Jfie 
 
 J Oreon's 
 
 Bride
 
 LANTERN STORIES
 
 Photographed by the author 
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING
 
 THE RIVER 
 DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 By 
 LENA LEONARD FISHER 
 
 BEING SOME STORY BEADS GATHERED IN SOUTH 
 CHINA AND STRUNG ON A THREAD OF MEMORY 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI
 
 Copyright, 1922, by 
 LENA LEONARD FISHER 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 TO THE DEAR TWO, 
 
 MY DAUGHTER AND HER FATHER 
 
 WHO WITH ME WALKED 
 
 CHINESE WAYS 
 
 2136274
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Where Flows the Ming 1 1 
 
 II. A Chinese Handy Andy 26 
 
 III. The Blight of Beelzebub 43 
 
 IV. A House of Understanding 60 
 
 V. The Sign of the Cross 73 
 
 VI. The Loosened Grip 84 
 
 VII. The Bandit Trail 97 
 
 VIII. The River Dragon's Bride 124
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 Where Flows the Ming Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 The Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages 12 
 
 The Tombs of Their Ancestors (A Mandarin 
 
 Grave) 36 
 
 "A Thousand Gold" to a Chinese Mother 66 
 
 The Oldest Methodist Church in Asia, at 
 
 Foochow 78 
 
 The Struggling Bit of Femininity on the Shore 104 
 "The Feathery Fronds of the Tall Bamboos" . . 108 
 The Bridal Chair 140
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING 
 
 [T is a perfectly Oriental proposition 
 that when I essay to string upon a 
 golden thread of memory some 
 stories, lived out before my eyes, 
 or told to my eager ears in strange, out-of- 
 the-world places by others who had seen 
 their slow unfolding; it is entirely Oriental, 
 I repeat, that the first bead to slip down the 
 shining cord should reflect in its ancient 
 carving the face of a man. If such be the 
 inevitable, I make my politeness to the spirit 
 of the Orient which drives my pen, and 
 meekly submit. The "Orient," being in- 
 terpreted, is "Man's Land." History, law, 
 tradition, and custom all combine to em- 
 phasize the designation. Why not, then, in 
 my pretty string of beads, first, the story of 
 Handy Andy? 
 
 I never heard his Chinese name, though 
 II
 
 12 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 doubtless that most honorable cognomen was 
 borne by a hundred generations, or mayhap 
 a thousand before him. It was as "Handy 
 Andy" that the American Woman Doctor 
 introduced him to me in her crude little Hos- 
 pital of the Good Shepherd back in the old 
 city of Ancestral Abodes. This most ancient 
 and delectable city lies in the very heart of 
 those purple mountains which enwrap the 
 path of the Ming River, remote from 
 here, it seems to me to-day, a million miles. 
 The trail I followed, at whose finish I found 
 the city, the hospital, and finally Handy 
 Andy, is a thousand years old it may be ten 
 times that for all I know. Was not the 
 dreamy old river on whose tide our house 
 boat floated spanned by the "Bridge of Ten 
 Thousand Ages," whose hoary grayness 
 gave it every evidence of being true to 
 name? 
 
 The incoming tide from the sea urged us 
 on under its crumbling arches after a hasty 
 embarkation from the moss-slippery jetty of 
 a city in southern China which was old when 
 the Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages was
 
 CO 
 
 w 
 
 O
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING 13 
 
 brave and bright with youth. I say a hasty 
 embarkation, for though our bed clothes and 
 food hampers and general travelers' junk 
 had been in readiness for all of two days, 
 the little gray house boat, all swept and gar- 
 nished for our arrival, must condition her 
 going upon the inward tide from the sea, 
 which, only a matter of three hours below 
 where the old city of Foochow waked and 
 slept, received the turbulent and muddy flood 
 of the most majestic Ming. In time, how- 
 ever, came a runner sent to us by our skipper, 
 who down at the jetty with crew mustered 
 five men including himself and his surly son 
 had with true nautical eye detected the 
 exact instant when the current of the big 
 river turned upward. The message was 
 brought by a pig-tailed coolie, and was brief 
 and very much to the point. It was delivered 
 with ceremonious politeness and was to the 
 effect that "The tide is now flowing top-side 
 and the boat can walk. Would the most 
 honorable foreigners be good enough to very 
 much hurry?" 
 
 So "very much hurry" we did. Sa-ho,
 
 14 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 the cook may the benediction of his honor- 
 able ancestors abide forever upon his head ! 
 and Cing-soi the houseman a gentleman, 
 or there never was one gravely directed the 
 baggage coolies, and with polite dignity 
 steadied us, as we scrambled down the slimy 
 water stairs. A moment later, having 
 clutched with fervor the end of the bamboo 
 pole obligingly held out to us from his perch 
 forward by the skipper of our craft himself, 
 we had safely made the distance between 
 shore and boat across the bobbing gang- 
 plank, and were off. 
 
 There was no poling of the boat to begin 
 with. The upward urge of the sea tide was 
 all the motor power we needed for the first 
 leg of the voyage. Once safely through the 
 massive gray arches of the two hoary bridges 
 which spanned the Ming at the city, the 
 winds came sweeping down from great pine- 
 scented heights, filling our white sails with 
 rushing life. My heart pounded with a wild 
 exultation as we steered straight upstream 
 toward the hidden recesses of those hazy 
 mountains ahead, piled up range upon range
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING 15 
 
 under the glistening, scintillating rays of a 
 close-to-tropical sun at noonday. I had em- 
 barked upon that dream journey which since 
 childhood's day of unrestrained imaginings 
 I had always been quite sure I should some 
 time pursue. And now the quest was beck- 
 oning just as I had always known it would, 
 up a mighty and all but unknown river, urged 
 on by breezes that had swept across vast 
 fragrant spaces into a realm of happenings 
 which for me experience had never before 
 visualized. 
 
 I reflect upon no other vagabond who has 
 treked across earth's unfrequented ways 
 when I record here my great wonderment 
 that no one of them ever returned to impress 
 upon my consciousness the transcendent 
 beauties of southern China. Possibly the 
 task bulked too large to be even attempted. 
 I am quite sure this must be the reason, for 
 I find my own pen growing unaccountably 
 shy at the first mental suggestion of trying to 
 splash upon paper with words any concept of 
 the glories which garment the path taken by 
 the old Ming into the dusky purple silences
 
 1 6 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 of those mysterious mountain solitudes in far 
 Cathay. Range upon range there were of 
 shadowy heights, with sky lines which re- 
 solved themselves against the gold of the 
 dying sun into the lineaments of sleeping 
 faces. 
 
 Naturally, in China the mountain faces 
 would slumber ! For with all the noisy con- 
 tendings through recent years, of us Occi- 
 dentals, that China is finally and victoriously 
 awake, facts would seem to clearly disprove 
 our blatant assertions. Else why have her 
 ancestral lands been stolen from her, her an- 
 cient national pride humiliated by the for- 
 eign aggressor within her gates, her liberty 
 curtailed, and her weakness ridiculed? 
 China still sleeps! 
 
 Occasionally in her dreams she has turned 
 over. Within recent moons her right arm, 
 strong, though benumbed by the pressure 
 of her body upon it as she has lain in her 
 age-long slumber her right arm, I say, 
 moved by some major nerve within her heart 
 of hearts, reached out one day and gripped 
 the student life of her domain. And the stu-
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING 17 
 
 dents of all China, thrilled by that touch, re- 
 acted in the Students' Strike with the most 
 potent, far-reaching and effectual demon- 
 stration against the wicked and unscrupu- 
 lous designs of a certain envious foreign 
 power that ever emanated from the Middle 
 Kingdom. Would that some lover of human 
 justice especially just now, some lover of 
 human justice in China might impress 
 upon the Chinese student body everywhere 
 that biceps muscles toughen only with the 
 using ! 
 
 I distinctly saw the sleeping countenance 
 of George Washington in the sun glow along 
 the mountain tops that first night on the 
 Ming. Fancy, though, the Father of His 
 Country asleep in China to-day! It is the 
 spirit of Washington, sleepless, strong, virile, 
 unconquerable, which is just now being re- 
 incarnated in the very fabric of the growing 
 body of Chinese students. When, on some 
 great day, this spirit shall be clothed upon 
 with the garments of a towering personality 
 who will blaze the trail to real, not fictitious, 
 national independence to be forever estab-
 
 i8 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 lished in righteousness and justice, China 
 will forget her inaction her aeons of dream- 
 ings and all China's blue-coated millions 
 will be awake. 
 
 Our boatmen are poling us now, for the 
 breeze is tired. That husky but surly one, 
 the skipper's son, is staying well forward in 
 the boat's prow. With his arms akimbo he 
 is solemnly whistling up the wind. This is 
 no quotation. No such marks should inclose 
 that last phrase. It is not a repetition of an 
 old proverb, neither is it a joke. It is a fact. 
 The skipper's son is seriously endeavoring, 
 by making a certain noise with his mouth, 
 to raise the wind. 
 
 The task is obviously less arduous than 
 that of poling which is absorbing the rest 
 of the crew to the point of straining muscles 
 and sweating bodies. From our prow these 
 yellow, half-naked giants are casting into 
 the channel their long iron-tipped poles, and 
 with such a leverage they are running along 
 the very rim of the boatside toward the stern 
 of our little craft, which shoots forward by 
 the measure of her own length upon her un-
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING 19 
 
 willing course against the current. Still the 
 surly one stands at his ease and whistles. 
 
 It occurs to me as I watch them there in 
 the gathering dusk that nautical ethics on 
 Life's River seem quite like this! It's easy 
 enough to whistle to raise the wind to make 
 a noise with one's mouth as it were but 
 usually it's the folk who pole who get any- 
 where. 
 
 The moon's disk is edging over the moun- 
 tain. As the silver segment widens to 
 emerge presently in full-orbed glory, the 
 craggy summits, reaching up and up through 
 the blue to catch the shining radiance, are 
 mirrored in tender trembling lines upon the 
 river's breast the river, which like all other 
 living vibrant creation, seems to sleep. 
 
 The boat lies at anchor. The crew, in- 
 cluding him of the noisy mouth, have be- 
 stowed themselves away in an invisible some- 
 where astern, to dream maybe of some de- 
 lectable river where everybody whistles and 
 no one poles. ^ 
 
 Overhead on a mountain steep of rock 
 huddles pathetically in moonlight whiteness
 
 2O THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 the crumbling walls of a little temple, its 
 up-curving roof of tile splashed by the brush 
 of passing centuries with tones of mellow 
 brownness. A silence unfathomable, un- 
 thinkable, is upon the face of the world. The 
 mountainsides, long stripped of the trees 
 which should now be clothing their nudity, 
 could offer no shelter for even so much as a 
 few feathered things who might disturb the 
 stillness by murmuring in their dreams. I 
 lay prone upon the white deck of the boat 
 saturated in moonshine, drugged by that at- 
 mosphere of ultimate repose into almost com- 
 plete cessation of action, either physical or 
 mental. I seemed an unreal atom in some 
 unreal sphere. Had I been a Brahman, my 
 drowsy soul would probably have whispered 
 "Nirvana." 
 
 I am glad it was no violent discordant 
 crash of sound that shattered the spell ! Such 
 veritable perfection of quiet must, of course, 
 needs come to an end as do all perfect things. 
 This silence did not end it simply oozed 
 away upon the sound of the song of boatmen, 
 heard faintly at first, as it was borne to us
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING 21 
 
 from far up the river where the moonlight 
 ceased to be moonlight and became silver 
 mist. It was the old, old song, intoned by 
 China's people of the rivers for a thousand 
 ages, as they cut with cumbersome propellers 
 the spray of the much-traveled waterways 
 which lead to the sea. 
 
 More than once I have luxuriously lounged 
 in a gondola under a silver moon, with the 
 low strumming of a guitar in my ears, while 
 snatches of song from passing boated min- 
 strels lent enchantment to a summer night 
 in Venice. They were beautiful, those nights, 
 and I love their memory. But since my 
 nights on the Ming those perfect nights 
 the others pale as do berouged ladies to- 
 ward morning after a night of dancing and 
 gayety. 
 
 This song of the boatmen on the Ming was 
 no ephemeral roundelay, no bit from some 
 flimsy music-hall favorite, popular for a 
 passing moment. This was a song woven out 
 of the fiber of which Chinese hearts have 
 been made since the beginning of things 
 Chinese, which is very, very long ago. No
 
 22 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 words of love or romance carried its mes- 
 sage. Yet the meaningless syllables, "Hi- 
 la, hai-la, Hi-la ho-la," chanted over and 
 over again in that uncanny melody spoke of 
 matters mysterious and profound. I sensed 
 through strains of that song the story of the 
 hard labor of men and women as they 
 planted the rice, and convoyed it to cities 
 down the river where it would sustain the 
 physical life of teeming millions. There 
 crooned in its cadences the love of men for 
 women. There trailed through it the laugh- 
 ter of children. There haunted it the ghost- 
 chords of departed ancestors, whose impos- 
 ing graves looked down from the mountain- 
 sides, and whose spirits are more powerful 
 in death than in life. There breathed 
 through it a deep note of cruelty, of age-old 
 custom ; of protest against the encroachment 
 of Western modernism; of smoke of sacri- 
 ficial incense, of shadows cast by sacred 
 mountains ; of the swish of the muddy water 
 of the paddy-field. All these things I heard 
 that night in the song of the boatmen, now 
 coming nearer and nearer through the moon-
 
 WHERE FLOWS THE MING 23 
 
 light to our anchored craft. It was a man's 
 song, and they sang it antiphonally, the two 
 shifts of oarsmen, in high-pitched, minor 
 voices, their paddles falling to the strange 
 rhythm in absolute unison. They came so 
 near that as I crouched on our deck I could 
 see the water slip from their flashing oars 
 like showers of silver beads. 
 
 They came they passed and were gone, 
 as millions like them, for ever and a day, had 
 come down the old river, had passed and 
 were gone. One lone cadence of that weirdly 
 magic music to this day sings itself over and 
 over within my consciousness, though my 
 voice utters it not often. Here are the notes 
 as they came to me across the water, but do 
 not try to sing them. The strain is but the 
 wraith of the song, and besides, no one could 
 sing it but the boatmen on the old, old Ming, 
 rowing in the moonlight down to the sea. 
 
 Hi -la hai - la, Hi - la ho - la - 
 
 Spring had come trailing across the moun- 
 tains of southern China, just before we, dis-
 
 24 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 embarking from our house boat at that place 
 in the river where riotous rapids halt the up- 
 stream pilgrim, began the last lap of the trail 
 at whose end beamed the benign countenance 
 of Handy Andy. 
 
 Yes, spring had come to dwell for a season 
 in the Mountains of the Moon. I saw her 
 that last day on the trail as we followed it on 
 foot or in chairs, over the well-walked nar- 
 row mountain paths toward the city of An- 
 cestral Abodes. She had drawn about her 
 fair young shoulders a marvelous robe of 
 jade green gauze starred with ruby azaleas. 
 She wore milk white plum blossoms upon her 
 breast, and in her hair the feathery fronds of 
 young bamboo. She was decked like an Ori- 
 ental maiden for the red bridal chair. Oh, 
 she was passing fair! 
 
 But the distant mountaintops are projected 
 against the glare of the departing sun in 
 purple boldness as the day wanes our final 
 day on the trail. We linger for a moment 
 on the crest of the last heights to be topped, 
 with a tender good night in our hearts for 
 the lovely world which we seemed to be leav-
 
 25 
 
 ing behind, drowsy now, with all its spring- 
 time glory upon it. 
 
 There at our feet upon the dark side of the 
 mountain we behold the trail's end, that an- 
 cient city, rising like a phantom thing from a 
 sea of spring green, and protected by encir- 
 cling mountain sentinels stern and strong. 
 Once more the chair coolies swing us upon 
 their tired shoulders and the last descent be- 
 gins and ends. 
 
 We are at the portal in the high wall 
 which surrounds the Hospital of the Good 
 Shepherd. A bell clangs, there are voices 
 within. Then the gate swings wide, and 
 there stands the American Woman Doctor 
 with a welcome in her outstreched hands and 
 in her radiant eyes a great gladness. And 
 just behind her, with dignified gratification 
 in every line of his long blue coat and his 
 close-fitting black satin cap with its red 
 knob, stands he whose story has occasioned 
 this rambling write-up of the trail in China 
 which led us to him.
 
 II 
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 
 
 HE Woman Doctor was responsible 
 for his being called by the some- 
 what unusual name of Handy 
 Andy. I dare say this Chinese 
 man, by his capable all-aroundness, had re- 
 minded her, that summer when she built the 
 Hospital of the Good Shepherd down in the 
 fertile Lek-du valley, of his Celtic prototype. 
 Already you know of the trail which led 
 us to him. Now I am telling you his story 
 as I had it from the Woman Doctor herself 
 as we sat in the fire-glow after supper, in her 
 own inglenook, a bit removed from the cen- 
 ter of hospital activities. 
 
 He was a dignified but gracious Chinese 
 man, this Handy Andy. No one would ever 
 indulge, when referring to him, in the usual 
 terms affected by flippant foreigners when 
 writing either intimately or casually of the 
 26
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 27 
 
 people of far Cathay. He was a Chinese 
 Man, which in his case included also being 
 a scholar, a diplomat, and very certainly, a 
 Christian gentleman. 
 
 The Woman Doctor finding quite impos- 
 sible for the hot summer's sojourn her first 
 headquarters, consisting of a stuffy room or 
 two in the abode of somebody's honorable 
 ancestors, was forced to look for another base 
 from which to work. Furthermore, after 
 much searching for cleaner to say nothing 
 of cooler quarters, eventually the Woman 
 Doctor found domicile for herself and her 
 servant in the house of Handy Andy, which 
 stood a lap or two up the mountainside, and 
 was etched out of a background of bamboo 
 groves. There flourished the buxom part- 
 ner of his choice, or, to be more exact, the 
 choice made for him in his callow days by 
 some go-between, the matrimonial agent of 
 his honorable parents. Chinese marriages 
 make no claim to being shaped in heaven. 
 Why should parents decide for their progeny 
 the comparatively unimportant and transient 
 matters of childhood, and then basely aban-
 
 28 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 don them when the most vital and significant 
 question of marriage matters arises ? Plainly 
 the duty of making this choice is paramount 
 to that of all others so at least reasons the 
 Chinese parental mind. 
 
 Mrs. Handy Andy, who was of rather 
 high official lineage, may have with docility 
 permitted herself to be chosen by her honor- 
 able parents-in-law to share the domestic for- 
 tunes of their son, but she never exhibited 
 any particularly striking characteristics of 
 tractability until long after the development 
 in the life of her somewhat subdued liege 
 which I am here recording. The change in 
 her was solved through those circumstances 
 which ultimately led her to become a Bible 
 Woman. After that great thing happened, 
 with the Holy Classic under her arm through 
 many years did she patiently and joyously 
 travel, without complainings, in torrid heat 
 or sheets of rain, that the untaught women 
 in those "other villages" might hear of the 
 great miracle which had made her own life 
 worth while. 
 
 In the early years various joy feasts were
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 29 
 
 spread in the house on the mountainside in 
 honor of certain tiny almond-eyed little 
 strangers who came to insure the continuance 
 for many generations to come of the lineage 
 of their father. When the Woman Doctor 
 took up her abode in that house the wee 
 strangers had become very much at home 
 rollicking chunks of boys and girls, their 
 black hair done in cunning patches and pig- 
 tails, their black eyes shining with mischief, 
 their blue coats and trousers going to make 
 an altogether irresistible juvenile combina- 
 tion. 
 
 At some time before the coming to his 
 house that summer of the Woman Doctor, 
 its master had learned of the "Doctrine" to 
 his own soul's entire satisfaction and his 
 family's entire mystification. That their 
 father was afflicted with a strange species of 
 insanity was confided in whispers by the 
 children to the Doctor before she had been 
 under the roof for a single moon. Each day, 
 they solemnly averred, he trod the steep path 
 which led through the bamboo grove at the 
 back of the house, not once, but several times.
 
 30 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 Infantile curiosity is not exclusively an Oc- 
 cidental commodity. Behold, then, these 
 small Chinese delights of their father's heart 
 secretly trailing that most honorable person- 
 age up the path and into the grove of 
 feathery greenness which to his devout soul 
 had become the oratory within whose lace- 
 like walls he held communion with an unseen 
 Presence. 
 
 Not only so, but with all due impressive- 
 ness was this sensational fact reported to the 
 mother of the house ad libitum ad nauseam. 
 Had they not seen their most exalted father 
 upon his knees there among the bamboos, 
 with uplifted face and closed eyes as he talked 
 aloud with some strange God, of whom, hunt 
 afterward as they would, they could find not 
 the faintest trace? 
 
 The entire family, including their foreign 
 guest, when upon various high occasions she 
 was bidden to partake of a meal with them, 
 could testify that before the master of the 
 house would taste one morsel of his steaming 
 bowl of rice he would bow his head, and hold 
 conversation with Some One, whom none
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 31 
 
 of them, stare about the room with wide-open 
 eyes as they would, could see. Afterward 
 one of the servants reported to his exas- 
 perated mistress, who had no sympathy 
 whatever with such erratic behavior, that he 
 had distinctly observed the Woman Doctor 
 herself doing the same mysterious worship 
 over her own rice in her own apartment. At 
 what possible conclusion could the idol- 
 worshiping mother and her children arrive, 
 except that the Doctor was afflicted with the 
 same sort of craziness as the man of that 
 house, inasmuch as they both at various 
 times spoke aloud to Some One whom no one 
 else could see? 
 
 During the long, hot summer days rose 
 certainly if slowly the walls of the new hos- 
 pital. The Woman Doctor found her hands 
 more than full as she supervised the proc- 
 esses of building and guarded the innumer- 
 able points which invariably arise with Ori- 
 ental contractors. All of these points were 
 to be particularly reckoned with if the funds 
 at her command, most of which she herself 
 had laboriously gathered, were to cover the
 
 32 
 
 final cost of this first and only refuge for 
 suffering women and children in all that sec- 
 tion of the province. In fact, it was almost 
 too much of a task for even the Woman 
 Doctor. 
 
 In spite of her watchful eye all sorts of 
 things in the way of building material had 
 a mysterious and most annoying fashion of 
 disappearing without leaving a trace. The 
 situation clearly demanded omnipresence, 
 and this, with all her equipment of brain and 
 body, the Woman Doctor had never been 
 able to achieve. By day she was very con- 
 fident, being constantly upon the ground. By 
 night she was helpless, for with all her 
 temerity of soul and nerve she couldn't sleep 
 and at the same time keep watch over a half- 
 finished hospital. 
 
 "Where thieves break through and steal" 
 is no mere figure of speech in the Orient. 
 One is vastly amused at first, over there, 
 upon sight of an inclosing wall with fanciful 
 but flimsy ornamental border at the top done 
 in plaster in a sort of embroidery design. 
 But he changes his mind when he learns that
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 33 
 
 the flimsier the coping the greater the clatter 
 by which some night prowler is announced 
 as the plaster fancywork crashes into pieces 
 against the weight of the ladder by means 
 of which he tries to climb up and over "some 
 other way." Verily I mused as I learned, 
 after all, fancywork may have its uses ! 
 
 The Woman Doctor had no stone adorn- 
 ment atop her wall, and anyway it is doubt- 
 ful whether singlehanded she could have 
 managed a bandit party at 2 A. M., though 
 she has a reputation on both sides of the 
 Pacific for her skill with a knife. The fact is 
 that while the walls of the Hospital of the 
 Good Shepherd were rising the services of 
 a dependable man who should act as major 
 domo were absolutely essential. Having 
 been a close observer of her Chinese host 
 during the time of her sojourn beneath his 
 roof, and of his fidelity under the trying 
 conditions involved in being the Christian 
 head of a non-Christian home, the Woman 
 Doctor was inspired to proffer to him the 
 job of overseeing hospital affairs. 
 
 Handy Andy looked very gravely at her
 
 34 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 when she broached the subject to him, and 
 then with characteristic Oriental delibera- 
 tion told her he would give her an answer in 
 two weeks. Fortunately, however, his de- 
 cision was reached within a few days, and 
 was both definite and favorable, the party 
 to the second part assuring the Doctor that 
 regarding her offer divine direction had been 
 given him in a vision. 
 
 In this vision, so he affirmed, he had very 
 clearly seen his Master, who had said to him 
 plainly, "Follow the Foreign Doctor." And 
 the Woman Doctor, rather askance at such 
 a bold declaration of divine leading, was 
 moved to expostulate. God never directed 
 one human being to follow another, she ar- 
 gued to him; it must be the Great Guide 
 whom he had been directed to follow, not an 
 American Woman Doctor! Had he not, 
 after all, been mistaken the ears of his soul 
 been a bit dull of hearing? But Handy Andy 
 remained obdurate. It was the Foreign Doc- 
 tor whom he was to follow. 
 
 Thereafter with a great solemnity upon 
 her, the Woman Doctor was more than ever
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 35 
 
 careful of her walking, remembering the 
 millstone penalty of him who causes an- 
 other, even a "little one," to stumble. 
 
 So, as is not unusual in Chinese families, 
 the man of the house in the bamboo grove 
 betook himself to his important task, the 
 mother of his children remaining with her 
 flock on the mountainside. If the truth be 
 told, Handy Andy was much more concerned 
 for the salvation of the souls of his wife and 
 children than even for his own success in his 
 new managerial position, which is saying 
 much. In regard to the latter, the Woman 
 Doctor intimated to me that in all the forty 
 thousand or more characters in the Chinese 
 language there were none sufficiently strong 
 to express the measure of his value to the 
 hospital project. 
 
 Eventually the little family moved down 
 from the mountainside and became dwellers 
 in the hospital compound. This was after 
 another "vision" in which Handy Andy had 
 plainly seen his wife and his little son drown- 
 ing in the depths of a deep, dark well, their 
 imploring hands stretched out to him for de-
 
 36 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 liverance. The Hospital of the Good Shep- 
 herd almost lost him then, because he was 
 convinced that it was his plain duty to go 
 back to the bamboo grove and set about vig- 
 orously to bring the mother of his children, 
 with all of them also, not into the compound 
 of the Hospital of the Good Shepherd that 
 was not his plan but into His fold. All this 
 he got out of his vision. I myself am no 
 scoffer at visions capable of such sane in- 
 terpretations. 
 
 It is not the story of the coming of his 
 heart's desire for his family that I am here 
 setting down, though that is a stirring narra- 
 tive. This is to record that Christian conse- 
 cration may be much enhanced by Christian 
 diplomacy, a fact finely demonstrated in the 
 planting of the much desired Sunday school 
 in the City of Ancestral Abodes by that apos- 
 tle of the Lord called by the Woman Doctor 
 Handy Andy. 
 
 Do not forget that this same apostle of the 
 Lord was by birth of no mean origin. I tell 
 you that I myself have walked through the 
 mazes of his own ancestral home, where in
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 37 
 
 the old days two hundred people, all being 
 of the families of his own clan, were dwellers 
 and at the same time, too. Likewise there 
 were six front doors, and what better or 
 more adequately than this architectural fea- 
 ture could bespeak its abounding hospitality ? 
 To my heart this also spoke, and it was of 
 another many-mansioned house where doors 
 will not sag on rusty hinges nor deserted 
 halls be haunted by voices long silent. 
 
 It was at that particular time of the year 
 when all masculine China, to the extent of 
 fathers and eldest sons, streams forth to the 
 hillsides to do Worship at the graves of de- 
 parted ancestors. Also they place upon these 
 graves offerings which are designed not only 
 to visualize the measure of their filial devo- 
 tion, but also to felicitate materially the 
 spirits of the departed in their present habi- 
 tat. Remote be the time when China, satu- 
 rate with Western irreverence, shall forget 
 this most lovely of all her ancient customs ! 
 
 It was the time of year, I say, when the 
 fathers and big boys, most imposing in their 
 long silk coats, went out to the graves,
 
 38 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 and the little boys stayed at home in utter 
 insignificance and ordinary blue cotton 
 coats. 
 
 Now, it fell out that just at this time in his 
 daily Bible reading Handy Andy came upon 
 the first chapter of Matthew, and that par- 
 ticular portion of Scripture with us not often 
 thumbed because of much reading, seemed to 
 glow before the eyes of this most practical 
 dreamer of dreams with a great illumination. 
 At chapel prayers that morning he observed 
 that he noticed how the Hebrews of the 
 Lord's day made very much of the ancestry 
 of their honorable houses, even as had been 
 the Chinese custom for many ages. He 
 could not but deplore that the younger boys 
 of his own clan knew so little of its ancient 
 history. 
 
 Presently he crossed the railless foot- 
 bridge which wormed its uncertain way 
 across the river, and divided the town into 
 two parts as distinct as ever were the three 
 into which Gaul was divided, and entered 
 one of those six front doors in his own an- 
 cestral house within which discontented little
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 39 
 
 Chinese boys who couldn't go graveyarding 
 were dragging out a dismal day. 
 
 Sympathy was sweet to that accumulation 
 of infantile misery, so Handy Andy's benign 
 proposition that he assist them in having an 
 ancestral celebration of their own met with 
 instant response that is, as "instant" as 
 anything in the Orient can be. 
 
 In the reception hall of "Heaven's Well," 
 that three-walled apartment with the fourth 
 dimension, quite open and giving upon the 
 stone-flagged court, to the poetic mind of the 
 Chinese the bottom of a "well," whose cover 
 is the blue sky in this room gathered with 
 their guest that group of younger sons. And 
 the guest, that subtle apostle of the "Doc- 
 trine," his eyes flashing, his language aglow-, 
 recited to them out of the genealogy of their 
 clan the glorious exploits of their famous 
 ancestors whose tombs in the hillsides were 
 the shrines of family veneration and worship. 
 And if this were not enough, this august 
 uncle of theirs opened before their shining 
 black eyes certain ponderous books, the most 
 valued possession of their clan, in which be-
 
 4O THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 sides much else of glorious history, all the 
 things he had related to them were written 
 down. 
 
 The first adventure into genealogical pas- 
 tures was a huge success. At the most ur- 
 gent entreaties of the Younger Sons it was 
 repeated upon two or three occasions. The 
 Y. S/s were thrilled with importance and 
 their most exalted parents highly gratified 
 that into the fiber of these young sprouts on 
 the family tree such valuable information 
 was being infused. 
 
 When clan enthusiasm had reached its 
 peak the instructor quit ! In vain was he im- 
 portuned to resume his recitals by various 
 of the Younger Sons who chanced to meet 
 him here and there as he looked after the 
 business of the Hospital, which long since had 
 become a lighthouse set in the sea of human 
 suffering of that district. Later came a most 
 polite and formal letter, written in Chinese 
 characters upon bright red paper quite like 
 a wedding invitation urging the self-ap- 
 pointed professor of the history of his house 
 to return to the eager group in the reception
 
 A CHINESE HANDY ANDY 41 
 
 hall of Heaven's Well in his own ancestral 
 house, but he went not. 
 
 It was only after a formal visitation of the 
 head men of his clan, who pointed out the 
 great benefit which would be conferred upon 
 the rising generation of the illustrious clan 
 which was his as well as theirs, that Handy 
 Andy rather reluctantly consented to resume 
 his labors among the Younger Sons. 
 
 Very adroitly then did this Christian diplo- 
 mat suggest to his non-Christian clansmen 
 that personally he would be much advantaged 
 could one certain day be set apart wherein 
 he could materially assist the young grafts 
 on the family tree in their growth toward the 
 ideals of filial devotion and deeds heroic as 
 exemplified in their ancestral annals. 
 
 Besides these valuable facts he said he had 
 it in his heart to teach them a few others. 
 You will have guessed what the few "others" 
 were which to this hot-hearted disciple of 
 Jesus Christ mattered most, being those re- 
 ferring to Him in whom "all the families of 
 the earth" should be blest. Also he suggested 
 that about once in seven days he could con-
 
 42 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 veniently leave the Hospital and travel across 
 the rickety footbridge to the house of his 
 ancestors for the purpose they urged. 
 
 So it fell out that upon that day which 
 the Christians called the Sabbath a Chinese 
 ambassador of Jesus Christ became the cen- 
 ter of a permanent group of boys, which, 
 under his inspired guidance, merged pres- 
 ently into the Sabbath school which had for 
 long been the desire of his heart. 
 
 Later the Sabbath school became a church. 
 
 Was not I myself guided by Handy Andy 
 to his ancestral home of which I have told 
 you? And did not my own eyes behold the 
 reception hall of Heaven's Well, which now 
 on every Sabbath day is filled by a worship- 
 ing congregation?
 
 Ill 
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 
 
 HE led me out of the delicate loveli- 
 ness of her room where we had 
 "tiffined" together up a broad stair 
 and into the shaded shelter of the 
 sleeping porch. There she gently urged me 
 into a steamer chair with its most inviting 
 lazy-looking length, while she herself sat 
 upon a bamboo stool at my side and told me 
 the story which I am telling you. 
 
 "She" in this case was the wife of the 
 Theological Professor in the College for 
 boys. I mean by that, that "He" was a the- 
 ological professor four days in the week. 
 The other three both "He" and "She" were 
 evangelists known and adored throughout 
 all the tropical countryside through which 
 they itinerated, and where almost like forest 
 leaves those other villages were scattered. 
 She herself had come out to south China 
 43
 
 44 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 young and enthusiastic from her New Eng- 
 land hills, and had had her various and sun- 
 dry experiences in missionarying before she 
 had added to them by taking on the Theologi- 
 cal Professor. And it was of one of these 
 prenuptial episodes of which she spoke to 
 me on that afternoon in May. 
 
 I can sense again the setting of her story 
 now as I tell you. I can see the long ribbons 
 of sunlight slanting through the slits in the 
 cool green of the shutters, and falling into 
 golden patterns on the matting which cov- 
 ered the floor. She sat there, slight but vital, 
 her soft brown eyes glowing like gentle stars 
 to light a face of classical oval, haloed by an 
 aura of divinely soft brown hair. If her red 
 lips trembled as she talked, or smiled as some 
 half-forgotten reminiscence played across 
 her mind, it was only to enhance the sweet 
 curve of her mouth or to reveal a fleck of 
 snow-white teeth. Add to all this the flavor 
 of an adorable New England accent and a 
 filet lace collar and you will comprehend in- 
 stantly why the Professor digressed from his 
 theology far enough to fall in love, and to be
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 45 
 
 inspired to invite her to itinerate with him 
 through life. 
 
 That was a weird subject of which we 
 spoke that day nothing less than demon 
 possession. I had heard strange rumors, 
 miraculous tales, having to do with such 
 happenings, during my wanderings up coun- 
 try, and of these I had spoken. I confess that 
 lying there in that lazy chair with long bars 
 of sunshine slanting across me, and looking 
 into the face of the charming wife of the 
 Theological Professor, any subject in which 
 Mephisto figured seemed remote. However, 
 I had asked My Lady questions, and she of 
 the dark-blue gown and filet lace collar was 
 essaying to answer. 
 
 "Demon possession," she began and then 
 the story ran on even as I shall tell you. 
 
 She had come to China, as she told me, 
 young and eager, and imbued with a very 
 broad "Congregational" belief. This variety 
 of belief, she went on to elucidate, had no 
 time nor room for the recognition of a power- 
 ful personality who is the author of all evil, 
 and is continually playing upon its forces to
 
 46 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 the great discomfiture of the human race. 
 In short, to her New England mind the devil 
 was not. What other folk thought him to be 
 was simply a lack of positive good a hole 
 in the bottom of the boat, as it were. But 
 there came a day upon which her mind was 
 to register a change. 
 
 The adventure overtook her when, in the 
 third year of her missionarying in China, 
 she and her little Bible Woman were taking 
 their way through some of those villages 
 which were scattered along the river a day 
 or two from the mission center. 
 
 My Lady had been experiencing that ex- 
 altation of soul which occasionally obsesses 
 the toiler who beholds with radiant eyes the 
 fruit hanging luscious upon the boughs of 
 his endeavor. And why not ? At every mud 
 village to which she sampanned she had been 
 received by enthusiastic women who jostled 
 each other in their eagerness to welcome her. 
 "Bing-ang" (Peace to you!) they had sylla- 
 bled in ascending scale and repeatedly upon 
 her approach "Bing-ang! Bing-ang!" And 
 sadly they had murmured, "Please, slowly,
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 47 
 
 slowly walk," when, the teaching of the Jesus 
 Doctrine ended, My Lady was clambering 
 again into her boat. She had drunk tea and 
 nibbled watermelon seeds with gracious 
 gentle women in houses where idol shelves 
 were now 7 a matter of history, and whose 
 little children no longer wore hung about 
 their necks contrivances in which their souls 
 were safely locked, nor jingling bells about 
 their baby ankles to scare away the ever- 
 active demons. "The Kingdom is coming!" 
 My Lady had no doubt of the fact, and there 
 even lurked in the back of her mind the com- 
 fortable conviction that she was helping to 
 bring it. 
 
 And then the thing happened which, ac- 
 cording to My Lady, completely shifted her 
 mental gears in regard to a devil who was a 
 real person, and led her to recognize that 
 evil was by no means merely a lack of good. 
 In fact, over night she swung clean over into 
 the camp of those who assert that "The 
 Prince of this world" is an honest-to-good- 
 ness entity who exercises a malignant, ma- 
 levolent, active force for evil ; who grips real
 
 48 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 people, and ruins them, and in some cases 
 tortures them and drives them mad. 
 
 For several days in a large village My 
 Lady and her Bible women had taught the 
 women and visited them in their houses. All 
 was going well and it was with peculiar satis- 
 faction of spirit that she . dropped in, one 
 evening toward the end of her stay, for a 
 call upon a family whose every member had 
 seemed frankly interested in her disclosures 
 of a better way than idol worship, and genu- 
 inely determined 'to abandon the old way of 
 many gods. Very often she had been a 
 guest in that house, being always eagerly 
 welcomed. Very slowly and plainly and 
 very simply had she taught them the funda- 
 mental mysteries of the Doctrine, and on this 
 her last visit to them before her journey 
 down the river, the whole family had de- 
 clared their intention of becoming people of 
 the Jesus Way. 
 
 Because of this the heart of My Lady beat 
 so joyously that she could scarcely maintain 
 with dignity her proper New England de- 
 corum. For, remember, this family was
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 49 
 
 outstanding in the community, and its con- 
 version would mean everything to the Cause. 
 Yet My Lady was cautious ; she must be very 
 sure of her course. She questioned them 
 closely as to their definitely announced in- 
 tent, and over its avowal they prayed and 
 sang. The Chinese believe very devoutly in 
 the power of song. And to all her queries, 
 there was always the bold answer "Yes, we 
 wish to be Christians." 
 
 Then the missionary, in order to superin- 
 tend the destruction of the last bridge which 
 might lead from the new faith back to the 
 old, applying the supreme test the thumb 
 screws, as it were to their newly found 
 purpose, demanded that the consent of each 
 member of the household be given to the 
 burning of the household gods. Without 
 parley or reserve, individually and collec- 
 tively, permission was given. There was no 
 hesitation, no drawing back. "But the Kit- 
 chen God," further argued My Lady, "will 
 you allow me to take even that down, and 
 with my own hands?" 
 
 Now the Kitchen God, it would seem, is
 
 50 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 the last word the very ultimate to the 
 Chinese mind in its influence upon the Over 
 Powers, who are alike dispensers of good and 
 evil rewards for deeds done in the Chinese 
 body. Upon New Year occasions the 
 twenty-fourth of the New Year month, to 
 be exact before that piece of red paper 
 representing the kitchen deity, which is 
 pasted upon the wall over the stove, for a 
 half day, and by the entire family, worship 
 is offered. Below it smokes the fragrant 
 incense, and delicacies in porcelain bowls are 
 conveniently placed for his delectation. 
 Treacle and honey among the offerings are 
 sweet suggestions that the mouth of the god 
 be closed to the utterance of bitter reports 
 against the family. Is not the kitchen, after 
 all, the heart of the house, and would not the 
 ears of its presiding deity be open to all of 
 those hidden family intimacies which should 
 remain unknown to the public and, if pos- 
 sible, to the dreaded Over Powers of the 
 spirit world? 
 
 So in order to insure a complimentary re- 
 port by the Kitchen God, when at the New
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 51 
 
 Year he sojourns for ten days in the abode 
 of the shades, his mouth is smeared with 
 honey, and he is conducted into the spirit 
 realm upon the smoke of his own burning. 
 In ten days another Kitchen God is pasted 
 upon the wall and the new record begins. 
 
 This being the god most to be feared and 
 of all the gods the one to whom the Chinese 
 domestic group most tenaciously holds, it 
 took much boldness upon the part of My 
 Lady to follow up the declared purpose of 
 her prospective converts by suggesting that 
 she herself remove from the wall with her 
 own hands the scrap of paper which repre- 
 sented him. 
 
 But each time she repeated her query came 
 the united response ready and hearty: "We 
 do believe ! Yes, you yourself may take down 
 the Kitchen God!" 
 
 So in the end My Lady went into the 
 kitchen, followed by the family, pulled out a 
 stool, climbed upon it, and with fingers which 
 trembled with eagerness began peeling off 
 the red paper which represented the tale- 
 bearing god.
 
 52 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 Scarcely, however, had the first edge been 
 loosened when out from that corner of the 
 kitchen where stood the little mother, sub- 
 dued and meek, My Lady told me she heard 
 a tiny noise a sort of a squeak of protest 
 which almost paralyzed her fingers, sending 
 a shivering and a trembling through her very 
 bones. It seemed veritably as though she 
 were gripped by some evil power quite out- 
 side herself, and she was almost too horrified 
 to speak was like to have fallen off the 
 stool. But presently recovering her mental 
 poise, and her blood having somewhat 
 thawed in her veins, she turned herself to- 
 ward that corner of the room from which 
 the uncanny sound had come, and looking 
 at the gentle little mother who stood there 
 said somewhat severely, "Oh, then you do 
 not wish me to take it down you are un- 
 willing?" 
 
 But the woman in the corner, who un- 
 doubtedly had uttered the cry, answered 
 bravely, though her voice was low, "Yes, I 
 am willing," and her husband and his 
 mother, and even the children, joined in a
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 53 
 
 most earnest response saying, "Oh, yes, we 
 all very much wish you to take it down." 
 
 So down it came, My Lady told me, 
 though not with ease, because of her strange 
 consciousness that somewhere resistance to 
 the process was being registered. And after- 
 ward prayer was offered and a hymn sung, 
 and with ecstasy in her heart and her first 
 real trophy of service in China, the Kitchen 
 God, in her hand, she left the hospitable home 
 of her gracious gentle converts. They had a 
 joyful evening, My Lady and her Bible 
 Woman. They prayed for every member of 
 that newly converted family and they 
 thanked God for them, and afterward those 
 two went joyfully to bed. 
 
 It should have been a day sooner that the 
 sampan carried them down the river. But 
 vital issues hung balanced in those hours 
 by which they had delayed their going, and 
 no shadow of regret that they had not made 
 schedule lurked in the minds of My Lady and 
 her helper. Souls were what they sought 
 and had joyously found. 
 
 And now before they were carried away
 
 54 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 on the river's tide, for no one could tell how 
 long, the good-by visit to the new recruits 
 to the ranks of the doers of the Doctrine must 
 be made. With eyes glowing and her ex- 
 altation of soul seeping through to illuminate 
 her fair young face, My Lady entered the 
 house whose doors had always at her touch 
 swung wide with welcome. On into the room 
 she fared, where more than once she had 
 bowed with the family in prayer, joyously 
 expectant of the greeting which would mean 
 more this morning than it ever had before, 
 because it would be the mutual greeting of 
 Christians. 
 
 She had barely stepped over the high 
 threshold I am telling you just as she told 
 me when it seemed to her as though an icy 
 breath from a mysterious somewhere blew 
 across her face. 
 
 Before her in the room where many times 
 she had been an honored guest were the same 
 members of the family who, upon her de- 
 parture only the night before, had accom- 
 panied her to the very gate in their outer 
 wall and begged her to "walk slowly." It
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 55 
 
 was certainly a blighting frost which lay 
 upon the occupants of that room. The head 
 of the house, at his bench, a scowl upon his 
 face, did not so much as raise his head from 
 his work. The old grandmother and the 
 two adorable round-faced kiddies, who had 
 eagerly, almost lovingly crowded up close to 
 her yesterday, kept their places in the far 
 corner of the room, silent and sullen. 
 
 But it was the gentle, mild little mother 
 who centered the tragic picture now un- 
 rolling itself before the wondering, fright- 
 ened eyes of My Lady. It was she who at 
 the first loosening of an edge, in the process 
 of removal of that thing on the wall which 
 represented a much-to-be-feared deity, had 
 involuntarily emitted a low cry of protest. 
 Now she sat upon a stool in the middle of the 
 floor, with such a look of savage hatred upon 
 her face as, My Lady assured me, she could 
 never even have dreamed as being possible 
 to overspread a human countenance. 
 
 With what courage the missionary visitor 
 could summon to bolster her she spoke to 
 them, greeting them in the old way, and
 
 56 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 wording her wish that with them all was 
 well. 
 
 And then, while that terrified New Eng- 
 land girl grasped the brown wall for physical 
 support, that little Chinese woman, her pan 
 of vegetables in process of paring in her lap, 
 responded to her question with such a tirade 
 of vituperation as she never could have im- 
 agined it possible for a human being to syl- 
 lable. On and on ran the harangue, the 
 vileness of its obscenity seeming to penetrate 
 every corner and crevice of the room. Oc- 
 casionally, out of pure physical exhaustion, 
 her very breath would fail, and turning her 
 face more fully upon My Lady she would 
 literally froth at the mouth. Again and again 
 this uncanny orgy of verbal abuse was re- 
 peated, each succeeding torrent more violent 
 than the one before. 
 
 Out of all the flood of incoherent Chinese 
 ravings that was poured into her ears My 
 Lady patched together the gist. Had the 
 woman's recital been continuous, or even 
 calm, it might have framed itself into a brief 
 but tragic statement.
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 57 
 
 Great peace had brooded over the house 
 of the New Christians, when, their mission- 
 ary visitor having departed the evening be- 
 fore, they had betaken themselves to rest. 
 If any member of the family was apprehen- 
 sive because of the empty idol shelf, or the 
 downfall of the Kitchen God, no mention was 
 made of the fact. But the dreams of the mild 
 little mother, who had fallen asleep along 
 with the rest of the household, came to a 
 sudden and direful end toward midnight, by 
 the sudden entrance through her door of the 
 arch enemy of the race, Satan himself. She 
 saw his horrid figure, his frightful eyes. 
 With awful voice and terrible malignity he 
 accused her of having given her consent for 
 the Foreign Woman to tear down from her 
 wall his own image and superscription. He 
 raised a frightful lash like a thousand scor- 
 pions and laid it in cuts of burning fire upon 
 her helpless body. In vain she had prayed 
 the little prayer which, she had gathered 
 from My Lady, would be a magic talisman 
 in time of trouble "Lord Jesus, save me.'* 
 Though her startled eyes peered eagerly into
 
 58 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 the dark for his appearance, he came not. 
 Every repetition of that prayer brought 
 down upon her at the hands of her demon 
 visitor new and awful torture. 
 
 Also he flayed her with words, every one 
 of which seemed to sink into her flesh like a 
 knife. "What do you mean," he hissed, "by 
 renouncing me me, whom you and your 
 fathers before you have served, since time 
 for you was? Have not I / put rice in 
 your bowl, and clothes on your back? And 
 now 7 you and your household desert me re- 
 nounce me me for the God of the Foreign 
 Woman? Come with me to hell !" 
 
 He reached out a clawlike hand to grasp 
 her, his unspeakable eyes burning her 
 through like coals of fire and then the 
 dawn broke, and she was alone. 
 
 "But," she shrieked like a mad woman, as 
 My Lady, who had gone faint and white 
 there against the wall, made as though to 
 urge her well nigh petrified body out the 
 door "but I'll go with him to hell ! I want 
 to go / want to, I tell you !" And as if to 
 clinch her own statement with another
 
 THE BLIGHT OF BEELZEBUB 59 
 
 reason, she shot forth a final addendum 
 "There are more folks there anyway !" 
 
 "And so," I murmured, as My Lady 
 ceased "and so ?" 
 
 "And so," she said, "I went away and left 
 them, my joy turned to ashes. There was not 
 enough left of me to even speak when I found 
 myself outside the wall. But this I knew, in 
 spite of my New England theology, that 
 whatever it was that woman saw and heard 
 explain it as you may it was an active, 
 powerful Force of Evil, which in her case 
 conquered. You may call it what you will. 
 / called it the devil/'
 
 IV 
 A HOUSE OF UNDERSTANDING 
 
 | HEY were going home, those two, 
 from a sojourn of ten days in the 
 Women's Hospital. 'Those two" 
 were daughters of Cathay, young- 
 ish and by no means unattractive, even as we 
 Occidentals measure good looks. "Home" 
 to them meant a village three days away, in 
 the furthermost mountain they could see in 
 the range beyond, over whose fair contour, 
 even as their journey began, night was 
 already draping soft shadows of mauve and 
 purple. 
 
 Not unfrequently as they followed the nar- 
 row paths between the paddy fields those 
 ascending paths paved with sharp little 
 stones whose edges often were turned bellig- 
 erently upward did the returning patients 
 from the Hospital pause an instant to look 
 back upon the gray building from which they 
 had emerged within the hour. Across its 
 60
 
 A HOUSE OF UNDERSTANDING 61 
 
 friendly walls the declining sun was slanting 
 a glorious shaft of crimson color like a bene- 
 diction at evening time. 
 
 It is small wonder that now and again the 
 eyes of the two mountain climbers were 
 turned wistfully back, until the hospital sil- 
 houette had itself become a part of the denser 
 shadows, which having completely blacked 
 out the noisy city upon whose border stood 
 the House of Healing, had crept with sinister 
 surety upon it also. For a House of Healing 
 it had been indeed to them, two neighbors, 
 coming down from that village which lay 
 three days away in the heart of the purple 
 heights. Upon the slender thread of a 
 passing rumor that the Foreign Doctor in the 
 hospital down in the valley, by some strange 
 power of necromancy, could clothe ailing 
 women with health as with a garment they 
 had essayed their great adventure. And all 
 they had heard and more the Doctor had 
 done for them, though not by magic, as 
 eventually they were to know. 
 
 What was of far more moment to the Two 
 Pilgrims from the mountains in search of
 
 62 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 health, the House of Healing had become to 
 them the House of Understanding, and it 
 was of this more than of the other about 
 which both women were thinking as night 
 dropped a dark curtain between them and 
 the valley below, where there stood a Chris- 
 tian hospital for non-Christian women. 
 
 Very readily had their not overly serious 
 disorders yielded to the skillful ministrations 
 of the Foreign Doctor. Ten short days had 
 sufficed to make scientific corrections in 
 physical conditions which without such treat- 
 ment must easily have tied the patients to the 
 questionable comfort of their hard board 
 beds for the rest of their lives. However 
 that may have been, of far greater signifi- 
 cance were the mental operations performed, 
 the spiritual correction established in the case 
 of the mountain patients in that House of 
 Understanding. So it was not the former 
 but the latter phase of their ten days' ex- 
 perience in the Hospital which upon their 
 homeward way filled the minds of the return- 
 ing travelers, and likewise moved their 
 tongues to speech.
 
 A HOUSE OF UNDERSTANDING 63 
 
 Bo-ai spoke first. Bo-ai's mother had 
 given her that lovely name whose meaning 
 in American is Precious Love because she 
 alone of three little daughters whom the in- 
 considerate gods had permitted to invade the 
 family circle had been permitted by the sooth- 
 sayers to remain in her arms. She had loved 
 all her tiny baby girls, that Chinese mother, 
 who long since had been gathered to her an- 
 cestors, and whose red-lacquered coffin had 
 been received into the cavernous depths of 
 the great horseshoe tomb of her family on 
 the mountainside. She being a woman had 
 certainly loved her girl children, but tradi- 
 tion and custom and the sentence of the 
 soothsayer must not be gainsaid and there 
 was no denying the expensiveness of girls. 
 
 It was Bo-ai who, between hard-taken 
 breaths, because the mountain-path was so 
 steep, remarked convincingly to Chieng-ging, 
 her comrade on the upgrade trail, that "cer- 
 tainly and beyond all peradventure, the For- 
 eign Doctor exceeded all other humans in 
 knowledge as well as skill." This seemed to 
 her passing strange, when one considered
 
 64 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 that the Foreign Doctor was a woman. Even 
 the children in the street could repeat the 
 age-old proverb current among them all 
 "A learned man buildeth the walls of a city, 
 but a learned woman teareth them down." 
 Yet there was a woman down on the plain 
 there who had reared the walls of a House of 
 Healing which was also a House of Under- 
 standing, because into it entered women, 
 even Chinese women like themselves, to be- 
 come thinking beings like herself. 
 
 "Also," Chieng-ging replied, when because 
 of the stubborn upness of the trail the two 
 had sat down to rest, leaning against a great 
 bowlder over which wide-eyed briar roses 
 clambered, "Also, the touch of the Foreign 
 Doctor's hand, even when its touch was pain, 
 was past all one's thinking most gentle." 
 
 Chieng-ging would have much reason to 
 remember a soft touch. The hand of her 
 mother-in-law, who instead of herself ruled 
 her house and her family, had been heavy 
 upon her since that day in her young maiden- 
 hood, when in her red bridal chair she had 
 been brought home to her husband's ances-
 
 A HOUSE OF UNDERSTANDING 65 
 
 tral abode. "Thousand Gold" was her name, 
 done into American, but that was no indica- 
 tion that in her own home her value was so 
 measured. She was quite unworthy of regard 
 or dignity of station, inasmuch as she was 
 but the mother of daughters. 
 
 Even when late in the night the two travel- 
 ers sat apart in a quiet corner of the inn 
 where, because of the darkness and the dan- 
 gers of the narrow path, shelter until dawn 
 had been secured, their conversation was 
 mostly of their great adventure and all which 
 clung to the memory of it. Besides the Doc- 
 tor, and mostly they spoke of the never-ceas- 
 ing wonder of her, they talked of the gentle 
 nurses, Chinese women, young, as they them- 
 selves had been only a few years back. Car- 
 ing for the sick is neither a very high nor 
 even a very honorable calling in some places 
 in the world, and surprise that this task had 
 been raised to one of real merit and even 
 distinction was still very much in their minds. 
 
 The very servants, so their talk ran on, 
 who prepared the vegetables and did the 
 humble tasks of the compound were very
 
 66 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 much of a quiet, peaceable sort of folk. 
 Never once during the stay of the two friends 
 had either of them witnessed or even heard 
 of a brawl among them. An almost unbe- 
 lievable thing did this seem to them, being 
 accustomed as they were to the vocal on- 
 slaughts, so much a factor in the general pro- 
 gram of Chinese community and domestic 
 matters. 
 
 In foreign lands where mission enterprises 
 function there are inevitably a number, 
 greater or less, of wee folks. In the wards 
 and on the wide verandahs of the Hospital 
 of the Good Shepherd happy children might 
 always be seen playing among themselves, 
 or with their amahs. The amahs never 
 scolded or shrieked at the wee bodies, and 
 the latter, although almond-eyed and olive- 
 skinned like their own babies, seemed some- 
 how of a different world. Possibly they were 
 better babies because of better beginnings 
 anyway they were different. 
 
 But outside of the Foreign Doctor herself 
 nothing which the two mountain patients had 
 observed in the hospital realm had impressed
 
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 A HOUSE OF UNDERSTANDING 67 
 
 them quite as amazingly as the Chinese 
 women within it who could read! Concern- 
 ing this point there were no limits to their en- 
 thusiasm. When one reflects that out of 
 every one hundred of China's rank and file 
 five only can decipher the printed character, 
 it is not strange that Bo-ai and Chieng-ging 
 were struck with amazement that every 
 woman in the Foreign Doctor's hospital 
 could- read, from that most Exalted One her- 
 self down to the youngest serving maid. 
 Indeed, the two Bible women, who day after 
 day sat in the outer room where patients 
 waited, and there read to them out of the 
 Holy Classic, were no more adept at leafing 
 its sacred pages than were the nurses, and 
 even the older children. 
 
 For the three days of the journey back to 
 the village in the top of the highest mountain 
 did very much conversation take place upon 
 all these points. And when invariably at 
 intervals there was raised- the inquiry as to 
 the reason for all these things so much to be 
 desired by any woman, always the explana- 
 tion mutually agreed upon was the same. It
 
 68 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 was that those other women', like themselves, 
 and yet so very unlike, were Persons of the 
 Doctrine Christians. 
 
 The men of their houses offered no ob- 
 jection when, as is the custom in China, 
 their dutiful wives first craved their permis- 
 sion to discard the worship of the household 
 gods, and of those other hideous ones down 
 in the temple, and become followers of that 
 Jesus Christ of whom so lately they had 
 learned. The men had very properly in- 
 quired what "being a Christian" included, 
 and very simply the two women told them 
 that which in ten days they had absorbed 
 of the new Doctrine. The gist of their in- 
 formation to the men was that the content of 
 the Doctrine was like to express itself in 
 quiet voices speaking gentle words, and in 
 hands which delighted in tender ministra- 
 tions. This they told them. 
 
 Also they begged permission to go one day 
 in the week a day's journey down the other 
 side of their own mountain where, according 
 to the word of the Foreign Doctor, a Person 
 of the Way would speak words concerning
 
 A HOUSE OF UNDERSTANDING 69 
 
 the Doctrine. This day, which was regu- 
 larly set apart by Christians for worship and 
 which was called the Sabbath, would fall 
 upon the third day after their return from 
 the Hospital, for very carefully had they kept 
 this fact in their minds. Upon their solemn 
 word that not one small item of their house- 
 keeping responsibilities should be omitted on 
 that day very certainly also that ample pro- 
 vision should be made in the way of supplies 
 of toothsome food of the variety which lies 
 close to men's ribs the heads of those two 
 houses gave their consent for the church- 
 going venture of their wives. 
 
 Even before the sun had risen high enough 
 to scatter its showers of gold over the bam- 
 boo fronds or kiss the dew from the sleepy 
 eyelids of the flowers which starred the 
 mountainside, Bo-ai and Chieng-ging were 
 upon their way. This was to be a day to 
 them of spiritual outreach and their eager 
 faces and their shining eyes proclaimed to 
 every passing wayfarer on the mountain 
 paths that they were bound upon some happy 
 and wholly unusual errand.
 
 70 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 Very great satisfaction and very sweet 
 content glowed upon the faces of the two 
 friends when, for all their long faring, with 
 not the tiniest fleck of dust visible upon their 
 blue coats and wearing against the glossy 
 blackness of their hair a few waxen petals of 
 the plum blossom, they reached at last their 
 objective, a tiny church in the valley. 
 
 They entered with timid, noiseless steps, 
 uncertain of what might be expected of 
 women like themselves, as yet not at all sure 
 of the ways of Persons of the Doctrine in 
 such a case. 
 
 In far away little churches like this one, 
 hidden in some valley of southern China, 
 there is announced properly enough an hour 
 at which worship begins. The blue coated 
 congregation, however, made up of folks 
 who, like Bo-ai and Chieng-ging, must come 
 from long distances, and upon their own feet 
 at that, do not always arrive upon the tick 
 of the clock, though in China even the clock 
 does not seem to hurry. Because of these 
 things, then, there is nothing arbitrary about 
 the hour of beginning the worship. That be-
 
 A HOUSE OF UNDERSTANDING 71 
 
 gins when the congregation gathers, and 
 upon this day its assembling was unusually 
 delayed. 
 
 The service ended at last, and the two new 
 seekers after truth had again taken the trail 
 toward the heights where their village 
 perched. It was hard going, the journey 
 back, for always the path wound upward. 
 The shadows too slanted long across the val- 
 ley, and the wind, now that the sun's fires 
 had dwindled, blew chill across their faces. 
 
 In spite of the fact that black night would 
 envelop them long before they could reach 
 their own doors, and that at the very thought 
 of the certain anger of their men their knees, 
 wearied to pairr with the climbing, trembled 
 under them, they clasped hands in the dark- 
 ness and agreed that the day had been worth 
 all it would cost. They had learned more 
 fully of the Doctrine, and the sinews of their 
 spirits were strengthened, as after days were 
 to prove. 
 
 It was over after a little, the cruel fury of 
 their men because of their late home-coming. 
 Even the marks which this fury had laid
 
 72 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 across their backs eventually faded. But 
 the words concerning the Doctrine which 
 they had heard that Sabbath day in the val- 
 ley church they did not fade. 
 
 If men could decree that women could not 
 be Christians when being such involved go- 
 ing to church one day in seven, then women 
 could decide that as for them they would be 
 Christians without going to church. 
 
 Also after much thinking, and between 
 them talking it all over, and withal with the 
 full knowledge of how little fitted they were 
 to undertake so great a project, the two new 
 followers of the Doctrine concluded that they 
 themselves must establish a church. 
 
 So sometimes does the Spirit of all truth 
 lead trusting and sincere souls into the way 
 of a great adventure for God.
 
 V 
 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 
 
 JJO-AI and Chieng-ging never forgot 
 for one small moment that their 
 sole theological and religious back- 
 ground consisted of what they had 
 learned in a stay of ten days in a Christian 
 Hospital for Women, and one service in a 
 little church in the valley. Also they knew 
 that the portion of the Doctrine which had 
 trickled through their ignorance and per- 
 manently remained in their memories must 
 perforce furnish forth all the spiritual pabu- 
 lum with which such new followers as might 
 join them could be provided. Neither of the 
 women could read and there was no base of 
 supplies, spiritual or intellectual, upon which, 
 when their very limited store of knowledge 
 was exhausted, they might draw for fresh 
 material. 
 
 In fact, the whole course in Christian 
 
 73
 
 74 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 homiletics offered, when in due time this 
 branch of the one universal Church of God 
 became operative in a far off mountain in 
 China, consisted of exactly three things. 
 These were : the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's 
 Prayer, and that Star-Spangled Banner of 
 Missions, "J esus loves me, this I know." 
 But the greatest asset of all in the planting 
 of the new enterprise was that down in the 
 Hospital, Bo-ai and Chieng-ging had them- 
 selves learned to pray. Truly this was great- 
 est of all. 
 
 Now, you must not be forgetting that the 
 training of the two women in the useful art 
 of establishing churches had covered just ten 
 days. Also you must have imagined that 
 the hindrances standing ready to block the 
 new project were many and serious. One 
 was disposed of when a neighbor woman, 
 though inspired with nothing more than 
 sheerest curiosity, offered a room in her more 
 ample house for the meeting place of the ex- 
 pected congregation. 
 
 The question as to the size of the congre- 
 gation was settled when at the initial service,
 
 75 
 
 called with much trepidation, the upper room 
 was quite filled to capacity with women and 
 children. 
 
 Possibly, however, of all the problems to 
 be solved that of thinking through some plan 
 by which with unquestionable accuracy the 
 Sabbath day might be marked was most 
 stubbornly difficult. That this must be set 
 apart as holy unto the Lord for reverent 
 meditation and attendance at worship if one's 
 men didn't mind all this the founders of 
 the new church were sure. But how to tell 
 just which out of all the long procession of 
 dull, monotonous days which dawned upon 
 their village and dragged through it and 
 died, was to be halted and appropriated as 
 the Sabbath this they did not know. The 
 moons they numbered, but unless it was 
 marked down in the book of their history or 
 tradition no day was noted. Certainly the 
 foreign custom of observing one day in seven 
 for ceasing work and "doing" the Doctrine 
 was most difficult to follow when there was 
 no way of knowing which particular day it 
 should be.
 
 76 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 I know in China a certain devout old per- 
 son of the Doctrine who, being too far upon 
 life's way to permit his memory to keep up 
 with him, never can think to close his shop 
 until he sees the missionary go past his door 
 on her way to Sabbath school. Then always 
 he hobbles forth and puts up his shutters and 
 hangs upon a nail driven into one of them 
 a sign in Chinese that would be in the Amer- 
 ican equivalent of "Closed because this is 
 the Lord's Day." So does this old person 
 of the Doctrine announce his Christian 
 standing. 
 
 But through the mountain village where 
 lived Bo-ai and Chieng-ging no missionary 
 had ever treked on her way, thereby indicat- 
 ing to two anxious women that the divinely 
 appointed day for worship had come. But 
 think out the trying puzzle they must and 
 they did. 
 
 At first it was suggested by Bo-ai that 
 there be adopted a system of straight marks, 
 drawn carefully with the writing brush upon 
 the wall of the upper room, the place of wor- 
 ship one for each common day, the seventh
 
 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 77 
 
 for the Sabbath. Later this plan was sadly 
 rejected. All straight marks look much the 
 same, and in such a maze of marks as were 
 like to be drawn accuracy as to the day to 
 be especially set apart would not be possible. 
 Women, too, are so stupid so slow of 
 memory ! 
 
 Most tangles, give them time enough, will 
 eventually untangle of themselves. Chieng- 
 ging it was to whom was vouchsafed the in- 
 spiration. It was she who remembered with 
 fresh vividness what she had learned from 
 the Foreign Doctor of that holy Jesus God, 
 who being himself sinless had most unjustly 
 been stretched upon a cross for the sins of 
 others, her own included. So it was she who 
 suggested timidly, because she was not sure 
 that it was reverent that his day be marked 
 with the symbol of his suffering, the cross. 
 
 Eventually it fell out that in the ecclesias- 
 tical fresco which was begun upon the wall 
 of the upper room on that day when this em- 
 bryo church first functioned the basic motif 
 was a cross. 
 
 Just how long afterward I do not know,
 
 78 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 but of a certainty it was several years, that 
 a Chinese pastor shepherding a flock of 
 Christians well established in the Way in a 
 city far across a distant valley, felt within his 
 heart a strange yearning toward "those other 
 sheep" wandering in spiritual darkness in the 
 purple mountains whose shadowy outlines 
 were becoming to him a daily challenge. 
 Eventually he became unable to resist the 
 call of those helpless human things, intrud- 
 ing as it did upon his sensibilities like the 
 bleating of lost lambs. Ultimately the Chi- 
 nese pastor took his way to the mountains 
 far away across his own valley, consumed 
 with his determined intent to lead those 
 "other sheep" into the safe fold of Divine 
 Love. 
 
 The journey was a matter of several days, 
 but every step of the way his heart beat with 
 a great exultation because of the glory of his 
 mission. If he was footsore when at last he 
 had scaled the heights and at the end of the 
 last long day had rested in a mountain inn, so 
 also was he glad, for now his real shepherd- 
 ing might begin.
 
 THE KETHODiST EPisco'P 
 .CHURCH 4T DA IMNG^TCOCH 
 TKts JL& trvc xr^icKvn-ck, 
 
 THE OLDEST METHODIST CHURCH IN 
 ASIA, AT FOOCHOW
 
 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 79 
 
 But though the raucous noises of the vil- 
 lage streets had given way to the muffled 
 murmur of family noises behind shuttered lit- 
 tle shops or brown mud walls, still always at 
 the Chinese mountain inn will be gathered the 
 curious crowd of men, whose very isolation 
 urges them toward that center of possible 
 outside communication. It was to such a 
 group respectfully, though eagerly, gathered 
 around the pastor from the distant valley, 
 and in the dingy half dark of the inn, that 
 he spoke of the mission which had drawn him 
 to those heights. 
 
 Very intently, very politely did the moun- 
 tain men hear him through. If occasionally 
 in the lantern's dim glare a significant look 
 passed from eye to eye about the circle, no 
 one spoke. Not until the guest had fully 
 spoken many words concerning the Doctrine 
 and his hot-hearted hope that soon there 
 might be Christians among them, was the 
 silence broken. 
 
 It was after the pastor had altogether 
 ceased that at last out of that deep silence 
 which lay upon them there spoke a voice.
 
 8o THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 It was an old voice, coming from one man 
 in the gathered group to whom the years 
 clung heavily. His were quiet words, but 
 clear and compelling, and what he said was : 
 "There are Christians in these mountains. 
 The place of their dwelling is the next vil- 
 
 lag*.' 1 
 
 My pen does not know how to write down 
 for you here the measure of the great amaze- 
 ment of the guest from the plain. Naturally, 
 having long known of the purple mountains, 
 unoccupied by evangelist, unvisited by mis- 
 sionary, it was with great difficulty that he 
 was convinced that the sole purpose of his 
 visit had already mysteriously become an 
 achievement. Even when, at the conclusion 
 of the brief sentence voiced by the old man, 
 a murmur of assent ran through the group, 
 the shepherd of the flock in the valley found 
 believing it a difficult business. Could it be 
 possible that preceding his own coming, in- 
 spired by such a lofty ambition as was his, 
 had come another whose mission had been 
 identical with his own? 
 
 One need not remain in doubt when indis-
 
 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 81 
 
 putable proof is said to be near at hand. Al- 
 though all the mountain was enwrapped in 
 the soft blackness of a southern night, and 
 few in China then venture out over the nar- 
 row paths set with sharp-edged stones, 
 which rim sheer and frightful precipices, 
 there presently emerged from the inn a blue- 
 coated procession of men led by one very old, 
 whose unsteady hand held a lantern. It was 
 a distance through the dark to the next vil- 
 lage a full six li, but the spirit of the visitor 
 to whom had just been given such astound- 
 ing information could brook no delay, which 
 if he wait until morning, must span the re- 
 mainder of the night. 
 
 Because then of the urgency of the guest 
 and also because of their own certainty, the 
 mountain men trod the path through the 
 dark, to find themselves after a while slip- 
 ping noiselessly through the one street of 
 the village of their quest. Before a house a 
 bit ampler and somewhat better than the 
 others which faced the street, huddling to- 
 gether in close friendliness, the old man with 
 the lantern came to a halt.
 
 82 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 There was a sharp rap at the outer door 
 a few words of greeting in the darkness. 
 Then the silent little procession passed 
 within, and moved slowly up the stairs. A 
 door swung into a block of open space, 
 carved out by the lantern's glare into the 
 proportions of a room. 
 
 If anywhere in all the world one special 
 yet perfectly ordinary spot can be trans- 
 formed into a spiritual "upper room" be- 
 cause to that sanctum once in seven days 
 there comes Jesus Christ to commune with 
 his friends, then this room, revealed by the 
 lantern glow in all its pitiful bareness, was 
 surely such an one. 
 
 Eagerly, almost violently, did the pastor 
 from the valley, standing there within the 
 shimmering aura of the dim light, grasp the 
 lantern from the hand of the old man who 
 carried it. He held it high above his head 
 as, peering sharply through the half light, he 
 passed quickly around the four walls of the 
 room. Upon these four walls he beheld an 
 ecclesiastical fresco which, a matter of years 
 before, was begun by two humble women
 
 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 83 
 
 disciples, however, of our Lord, whom they 
 had met to their soul's satisfaction during a 
 stay of ten days in a Christian Hospital for 
 Chinese Women. 
 
 What the pastor from the plain below saw 
 was a row of marks three deep, etched 
 crudely out upon the four walls of that "up- 
 per room" and every seventh mark was a 
 cross. 
 
 And there were Christians in those moun- 
 tains.
 
 VI 
 THE LOOSENED GRIP 
 
 UT," I began, "you simply must 
 tell me another devil story one 
 with a different sort of ending, you 
 know." 
 
 It was in the sun parlor at the Theological 
 Professor's house again, and I was lazying 
 in the steamer chair. 
 
 "I simply can't write that story down, 
 Lady Dear, and leave the folks who read it 
 with such a taste, so to speak, in their men- 
 tal mouths. I mean, isn't there another 
 story where we that is, the woman, instead 
 of the devil wins out? I'm sure there is 
 one!" 
 
 And so she told me though really it was 
 her little Bible Woman's adventure, and it 
 happened just as I shall be writing it down 
 for you. 
 
 Siok-leng which being interpreted means 
 
 84
 
 THE LOOSENED GRIP 85 
 
 "Pure White Lily" was the name of the 
 Bible Woman. Indeed she seemed quite the 
 embodiment of her name too, as she moved 
 about through the filthy mazes of the river 
 villages. Like a lily of spotless whiteness 
 she seemed among the other women, in these 
 places of odor and squalor and unsightly, 
 hidden things her very spiritual reach lifting 
 her out and beyond them. In a vague, won- 
 dering way the village women knew this 
 though had you asked them the why of their 
 almost subconscious perception about Siok- 
 leng's superiority, they could not have told 
 you. 
 
 A little way into this world of better things 
 she had inducted some of them when once or 
 twice a year she sampanned down the river 
 and sojourned for a space within those fetid, 
 crowded, nauseous places. It was while 
 upon such an annual or semiannual errand 
 that there happened the adventure of which 
 I am telling you. 
 
 A boy who might have turned fifteen had 
 politely approached Siok-leng as she was re- 
 placing her Bible and hymn book in the silk
 
 86 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 bag which her own fingers had lovingly em- 
 broidered as befitted the reliquary of such 
 holy things. The women to whom just a 
 moment before she had been talking had dis- 
 persed like a flock of noisily chattering crows, 
 and the little Bible Woman had fetched a 
 long sigh of relief for very tiredness. 
 
 The lad, immaculate in his clean blue 
 gown, his hair sleekily glistening like the 
 polished black wood of his own hills, had 
 most punctiliously made his politeness and 
 gravely inquired if the honorable guest from 
 up the river were, as he had heard reported, 
 a Person of the Jesus Doctrine ? 
 
 There may be persons so designated in the 
 world who hesitate to boldly make the ac- 
 knowledgment, but not to this division of the 
 faint-of-heart belonged Siok-leng. It was 
 because of the unhesitating affirmative of her 
 answer that presently she was being jostled 
 through the noisy confusion of the crowds 
 in the streets on her way to visit the sick 
 mother of her blue-coated conductor. The 
 section of the village toward which they went 
 was quieter than the streets with which she
 
 THE LOOSENED GRIP 87 
 
 was familiar, and the Bible Woman could 
 not but wonder, toward the end of their go- 
 ing, at house after house in the neighborhood 
 standing silent and deserted. Later on she 
 was to find out the reason for this. 
 
 An outer gate was opened presently by the 
 lad, and a moment later Siok-leng stood in 
 the guest room of a Chinese house and was 
 being greeted with gentle graciousness by the 
 fragile-looking little mother of the boy with 
 whom she had come. 
 
 The watermelon seeds were passed, and 
 then when the boy had slipped out, and the 
 women w r ere alone, between sips of fragrant 
 jassamine tea from tiny cups, the tragic 
 story of the misfortune which had befallen 
 that household was told. 
 
 The fragile little woman, according to her 
 own avowment, was in the controlling grip, 
 dire and complete, of demons. Their first 
 frightful invasion was entirely unannounced, 
 the uncanny horde, led by one whom she 
 called "The Prince of Devils," having 
 swarmed in upon her as she sat alone in her 
 house one awful night twelve years before.
 
 88 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 So quiet and sane was the recital of her 
 hostess, so calmly she told of the horrid de- 
 tails of the torturing nocturnal visits, so cold 
 grew the little hand which Siok-leng held in 
 hers, that all her heart went out to the pitiful 
 victim. 
 
 The demons had come literally swarming 
 into her house, so she told the Bible Woman 
 such legions of them that there was not 
 sufficient room in all the house to hold them. 
 Even she told Siok-leng of their hideous 
 bodies, and bulging eyes, and long claws 
 which opened and shut as though eager for 
 prey. Altogether they were unspeakably ter- 
 rible. And some, she said, were handsome 
 devils really handsome ! 
 
 Such an one was he, their "Prince," who 
 snatched her about the waist and hissed into 
 her ear that she must dance with him. At 
 that she tried to shrink even farther away 
 from his hot body, for she was a decent, high- 
 class Chinese woman, and such women do 
 not dance. And then tighter and tighter did 
 he grip her, and wilder and wilder grew the 
 mad whirlings, until, lifting the slight little
 
 THE LOOSENED GRIP 89 
 
 body from the floor, her hellish torturer 
 swung her upon her own tea table and com- 
 manded her to sing. 
 
 "And I sang, and I screamed aloud, like 
 the wild thing they had driven me to be," the 
 weary voice of the narrator went on, "until 
 the neighborhood could hear my ravings and 
 came rushing in, while this whole end of the 
 village was in an uproar. With the coming 
 of the people the hordes of demons fled away 
 with shrieking laughter only, every night 
 for twelve long years they have returned to 
 torture me and I am tired tired." 
 
 Gradually the nearby families left the 
 neighborhood, being very much afraid when 
 in the night they could hear those ravings. 
 
 The Bible Woman remembered the silent, 
 empty houses past which her guide had led 
 her not one hour since. To her now they 
 spote mutely of the tangible outworking of 
 fear, as a force in the lives of the people of 
 her race. 
 
 Very diligently too had the head of the 
 house gone about securing relief for his little 
 lady wife. She was the mother of his son,
 
 90 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 and, besides, he loved her. Many an idol 
 shrine had been enriched by his gifts, many a 
 priest made to chuckle over the silver he hid 
 in his sleeve but all to no end. The ghoul- 
 ish visitants of the night still defied barred 
 doors, and with great fury they violated that 
 house. 
 
 Strange news had lately trickled through 
 to the afflicted family, concerning the woman 
 from down the river who was known as a 
 "Person of the Jesus Doctrine," and who 
 daily taught the women of the village, and 
 even went from house to house telling what 
 the people were calling the "Good News." 
 It was with the fervent hope that this Jesus 
 God, a new deity in that community pan- 
 theon, and about whom Siok-leng seemed to 
 know much, might outdo, in a contest of 
 strength, the malevolent disturbers of their 
 peace, that the family had importuned the 
 coming of the Bible Woman. 
 
 Very carefully, very prayerfully then, did 
 Siok-leng, sitting there, holding the cold lit- 
 tle hand of the woman beside her, tell how 
 that while she herself had no power over the
 
 THE LOOSENED GRIP 91 
 
 evil things of the night, he who was her 
 God was stronger than all the strong devils 
 that had poured forth from hell to lash her 
 into frenzy. It was he who could deliver her 
 from their thrall. She spoke very solemnly 
 that word, but also she spoke words concern- 
 ing the conditions upon which only that God, 
 never heard of by her before, could properly 
 be entreated to come to that house. 
 
 Certainly he, the only and all-powerful 
 One, would tolerate the presence there of no 
 other gods! All the idols must be taken 
 down from the shelf. If anywhere in all the 
 house, even in the darkest, most secret 
 corner, there was hidden the smallest, most 
 insignificant god yes, or even a most 
 precious one out it must come into the light 
 of day and go to its destruction with all these 
 others which must be burned out there in the 
 courtyard of Heaven's Well with an utter 
 and complete burning. All this did Siok- 
 leng say. 
 
 When the woman's eager assent was reg- 
 istered, also that of the father of her son, 
 and of that blue-coated light-of-the-eyes-of-
 
 92 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 his-parents himself, then a great smoke of 
 burning idols arose from the courtyard of 
 that dwelling, while the idol shelves in their 
 erstwhile most honorable place yawned 
 empty like a toothless mouth. 
 
 The menacing deities having been dis- 
 patched into the realm of such departed 
 things upon the smoke of their consuming, 
 then did Siok-leng begin her teachings of 
 very sacred and fundamental, yet withal very 
 simple, things in the genesis of the establish- 
 ment in that house of faith in the Doctrine. 
 
 Also Siok-leng opened to that anxious 
 family the Holy Classic, through \vhich was 
 revealed to them that kindly divine Physi- 
 cian who, when in the long ago he walked 
 the ways of men, out of poor tortured folk 
 like the mother of this house had cast many 
 devils. Because these noisome things knew 
 how futile was their case in combat with his 
 great power they did not even try to answer 
 back. There could be no answer to him, the 
 Bible Woman told them. 
 
 Also Siok-leng taught the eager woman, 
 now trembling with a great hopefulness that
 
 THE LOOSENED GRIP 93 
 
 her salvation was at hand, a little prayer. 
 Chinese lips were saying it that day, yet it 
 was the same petition which universal hu- 
 manity through the years and under the 
 stress of its burden has syllabled more often 
 than any other "Lord, save me." Indeed, 
 it was this simple prayer which, should the 
 demon intruders come that night, was to be 
 upon the lips of their harried victim, a most 
 holy and effectual talisman. 
 
 "If they come to-night," Siok-leng care- 
 fully admonished the woman, "at the very 
 first sight or sound of them, kneel down 
 quickly upon the floor, lift up your head 
 boldly, and your arms, and cry out this 
 prayer to Jesus Christ, who is more powerful 
 alone than all the devils in hell, and they will 
 leave you. Certainly they will go. Have 
 no fear. In the name of Jesus Christ they 
 must go." 
 
 So, praying for peace upon that house, the 
 Bible Woman went her way back to her 
 lodging. Only first she assured the family 
 that should they for any reason desire her 
 during the night, her glad feet would bring
 
 94 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 her to them. And for long hours through 
 that night Siok-leng prayed. In the behalf 
 of a suffering woman she prayed that ef- 
 fectual prayer which "changes things." 
 
 The azalea flowers that "all-over-the- 
 mountain-red," which splashes with gor- 
 geous color the hills of southern China 
 were shaking the dews of the night from 
 their flaunting pennants and the young 
 spring was laughing out loud in the golden 
 sunshine when, very early in the morning, 
 Siok-leng sped out to that erstwhile house 
 of sorrow upon the fringes of the little vil- 
 lage. 
 
 The outside gate stood ajar as though in 
 wide-hearted welcome, and an instant later 
 she stood inside the guest room, where only 
 a few hours ago she had held the cold little 
 hands of a soul-weary woman. She noted 
 that the empty idol shelves had been heaped 
 with glowing red azaleas and she won- 
 dered. 
 
 She wondered no longer when into the 
 guest room came unfalteringly, even though 
 there lingered a degree of languor in her
 
 THE LOOSENED GRIP 95 
 
 movement, that woman who for twelve long 
 years had been veritably a woman of great 
 sorrows. Very gently she came toward her 
 guest, her face raised and shining as with a 
 radiance not earthly, and withal overspread 
 with a great peace. 
 
 "Yes, they came," she answered the eager 
 interrogation of the Bible Woman. "Oh, yes, 
 they came !" And there were more than had 
 ever before swarmed through her doorway, 
 and they jeered and mocked and laughed as 
 though to terrorize her, and conquer her by 
 their very onslaught of hideous noise ! 
 
 But something, so she said, had blocked 
 them, where their fiery breath was almost 
 close enough to scorch and wither her. She 
 had slid from her chair to her knees there 
 upon the floor, as Siok-leng had expressly 
 instructed her, but now as the hateful horde 
 advanced, and in her soul she knew that the 
 ultimate crisis was at hand, almost her 
 leaden arms refused to be lifted up almost 
 some awful magnetism from below chained 
 her suffering face to the earth almost her 
 voice as she essayed to pray, that prayer,
 
 g6 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 "Lord, save me," seemed drowned by the 
 sound of her own pounding heart as well as 
 by demon shriekings. 
 
 In that final moment though, it was Siok- 
 leng's pure strong face which visualized it- 
 self for a moment before her frenzied vision. 
 Very clearly in her awful extremity, so she 
 afterward said, it was the sound of Siok- 
 leng's calm, convincing voice saying, even as 
 she herself had heard her say that very day : 
 "Certainly they will go ! Have no fear. In 
 the name of Jesus Christ, they must go!" 
 And as her own voice confidently arose above 
 the demon din, even before the little prayer 
 was finished, they did go ! 
 
 And there was great peace upon that 
 dwelling, which was never again in all the 
 years that followed a House of Sorrow, but a 
 House of Joy.
 
 VII 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 
 
 HEN we left home our program did 
 not include a jaunt through the 
 bandit country. But, thanks to 
 favoring circumstances when we 
 
 reached the Middle Kingdom, neither did it 
 
 preclude such a feature. 
 
 O, it's great to go a- jaunting, 
 
 Where a program doesn't bind you, 
 
 And if adventure you're a-wanting, 
 Cast your bait and one will find you. 
 
 Not that we absolutely courted adventure, 
 of course, but when it came our way at the 
 beck of a willing mind, we did not sidestep it. 
 Certainly we didn't! This particular un- 
 usual happening came about through a visit 
 to us while we lingered in the Happy Valley 
 of two missionary folk from up river. They 
 certainly had what Friend Chesterton would 
 designate "personality," those two! At 
 97
 
 98 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 least that is how I account for our ready 
 promise to them of a return visit back where 
 they told us they lived "Back in the moun- 
 tains in the bandit country, where you can't 
 go any farther." 
 
 Now, the jumping-off place had always 
 had an enticing sound to my adventurous 
 soul, and "where you can't go any farther" 
 was its equivalent. But "bandits" ! That 
 "sold" the proposition to me and well, we 
 went. The journey took us again far up the 
 stately old Ming, in the same old houseboat 
 poled by the same old crew. The whole dis- 
 tance covered was only a matter of a hun- 
 dred miles each way. But when, including 
 a stay of a couple of days at your destination, 
 the going takes you ten days, and means 
 houseboat and sampan, mountain chairs, and 
 much of the time your own good feet be- 
 cause there isn't a mile of railroad in the 
 province one feels quite traveled when once 
 more he is back in the Happy Valley. 
 
 The voyage started auspiciously, and all 
 went well for a few hours. Then the skipper 
 balked. He ran the houseboat over shore-
 
 TPIE BANDIT TRAIL 99 
 
 ward upon the very edge of a sand bar and 
 absolutely refused to make the craft "walk" 
 a pole's length farther. The little lady who 
 runs a big industrial work for friendless Chi- 
 nese widows down the river, was our be- 
 loved personal conductor along this bandit 
 trail, and although most politely she urged 
 the dower-faced captain to resume the chan- 
 nel immediately, she was politely, but I 
 thought a bit scornfully, refused. Then the 
 Personal Conductor scolded in her best and 
 most forceful Chinese, only to be as em- 
 phatically, even noisily, informed that the 
 boat would not "walk." 
 
 The reason? Perfectly simple. Had not 
 the skipper told Cing-Soi, the foreign 
 woman's houseman, when he bargained for 
 the boat, that in the contract there must be 
 the furnishing of one indispensable item by 
 the foreigners themselves? 
 
 Now the bargain as made was that our 
 party of five was to pay an aggregate amount 
 of three dollars per day which covered the 
 entire expense for all of us, save that for 
 food and bedding. The latter we must pro-
 
 ioo THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 vide. But the indispensable "something" 
 without which the skipper would not allow 
 his craft to be poled another stroke "What 
 was it?" urged the missionary. 
 
 Then it came out, the statement of this 
 astounding omission of us most negligent 
 foreigners, which proved to be the Amer- 
 ican flag nothing less. Shades of Betsy 
 Ross and this was China ! Our skipper 
 proceeded to elaborate his point. Did not 
 the honorable but careless foreign guests 
 know that they were embarked upon a some- 
 what questionable voyage which would carry 
 them through the very heart of the bandit 
 country? Also were they not aware that 
 the Chinese flag (when this protection was 
 mildly suggested by one of us imbecile for- 
 eigners) would but invite the confiscation of 
 the houseboat, should the bandits in their 
 maraudings around spy us from the shore? 
 Absolutely, the Flowery Flag would be but 
 as a painted rag in the eyes of the buccaneers. 
 In fact, what the skipper said, all of which is 
 too voluminous to record, was that were we 
 to persist against his advice, we might as
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 101 
 
 well order our coffins or, as far as he was 
 concerned, its American equivalent, "Noth- 
 ing doing," and he meant it too. 
 
 Then, as often happens, in the very mo- 
 ment of despair came inspiration. Came the 
 vision of a church in Boston, back home a 
 million miles away it seemed that morning 
 a church crowded to the doors with mis- 
 sionary pilgrims. Came also the memory of 
 one face in the throng of a silken flag sent 
 forward with the loving urge that it be the 
 talisman upon the long trail which one in 
 that Sabbath day multitude was about to 
 begin. 
 
 It was this flag, then, which, sewed by 
 eager fingers to a stair rod, one of the three 
 holding down a bit of matting on the diminu- 
 tive stairs leading from cabin to deck, was in 
 a real American jiffy flying bravely from the 
 stern of our craft. Most devoutly did we 
 thank Heaven as well as the generous heart 
 of the donor of that blessed bit of silk that 
 its proportions were sufficiently ample to 
 splash the sunshine with color enough to be 
 seen from the shore.
 
 IO2 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 The effect of this improvised flag raising 
 was instantaneous. The skipper emerged 
 from surliness to serenity, from scowls to 
 smiles. The coolies stripped off their 
 patched jackets and reached for their poles. 
 The very eyes of our boat bulged with be- 
 nignity as, to the weird crooning of our boat- 
 men's song, we once more cut the upstream 
 current. 
 
 That was one unique cruise, let me tell 
 you! There was a world of folk upon the 
 river. The women of the sampans, their 
 floating domiciles drawn for purposes of 
 house-cleaning upon occasional stretches of 
 sandy beach, were conducting vigorous cam- 
 paigns of scrubbing. Cunning pig-tailed 
 kiddies frolicked on the sands, while fat little 
 babies, securely anchored to the boats by 
 ropes tied about their middles, made frantic 
 efforts to fall off and get drowned. Every 
 sort of weird-looking craft which could be 
 conjured by one's imagination, or dreamed of 
 by a poet, or sung about by a singer, floated 
 past us on its way to the sea. There were 
 great brown sails, like the outspread wings
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 103 
 
 of some huge, impossible bird. There were 
 tattered, ragged ones and others, white once, 
 now gray, splotched with blue patches the 
 color in which all China clothes itself. There 
 were silent, mysterious craft which passed 
 us, and others from which peered out cu- 
 rious but kindly faces. The family wash, 
 consisting inevitably and unvaryingly of blue 
 coats and trousers, flew with animation from 
 the bamboo poles, upon which, across some 
 quarter of many boats it was hung, or, 
 rather, impaled, since clothespins were 
 minus. 
 
 It was a journey which took us through 
 the tumultuous upper reaches of the Ming, 
 one to prove the mettle of our boatmen and 
 the poise of our own nerves. Gigantic rocks 
 and bowlders, as well as hidden and danger- 
 ous reefs, here strew the river bed, while the 
 rushing waters, maddened at the obstruc- 
 tions in their seaward course, plunge franti- 
 cally at the houseboat as though to tear it to 
 atoms. No crew could pole against such 
 frenzied force, and alone steer our craft 
 around the jagged horn of a rock of immense
 
 IO4 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 bulk which thrust itself outward as though 
 to gore our prow. 
 
 Time and time again they attempted it, to 
 fail as often, every new venture sending our 
 poor little boat back again downstream far 
 beyond the point where the last fresh start 
 was made. The whole effort finally ended 
 with half our crew, harnessed with ropes 
 which were firmly fastened to the boat, 
 crawling across the rocks to the shore. Once 
 there, bent, like beasts, upon all fours, they 
 crept along the mountainside, and with the 
 terrific poling of the straining, sweating, 
 yelling coolies on the houseboat we finally 
 rounded the point and glided peacefully into 
 the placid waters of the channel. 
 
 While all these noisy nautical maneuvers 
 were in process I saw creeping along the 
 precipitous sides of the mountainous shore, 
 fairly in the wake of our straining crew, a 
 little blue-coated, blue-trousered woman. 
 The memory of her will always prick at my 
 heart. She too was creeping upon hands 
 and feet, and harnessed about her shoulders 
 was the cable pulled taut from its fastening
 
 Photographed liy the author 
 
 THE STRUGGLING BIT OF FEMININITY ON 
 THE SHORE
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 105 
 
 to the big lumber sampan, which behind us 
 had all day been making its slow course up- 
 stream. 
 
 To some mother's heart back in baby days 
 she might have been "Fragrant Flower" or 
 "Thousand Gold" I do not know. Probably 
 to the very boat she was pulling, as in some 
 sheltered harbor it lay near the great city 
 below, she was carried one day a bride in her 
 red chair. Perhaps from under its bamboo 
 cover in the dark of some night had trem- 
 bled the feeble wail of the first baby she had 
 cuddled next to her heart. Others had come 
 afterward; we could see several sturdy 
 youngsters playing upon the diminutive rear 
 deck while an implacable-looking old mother- 
 in-law squatted in solid comfort, with her to- 
 bacco pipe in her hands. 
 
 Forward on the boat, owner and overlord 
 of all he surveyed, stood the head of this 
 floating residence, a stalwart Chinese man. 
 With raucous voice and angry gesticulation 
 he was shouting directions to that little, 
 despised, creeping thing upon the shore, his 
 wife, whose little brown shoulders were raw
 
 io6 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 under the chafing of the rope, as upon all 
 fours she strained to the killing point, as she 
 tugged the sampan through that frantic cur- 
 rent. 
 
 My soul turned sick within me as, fasci- 
 nated with the very tragedy of it all, I stared 
 wide-eyed at the struggling bit of femininity 
 on the shore, until, our own boat rounding a 
 turn in the river, it was lost to my vision. 
 But to me for always that Daughter of 
 Cathay, bearing not only her rightful 
 burden of wifehood and motherhood, but the 
 back-breaking load of an all but impossible 
 manual task, must symbolize the woman- 
 hood of the world where Christ is not. In 
 the name of the Eternal Equities can it be 
 possible that the women of America shall 
 always have so much, and those of the Orient 
 90 little of that which makes life radiant ? 
 
 But it is near the end of our second day out 
 and the sun declines. With the last of its 
 gold it sets a crown upon the mountaintops, 
 and fuses into gorgeous carmine the azaleas 
 which splash their slopes. For it is azalea 
 time in China, and one entirely ceases to
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 107 
 
 wonder why the character which designates 
 the brilliant blossom translated literally 
 " All-over-the-mountain-red. " 
 
 If there be a question in your mind as to 
 China's claim to being the "Flowery King- 
 dom" just take the Bandit Trail in May 
 through the mountains to Kucheng. Young 
 spring had tripped that way a day or two 
 before us, and she had spilled her flower bas- 
 ket. There were long, white sprays of bridal 
 wreath, and a fragrant network of wild 
 honeysuckle, clambering over the green 
 undergrowth. 
 
 A single bloom of that shower of briar 
 roses could not have been covered by one of 
 your grandmother's flaring teacups which 
 you will term exaggeration, but which, upon 
 my word, is not. The pear flowers scattered 
 their petals like snowflakes upon our heads, 
 and wide-eyed blue violets looked out from 
 the green lacery of ferns. Wild strawberries 
 promised a luscious find to some subsequent 
 wayfarer, and the pampas-grass whispered 
 gentle secrets into our ears as we passed. 
 
 The watery surface of the paddy fields was
 
 io8 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 beginning to show a sheen of pale jade green, 
 and the feathery fronds of the tall bamboos 
 were joyously bending under the sweet 
 breath of the wind. Somewhere in those 
 mountains through which we trekked that 
 day in our swinging chairs the spring sat 
 enthroned. We walked her path, we almost 
 saw the elusive young thing herself. 
 
 But remember this was also the Bandit 
 Trail, and the very stones which paved it 
 had only a few months before run red with 
 blood. Again and again our shouts to each 
 other were stilled, as our caravan filed si- 
 lently, Indian fashion, through the desolate 
 ruins of once thriving villages. Nothing 
 now remained of them but charred and crum- 
 bling walls, over which even in so brief a 
 time and, as if to cover their wounds, kindly 
 Mother Nature was throwing a garment of 
 softest green. 
 
 The uprising of the bandits, w r hose per- 
 sonnel included ex-soldiers, and even men 
 who were themselves mountain men, had 
 been widespread and violent. Masquerading 
 under the patriotic cloak of "Love of Coun-
 
 Fhotogr:i plied by the author 
 
 "THE FEATHERY FRONDS OF THE TALL 
 BAMBOOS"
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 109 
 
 try," the name by which they designated their 
 order, they mustered their legions by thou- 
 sands, declared death to all officials and if 
 refused tribute money by the villages, looted, 
 murdered, and burned. 
 
 To the big walled city down in the plain 
 during that veritable reign of terror fled 
 thousands of refugees from the sorely dis- 
 turbed heights round about. It was to this 
 same city, rising like an enchanted island 
 from a sea of green, and etched out of a 
 golden sunset, which gladdened our eyes as 
 our coolies swung down the last descent, and 
 we knew that we beheld the end of the trail. 
 But not half so much did the sight of the city 
 gladden our eyes as did another. Finally 
 down the last mountainside we in our chairs, 
 now grown hard in the long going, wound 
 past a living streamer of blue a human 
 streamer made up of hundreds of school- 
 boys, immaculate in their clean blue cotton 
 gowns, who with their professors, dignified 
 beyond expression and quite as kindly, had 
 gathered there to give us welcome. Outside 
 the city gate were assembled the girls in quite
 
 no THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 as imposing a line of their own, while behind 
 them grouped the older women from the 
 Bible Training School. It was the girls too, 
 I love to remember, who gave us that 
 thrilling firecracker salute! Firecrackers! 
 After China no worldly welcome for me, I 
 fear, can ever be quite complete without 
 their noisy heartsomeness. 
 
 The Doctor, however, in the Mission 
 House on the hill was the spellbinder, who 
 away into the wee hours held us enthralled 
 with stories of the bandits. For let me tell 
 you this Doctor and his was a double title, 
 by the way, attained by the medical as well as 
 the theological route had had more than 
 one "close-up" with these Gentlemen of the 
 Greenwood. As a skillful surgeon and physi- 
 cian in his own hospital as also among the 
 poor in their own wretched dwellings he was 
 known to all who lived in that section of the 
 province. 
 
 As shepherd of the flock in the fold of the 
 church with a cross on its spire down in the 
 teeming city, and upon occasions, the itiner- 
 ating preacher who had found his way into
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL in 
 
 many of those "other villages," his name was 
 hallowed in a thousand homes. It was this 
 Doctor, then, who in the waning of a wonder- 
 ful day related to us how upon a certain night 
 not so long before our coming he had been 
 the guest of the bandit chief and his savage 
 crew in a village high up in the mountains 
 and with no man of his own race near. 
 
 All through those months of bloody ma- 
 rauding there was one fact which was out- 
 standing in its significance. Though death 
 without mercy was to be the portion of all 
 officials luckless enough to fall into their 
 hands, and a similar fate was to be visited 
 upon the inhabitants of resisting villages, by 
 solemn edict of the bandit chief himself upon 
 neither the person nor the property of Chris- 
 tians were violent hands to be laid. If there 
 were needed convincing proof of the prac- 
 tical power of the Christian faith upon the 
 non-Christian mind, it would seem to be here. 
 But with such protection available for be- 
 lievers it followed logically that just at that 
 particular season the church both within the 
 walled city and in the surrounding villages
 
 ii2 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 was deluged with applications from those 
 who craved entrance. Verily, to save one's 
 life is worth the abandonment of even the 
 family idols! 
 
 But there was no "revival" of this sort 
 encouraged by the mission just now. Those 
 recruiting agencies for souls, the churches, 
 except when regular services were held, were 
 absolutely closed, Be assured that those 
 missionaries of ours, the Doctor and all the 
 rest, both to bandit and brothers are likewise 
 Apostles of the Square Deal. For that 
 reason there was displayed upon the breast 
 of every Christian a scrap of yellow, the 
 characters upon which registered his name, 
 his church, and the exact location of the lat- 
 ter. As proof that these were authentic 
 facts there were appended the name of the 
 pastor, the superintendent of the district, and 
 the mission director the last being the Doc- 
 tor himself. The name-roll too by which 
 these established ones could be verified, was 
 not one of these nailed to the door of every 
 church ? 
 
 It was during these anxious days that the
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 113 
 
 Doctor, urged by some human necessity in 
 a distant mountain village, had taken his 
 way there on foot, accompanied only by one 
 of his students from the mission school. The 
 human necessity dealt with, the Doctor and 
 his aide, having covered some distance upon 
 their homeward way, found themselves with 
 evening upon them still a matter of some six- 
 teen miles from their objective. More, they 
 had thrust upon them by wayfarers upon the 
 mountain path as they neared this particular 
 village the rather disconcerting information 
 that, since it had recently been appropriated 
 by the robber chief and several hundred of 
 his followers, it would be a most desirable 
 locality to avoid. 
 
 The Doctor, devoutly wishing that days in 
 this season were longer, and making a hasty 
 but definite decision to speed up and cover 
 the miles between him and home by morning, 
 was entirely unafraid, but decidedly dis- 
 gusted, to be met at the edge of the town by 
 the bearer of a polite invitation from the big 
 bandit for an interview. 
 
 Now, several critical cases in the hospital
 
 H4 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 and some important parish matters were 
 very much just then the stronger urge in 
 the Doctor's program than such casual mat- 
 ters as visits to bandit chiefs. So with all 
 proper politeness no one could outdo the 
 medical man there he instructed the runner 
 to return to headquarters with the message 
 that the most unworthy and insignificant 
 foreign doctor was very much in a hurry, and 
 while it caused him great regret to decline 
 the most honorable Chief's gracious invita- 
 tion to penetrate into his august seclusion, 
 he must hasten upon his way. 
 
 On the two men from the valley sped along 
 the winding trail (for the black night was 
 coming down upon them) only to be over- 
 taken in time by the second runner. He 
 carried a message like unto the first, that the 
 voice of the most exalted foreign Doctor 
 would be esteemed as pleasantest music in 
 the ears of the Chief, who begged that the 
 honorable Doctor would condescend to re- 
 main for the night under his own most un- 
 worthy, if somewhat temporary, roof. 
 
 So back trudged the head of the hospital in
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 115 
 
 the plain, murmuring under his breath to 
 pacify his own impatience at such an ex- 
 hibition of Chinese perseverance "After all 
 it costs nothing to be polite." I have the Doc- 
 tor's word that he said nothing more than 
 that! 
 
 It was quite the most pretentious house 
 in that village, now deserted by all but the 
 bandit crew, to which the Doctor was con- 
 ducted. Through the outer gate, across the 
 court of Heaven's Well, and into the guest 
 hall he followed his guide. Then after be- 
 ing much kowtowed to by various bandit dig- 
 nitaries and the making of much ceremonious 
 politeness upon his own part, into the most 
 august presence of the worst outlaw in south 
 China was ushered the Doctor. 
 
 And the outlaw himself ? Oh, he was no- 
 body of very terrible personal presence, so 
 the Doctor told me. In fact, he was still in 
 his twenties, and a real boyishness albeit a 
 somewhat savage boyishness seemed still 
 to garment his personality. That he had 
 outstanding indications of such qualities as 
 would make for crude and cruel leadership
 
 n6 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 there was no denying, and inwardly the 
 visitor congratulated himself, as he was con- 
 ducted to the place of honor at the right of 
 his host as he sat upon the bed, that the velvet 
 side of banditry, he had reason to believe, 
 was turned toward him. The inevitable 
 watermelon seeds, the tea and the cakes were 
 immediately forthcoming. You might easily 
 have supposed that company of cutthroats to 
 be perfectly tame and tractable Chinese men 
 as with the Doctor, dangling his legs over 
 the side of the Chinese board bed, they all, 
 there in the lantern glow, ate their cakes and 
 munched their melon seeds in peace and 
 quiet. But no one could blame the guest, if 
 his imagination led him (he knowing them 
 so well) to fancy he saw red blood upon the 
 hands that served him! 
 
 It was after all formalities and conventions 
 had been scrupulously observed and his per- 
 sonal staff dismissed by the Chief that there 
 was revealed to the Doctor the real reason 
 for this somewhat forced seance. The ban- 
 dit stated that for many moons he had had 
 great desire to have words with the man who
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 117 
 
 was now his guest, but that until this very 
 night he had failed to attain the desire of his 
 heart. It became evident early in the some- 
 what one-sided conversation which there- 
 after ensued, that the outlaw was for some 
 reason or other making very decided efforts 
 to meet his guest on a positively fraternal 
 basis ! To further promote his obvious pur- 
 pose in thus entertaining his wholly un- 
 willing guest, he advanced presently the 
 somewhat astounding argument, that, 
 though appearances in proof thereof were 
 usually wanting, his conviction was that the 
 mission of Christians and that of bandits 
 were really identical. 
 
 The members of his army, to whom he had 
 applied the opprobrious titles with which the 
 whole countryside was familiar these were, 
 according to the Chief, honest-to-goodness 
 "Love of Country Men." They were pa- 
 triots of the highest order, bent solely upon 
 the uplift of their fellow men. As such they 
 were entitled to their living 1 at the hands of 
 the populace, and, failing to receive it, they 
 were certainly acting quite within their
 
 n8 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 rights to appropriate by force that which 
 their necessities required. 
 
 Were not the Christians likewise "uplift" 
 people? Certainly the bandits themselves 
 recognized them as such, and had treated 
 them and should continue to treat them as 
 brethren! Was there not pasted upon the 
 wall of the very room in which they were 
 then conferring the list of rules issued by the 
 Chief himself, governing all bandit proce- 
 dure ? And would the honorable Doctor no- 
 tice the first of these? 
 
 So there in the flare of the primitive lan- 
 tern which his self-constituted host himself 
 held high, the Doctor read in Chinese char- 
 acters : 
 
 "To any man killing a Christian or burn- 
 ing or injuring a Christian church death." 
 
 All of this, you have surmised, was leading 
 up to something, and the big Chief's particu- 
 lar cat was now out of the bag. The big 
 Chief, that most bloody and terrifying some- 
 body in the whole province, wanted to build 
 a church! He stated his convictions and 
 made his proposition very clearly and, the
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 119 
 
 Doctor assured me, almost eagerly. His 
 convictions were that churches were good, 
 and made for the uplift of the community. 
 So were Christians. After the present un- 
 rest in the mountains had settled down a bit 
 he himself very much desired a church in 
 his own village. In fact, so earnestly did 
 his heart desire such a consummation that he, 
 being possessed with a fair share of this 
 world's goods that he himself would con- 
 tribute the plot of ground upon which the 
 church should be builded. To bring about 
 his heart's desire he would go even further 
 he would furnish all the necessary funds 
 that the walls might be raised and the build- 
 ing completed. All this time this polite cut- 
 throat had himself conducted the major por- 
 tion of the conversation. Now he waited 
 for his guest to speak. 
 
 You may conjure up the picture to your 
 own satisfaction. The Doctor, high up in a 
 mountain village almost on the edge of the 
 world, the enforced guest of the man at the 
 beck of whose finger villages had gone up in 
 smoke, treasures were looted, and hundreds
 
 I2O THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 of innocent folk come to their deaths ! And 
 it was this man of blood, surrounded by 
 three hundred or more of his kind, the most 
 hated, the most feared in a province, who 
 was proposing to a lone missionary in a hovel 
 on a mountaintop at midnight, to build a 
 Christian church ! 
 
 I think I should have liked to see the 
 Doctor just then. He was a Manxman be- 
 fore ever he had won a degree and his hair 
 had a dash of red in its fiber and mayhap, 
 also his temper. At any rate he warmed up 
 considerably, albeit his eyes held a twinkle 
 as he outlined the potential proportions of 
 the bandit chief's proposition. To begin 
 with, it was evidently the purpose of this 
 adroit marauder to attempt to stage a come- 
 back into peaceful pursuits of life. It may 
 have been that down in some musty corner 
 of his heart there remained one good impulse 
 which was prompting him to make amends in 
 the sight of the people, and while the time 
 seemed opportune, for his career of murder 
 and crime. A church would furnish tangible 
 evidence of a change of heart. The accom-
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 121 
 
 plishment of his plan would go a long way 
 toward establishing him in the good graces 
 of the public. 
 
 But to the Doctor, sitting there in state 
 on the bed beside the bandit, there was quite 
 a different aspect to this church-building 
 proposition. While it was altogether de- 
 sirable that the Chief should mend his ways, 
 a church which should stand as a monument 
 to such transformation would be plainly 
 undesirable. Certain it is that to most of 
 the community it would have been substan- 
 tial evidence that gross sins could be atoned 
 for by very material means. The priests in 
 their temples were telling them the same 
 thing. Then the Doctor didn't particularly 
 care to start the "one-man church" in China. 
 The present proposition would result, if ac- 
 cepted, not solely in a "one-man church," 
 which of a certainty such a one would be, 
 but a bandit-bossed church at that ! Many of 
 the villagers whose homes had been deso- 
 lated and whose fields had been ruined and 
 whose relatives had been killed, at the order 
 of this would-be benefactor, might be a bit
 
 122 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 nervous about going to his church. This 
 should not be, for surely the doors of a true 
 church should swing wide upon their hinges, 
 and no fear should hover there! 
 
 All this the Doctor elucidated honestly and 
 plainly to his host, there in the dim light of 
 the dying lantern flame that night. Also he 
 preached to him that night of One who had 
 said, in the long ago, and was repeating it 
 to-day to guilty souls: "Though your sins 
 be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow : 
 though they be red like crimson, they shall 
 be as wool." 
 
 Very early in the morning the Doctor and 
 his student, having bided safely with the ban- 
 dits for the night, struck the trail down the 
 mountainside for home. 
 
 If you are asking if the story ends here, 
 I am telling you that it does not quite for 
 I have in my treasure sheaf from China a 
 bit of pasteboard a calling card it is on 
 which are three sets of most imposing char- 
 acters. Upon the reverse side the Doctor 
 himself, who gave me this trophy, has writ- 
 ten with his own hand, " 'Mr. Dang,' Ku-
 
 THE BANDIT TRAIL 123 
 
 cheng Bandit, now 'Col. Dang/ in Govern- 
 ment Service." 
 
 The Colonel had been his recent visitor. 
 
 THE BANDIT'S CALLINO CA&D
 
 VIII 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 JHEN the stage is set for this epi- 
 sode, the telling of an old tale by 
 an old scholar, there must be in- 
 cluded a glowing fire upon a 
 hearth, around which down in China's south 
 country there gathers a shivering group of 
 foreigners. 
 
 If I must clear myself of inaccuracy as to 
 "shivering" in the south country, I would 
 simply say that down there in the Happy 
 Valley, after the rainy season has thor- 
 oughly saturated the landscape for a week or 
 two, folks do shiver over a fire, provided 
 they have one, whether or not they are sup- 
 posed to. 
 
 I myself know of no climate on earth 
 which absolutely trues itself with its hall- 
 mark do you? Climate everywhere has 
 a chronic habit of being "unusual." Once I 
 124
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 125 
 
 actually saw it snow where "Afric's sunny 
 fountains," according to the hymn-book, 
 were supposed perpetually to play. 
 
 But to go back to the Happy Valley. 
 There was a crackling fire on the hearth at 
 the Mission House, and the smoke from the 
 aromatic wood that was burning rose, sweet 
 like temple incense, save that unlike that it 
 suggested wholesomeness and purity. What 
 matter that the rain and wind battled about 
 the corners of the house, pursuing each other 
 across the lawn from whence occasionally we 
 could hear the limbs of the old camphor tree 
 crack like artillery play under their com- 
 bined assault. If the penetrating chill had 
 crept inside and clammily trailed across walls 
 and floor, there was also the cheering circle 
 of warmth from our fire, and we, a group of 
 wayfarers, drawn to this spot from devious 
 distances, comforted ourselves within its 
 cheery glow. 
 
 Likewise there was with us the Old 
 Scholar. I am not yet sure when he entered. 
 Certainly, he had not been there while there 
 were being exchanged our experiences
 
 126 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 apropos of the junk shop expedition of the 
 afternoon. Oh, those altogether enticing 
 Chinese junk shops my memory thrills to 
 them yet! Hidden away in queer crannies, 
 around unlooked-for corners, in mysterious 
 alleyways, all of which somewhere inter- 
 sected the big street, they yielded forth to 
 the eager searcher treasures more or less 
 ancient (the Chinese gauge of value), always 
 fascinating, as also cheap if the persistent 
 searcher can worst the merchant at the di- 
 verting little Chinese game of browbeating. 
 Certainly, the Old Scholar was not pres- 
 ent while everybody in the fireside group 
 talked at once. Not even we daring Occi- 
 dentals would be sufficiently blatant to frivol 
 in the presence of such a perfect product of 
 China's age, dignity, and learning. None of 
 us, had we been interrogated, could have ac- 
 curately told just when the visitor out of the 
 storm entered the room. Suddenly, quite 
 without announcement or abruptness, he was 
 there, standing well within the door, gravely 
 saluting us, while we, instinctively rising, 
 were apprehensively taking a mental inven-
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 127 
 
 tory of our probable ability to appear less 
 boorish than we felt. 
 
 As we surveyed him there, tall and im- 
 pressive, his aristocratic line accentuated by 
 a long black coat of silk, and his finely 
 shaped head crowned by a satin cap with a 
 glistening knob of red, it was like being sud- 
 denly confronted by some venerable though 
 still forceful king or potentate, without be- 
 ing arrayed in one's festive garments. We 
 foreigners may think ourselves the ultimate 
 in matters of proper conventions, but how at 
 our many blunderings must the Oriental 
 laugh behind his facial mask of benignant 
 imperturbability ! 
 
 There was a genial gravity, if I may so 
 speak, which clothed our visitor. It was as 
 though the sunshine of his soul smiled se- 
 renely above the long years of his human 
 experience with its various vicissitudes. 
 
 For thirty years had the Old Scholar in- 
 ducted, with varying degrees of success, the 
 foreigners of the Concession into the terri- 
 fying mazes of the speech of his ancestors. 
 No Oriental with his most exalted reverence
 
 128 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 for a teacher could ever surpass the admira- 
 tion and veneration which was felt for the 
 Old Scholar by every foreigner who had 
 been so favored of the gods as to be his pupil. 
 
 For the major part of those thirty years 
 during which there in the Happy Valley he 
 had listened to young missionaries in their 
 frantic attempts to "coo the tones" which 
 achievement in Chinese seems to underlie all 
 possibility of success he had stoutly re- 
 fused to believe the Doctrine. For all those 
 years he had read in his daily lessons with 
 them such teachings out of the Chinese 
 translation of the New Testament as were 
 never uttered by the sages who spoke in his 
 Classics. Obdurately he withstood their un- 
 mistakable power, even though with clinched 
 teeth and against his conviction. He was a 
 Chinese of the Chinese. He would admit no 
 Western God to dominate his thought, much 
 less to sit upon the throne of his heart. As 
 were his fathers before him so would he be, 
 and his mental conclusion toward the Doc- 
 trine was the Chinese equivalent for "Finis." 
 
 Then Kwan-Yin, his wife, a humble but
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 129 
 
 loving follower of Jesus Christ, had died. 
 Very truly had the Old Scholar loved her, 
 and withal it was the light which had shone 
 in^he Vale of the Shadows, as she unafraid 
 passed through, which led him to her God. 
 They tell me that no one who saw the Old 
 Scholar move gravely down the aisle to the 
 altar in church that Sabbath morning, when 
 having made his great and final decision he 
 formally allied himself with the people of 
 the Doctrine, will be likely ever to forget it. 
 When we knew him it was years after that, 
 and when being thoroughly established in 
 the truth, he towered in kingly character 
 above the rank and file of men even as over 
 across the Ming, Kushan, the sacred moun- 
 tain, looks down at the little hills at her feet. 
 But it was not of himself that the guest 
 at our fireside spoke that evening while the 
 wind and rain reveled outside and, all po- 
 liteness having been performed, we once 
 more at our ease sat in a circle about the 
 glowing fire, widened a bit now by his se- 
 rene presence. It was of things Chinese 
 that he spoke, much that he told us being
 
 130 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 first-hand information in regard to quaint 
 and curious customs of Cathay, in response 
 to our eager questionings. 
 
 In all my quiver of lore and legend culled 
 from time to time in many climes there is 
 not treasured any more exquisitely lovely 
 than the tale told that wonderful night, by 
 the Old Scholar, of the River Dragon's 
 Bride. As much like he told it to us as it is 
 in me here to repeat it, I am faithfully telling 
 it to you. 
 
 For five thousand years the folklore and 
 fairy tales of China have been written down 
 in books. Long before that they lived in the 
 hearts of the people. I gathered from what 
 the narrator said indeed that to-day, as ever, 
 once out of school the Chinese pay no greater 
 attention to their Classics, provided they be 
 not scholars by profession, than do Amer- 
 icans to theirs. Fiction and folklore are 
 loved by old and young among these imag- 
 inative and lovable folk, and probably far 
 more than the entire bulk of their Classics 
 do these influence their mind. 
 
 When, therefore, little olive-skinned chil-
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 131 
 
 dren point to a canoe-like craft, long, slen- 
 der, graceful, carefully protected alike from 
 sun and rain in some conspicuous spot near 
 their community center had not we our- 
 selves often seen such an one in our faring 
 through the river country? they will be 
 told that once upon the day of the Dragon 
 Festival this boat was a winner in a furious 
 race with boats of other villages. And the 
 story I am telling you as accounting for the 
 Dragon Boat Races is the same one which 
 for a thousand years Chinese mothers have 
 told their children. 
 
 It was very long ago when first these 
 strange events were recorded. It was in 
 that golden age of old Cathay when the jus- 
 tice of Heaven seemed most actively em- 
 ployed with the affairs of men, and all the 
 Flowery Kingdom rejoiced because of 
 abounding prosperity. 
 
 But there came one dark day when the 
 beloved Emperor, he who sat in the Purple 
 Palace, ruled in righteousness and dispensed 
 with equity and justice the affairs of state, 
 laid aside his scepter adorned with jade and
 
 132 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 virgin gold, and mounted up to become a 
 guest of the Dragon on High. 
 
 There then arose in the land an Emperor 
 who was utterly selfish at heart. Misrule 
 and wicked craftiness and great cruelty char- 
 acterized his reign, and the people, bowed 
 under oppression, mourned because of the 
 evil days which had fallen upon them. The 
 gods themselves turned deaf ears toward 
 them, though they crowded the temples and 
 cast before the altars their most precious 
 possessions. The smoke of costly incense, 
 freighted with the pitiful petitions of the 
 people, rolled upward from every shrine in 
 the land. To crown their sorrows there came 
 down upon the stricken country, already re- 
 duced to direst penury by the failure of crops 
 and the levy of heavy taxes, a famine so sore 
 that no record of such an one had ever been 
 written down in all the annals of the Middle 
 Kingdom. 
 
 On such a day of human misery and stress 
 certain evil priests, acting willingly under 
 the direction of the unrighteous king, who 
 saw here a fine chance to benefit materially
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 133 
 
 in purse out of human suffering ancient 
 ancestor that he was of the modern profiteer 
 proclaimed an oracle from the gods. It 
 had been divinely revealed, so they blatantly 
 affirmed, that only would prosperity and hap- 
 piness again descend upon the stricken king- 
 dom were an offering, inconceivably great 
 and precious, made to the terrible Dragon 
 God whose habitation was in the slimy depths 
 of the river. No wonder that the frenzied 
 people, rising from their hunger and disease, 
 clamored loudly that no gift which could 
 lift them out of their distress could be too 
 valuable, no offering too costly. 
 
 When later they learned from the lips 
 of the perfidious priests that the only 
 oblation acceptable to the angry Dragon of 
 the River would be the loveliest maid in all 
 the realm, arrayed in bridal grandeur and 
 bedecked w r ith jewels worthy of a king's ran- 
 som, they could scarce believe their ears. 
 And when, moreover, they knew that upon 
 a certain day to be proclaimed the luckless 
 lady was to be conveyed in her nuptial chair 
 of red to the water's edge, from thence in
 
 134 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 a flower-festooned barge to be rowed by si- 
 lent oarsmen to her doom in midstream, there 
 was mourning over all the land. 
 
 But to the credulous populace all this was 
 believed to be the will of the gods. They had 
 suffered much. Evidently, the wrath of the 
 gods could be appeased only by some such 
 costly sacrifice. 
 
 The thing was done, and later upon a 
 lonely beach the body of the ill-fated Bride 
 of Death, stripped of its jewels by agents of 
 the diabolical priests, floated down the river's 
 current to be lost to sight forever in the sea. 
 Strange to relate, the plagues which devas- 
 tated the land were stayed, and it was small 
 wonder that thereafter for hundreds of years, 
 upon the annual recurrence of that day, to 
 provide against the future fury of the venge- 
 ful River Dragon, a similar tragic sacrifice 
 was made. 
 
 One day after a long time, there ascended 
 the imperial throne, by the road of the con- 
 queror, a most upright young emperor who 
 was set to exalt all good and put down evil. 
 Immediately discerning the hideous fraud
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 135 
 
 which for so long had been perpetrated upon 
 the unsuspecting people by the evil descend- 
 ants of those priests of former days, he re- 
 solved for once and all to put an end to it. 
 
 For the first time during his reign the day 
 approached, the fifth day of the fifth moon, 
 when once more there was to be chosen the 
 hapless victim who was doomed to be offered 
 to the River Dragon. 
 
 The choice, made by a self-appointed com- 
 mission of tw r o priests and a conscienceless 
 priestess, fell upon the idolized and only 
 daughter of a high official family. Beauti- 
 ful beyond all words was the chosen maid. 
 All the terms applied by ancient poets to the 
 ravishing beauty of court favorites might 
 have been employed in describing her. Had 
 one inch been added to her height she had 
 been too tall. Her stature diminished by a 
 hair's breadth would have made her too 
 short. One more fleck of powder had ren- 
 dered her too pale, while another touch of 
 rouge would have ruined her color. Like 
 the plumage of the jewel bird were her ador- 
 able eyebrows and her skin was as satin. Her
 
 136 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 waist was like a roll of new silk and her 
 teeth like small white shells. Her many 
 suitors, lured from afar by rumors of her 
 loveliness, covered their faces, even when 
 they glimpsed her from a distance, unable 
 to bear the splendor of her charms. It was 
 such an one as this princess over whose luck- 
 less head the muddy waters of the river were 
 soon to close, to satisfy, not an angry river 
 deity, but rather the insatiable greed of the 
 evil priests. 
 
 The family of the princess was mad with 
 grief. The only son, her brother, clad in 
 coarse sackcloth, visited the temple and upon 
 his knees before the idols vowed to perform 
 the extreme rite of consuming his own cooked 
 flesh; he would renounce his inheritance as 
 the only son of his father, and for the rest of 
 his life beg, a mendicant, from place to place, 
 could only the awful edict which pronounced 
 his adored sister's doom be revoked. The 
 whole city was plunged into mourning but 
 it was all to no avail. The decision of the 
 gods, as revealed to the Commission of 
 Three, must stand.
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 137 
 
 Preparations for the bridal of death were 
 set in motion. Almost all the city was bid- 
 den to the feast, which, according to custom, 
 must be given by the father of the bride be- 
 fore she should start in her marriage chair 
 upon the fateful journey from which she 
 would never return. 
 
 Now there was one in the capital city who 
 was not bidden to the feast, and strange to 
 say, this was the young Emperor who had 
 but within recent moons taken his seat upon 
 the Dragon Throne. Whether or not this 
 omission was an oversight, or at the com- 
 mand of the priests, it was not necessary to 
 fathom, since in China, then as now, the 
 sending of a gift to the bride, whether or not 
 a gorgeous scarlet invitation has been re- 
 ceived, would insure to the donor thereof a 
 warm welcome to the wedding. 
 
 Therefore on the day appointed for the 
 strange bridal, there emerged from the Pur- 
 ple Palace a train of servants bearing upon 
 salvers of finest lacquer a gift of such sump- 
 tuousness as none but royalty could devise, 
 and whose glistening grandeur was unbe-
 
 138 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 lievable. There were gorgeous flowers 
 whose petals were of coral and jade, every 
 one of which trembled like those of a real 
 blossom. There were butterflies of greenest 
 jade and bracelets frosted with pearls. 
 There were garlands of plum blossoms 
 wrought of milk-white pearls, and chains of 
 gold, and rolls of rarest silk, and embroid- 
 ered garments. All of these gifts were sent 
 by the Emperor to the house of the bride's 
 father, and shortly after their arrival came 
 the monarch himself. The multitude of 
 guests already gathered made way for him 
 as straight and strong and regal, yet kindly 
 of face and benignant of mien, he strode to 
 the seat of honor which had hastily been pre- 
 pared for him. He looked every whit what 
 his ancient title designated him the Son of 
 Heaven. 
 
 The wretched little bride, all clad in her 
 bridal finery heavy with jewels, and trem- 
 bling with the great fear which was upon 
 her, was presently led from her own apart- 
 ment, in which during the feast she had sat 
 aside weeping. She was about to be placed
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 139 
 
 in the red chair, when her attendants were 
 halted by the voice of the Emperor. 
 
 "I do not yet see the bridegroom," he 
 said, speaking clearly amidst the great si- 
 lence which now covered the throng of wed- 
 ding guests. "Surely," he went on, "the 
 bride will not leave her father's roof until 
 her happy husband comes to claim her. Has 
 he not yet come?" 
 
 A great hope began to stir in the hearts 
 of the people as the words of their young Em- 
 peror fell upon their ears, while the bride's 
 family, prostrated in sorrow, scarce dared 
 believe they heard aright. 
 
 "Has the bridegroom not yet come?" 
 again asked the royal questioner. 
 
 And all the people murmured, "No one 
 has come." 
 
 "Then," resumed he, "we must know why 
 he tarries so late. I will send at once to his 
 palace which you say is at the bottom of the 
 river, a messenger who will announce to him 
 that his lovely bride awaits him here." 
 
 The head priest of the evil trio, who were 
 now on the swift road to their complete un-
 
 140 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 doing, was the first runner to be dispatched. 
 Willing hands provided him prompt conduct 
 to the barge, which, gay with its flowers, lay 
 waiting at the water's edge for the poor lit- 
 tle bride. Without a further word, the priest 
 upon whom grim retribution had so suddenly 
 fallen was rowed to midstream, there to take 
 the path to the palace of the River Dragon 
 which he himself had designed for the lily 
 feet of a lovely maid. 
 
 At the house of the bride's father the wed- 
 ding guests lingered, the bride herself sitting 
 once more apart, but with the birds singing 
 in the topmost branches of her heart. Lis- 
 tening through her silken curtains she again 
 heard that now beloved voice once more 
 addressing the guests : 
 
 "Has the bridegroom sent back my mes- 
 senger to say when he will come, or the 
 reason for his strange delay? The hour 
 grows late. This is a most dishonorable do- 
 ing, that so beautiful a bride should be thus 
 deserted at her wedding chair. Has my 
 messenger returned?" 
 
 And all the people, upon whose cloud of
 
 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 141 
 
 sorrow a great light was bursting, now 
 shouted back to him, "No one has returned !" 
 
 Then the second priest was named as mes- 
 senger to the delinquent bridegroom, and 
 upon his failure to return the wicked old 
 priestess w r as sent the way of her confeder- 
 ates in crime. 
 
 Just as the red ball of the sun dropped 
 down behind the mountains, and while the 
 happy guests could scarce repress their joy 
 until their splendid young ruler should finally 
 speak, he slowly rose in his place and said, 
 "The sun has set and though we have waited 
 for him many hours, the much feared River 
 Dragon, who for ten thousand moons has af- 
 flicted the homes and hearts of my people, 
 has not come to take his fair young bride. 
 I have given him ample time to make good 
 his ancient claim and he has failed. This 
 winsome bride is not for him, and nevermore 
 shall he curse my people or my country." 
 
 And all the people shouted with a great 
 and joyous shout, "Death to the River 
 Dragon ! Long live our king !" 
 
 And he did live long, and with him, the
 
 142 THE RIVER DRAGON'S BRIDE 
 
 sole Queen of his heart and kingdom, 
 reigned the lovely Princess who would, but 
 for him, have become the River Dragon's 
 Bride. 
 
 In memory of that great deliverance, to 
 this very time, upon the fifth day of the fifth 
 moon there are rowed upon the rivers of 
 China the Dragon-Boat races, in all the bril- 
 liance of their decoration, and whose sole 
 guerdon for victory is a garland of flowers. 
 
 O China! Are you yourself the Pretty 
 Princess whom to-day your enemies, after 
 stripping you of your jewels, both national 
 and material, would consign to your doom 
 beneath the murky waters of the River of 
 Oblivion ? 
 
 Hold fast to your courage, Pretty Prin- 
 cess. Your own dauntless Deliverer shall 
 yet come, and you too shall live happily ever 
 after.
 
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