a translation of it, and I will put it in here, just to show you what a Japanese fairy story is like.
"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!""Of what?" enquired the Doctor, conscious of masculine stupidity."Well, it seems that some Chinese pirates determined to capture this boat, murder all the foreigners on board, rob the Chinese passengers, and then get away on a junk that was to be ready to receive them. They made their plans, and on a certain day fifty of them took passage from Canton to Hong-kong. When about half way, they were to meet a junk with more men; and as the junk hung out her signal and came near, the fellows were to fall upon us with their knives, and capture the boat. They intended to kill us all, but their scheme failed, as there were four ships at anchor that day close by the spot where the junk was to meet them, and so the junk took the alarm and left. There was no disturbance, and we did not have a suspicion of anything wrong. Finding they had failed with us, they went the next day and captured the steamer Spark, which runs between Canton and Macao. They killed the captain and officers and the only European passenger who happened to be on board,[Pg 404] plundered all the native passengers, and got away. Some of them were afterwards captured, and confessed to their part in the affair, and then the whole story came out that they had intended to rob this boat. Since then we always have the gratings down, so that the third-class passengers cannot come on deck; and we keep plenty of rifles and revolvers in the pilot-house and captain's cabin ready for use. They may never try it on us again, and we don't intend to give them a chance to do so."I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. "Yes; well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west between Fayette and union Church. You'll find there a little polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come to a small--""I surrender," he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed, he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, "That's all right, my son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it."