A Yankee in the Far East

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

There are so many ways suggested these days by the various periodicals on how to make money at home, it would seem that all ingenuity in that direction must be exhausted; but how to make money abroad seems to me to be almost a virgin field.

New pastures have always interested me, and if I can add to the sum of human happiness by a wise suggestion, and point the way to satisfy an almost universal longing to see the world, – for instance, if I can show how one can make a luxurious world tour and come out ahead of the game while doing it, – I shall be only too glad.

It's no new trick to beat one's way around the world with the hardships attending such an enterprise, but to tell how to do it in ease and luxury surely ought to earn me the gratitude of my fellow-men.

Get a bunch of pencils and some pads of paper and announce to a waiting editorial world that you are about to take a trip around the globe, and that you propose to write some letters of travel and syndicate them. That, for a consideration, you'll let some good papers print 'em.

Don't be modest about naming a good round price for the consideration of letting your papers in. Because you'll need the money.

All editors you'll find are hankering for letters of travel.

Letters of travel are a novelty. The first editor you call on early in the morning, say about ten o'clock (that's early enough to get to work in this new enterprise I'm tipping you off to – gone is grinding toil and worry – let others moil), this first editor of some big daily (big dailies are the easiest) – don't be timid – brace right up to him, and give him your proposition in a nutshell – easy-like – right off the bat.

It will be a pleasure to you to watch him brighten up at your offer.

Managing editors of big dailies are hard-worked men.

Atlas' job (merely physical) is easy compared with the mental strain and worry the managing editor of a big daily paper is subjected to these days.

You'll find him feeling the need of something – it's travel dope.

Don't be too arbitrary with him when he inquires in a tentative, anxious way, as he is about to affix his signature on the dotted line in your contract: "Of course no other paper in our town gets these letters?"

Assure him he will have exclusive use in his town. One paper in a town is enough, if you select the biggest and best one.

If (an almost impossible contingency) there should be any hesitancy on the part of the editor in grabbing your offer, if it seems to you that the price may be giving him pause, don't make the mistake of cutting the price. Tell him you may (don't promise for sure, – it won't be necessary, – a hint will be enough), tell him you may run a little poetry into your letters – that poetry comes easy for you to write – a sort of a fambly gift.

Don't stall, for fear you can't write poetry. You can do it if you think you can. It's dead easy.

Newspapers are just crazy for poetry – so crazy for it that lots of them will buy it when every line don't begin with a capital – where the poet ends a sentence right in the middle of a line, puts a period there, and just to beat the compositor out of a little fat starts a new verse after that period.

Why, they will buy poetry where the reader will get half through the piece before he discovers that it is poetry, and after he has caught the swing he will start at the top and begin over, and go clear to the end every time, and feel good over it.

This is where this kind of poetry differs from patent medicine advertisements.

In the latter, when the poet begins to advise the use of a new brand of pills, when the poet's ulterior motive begins to crop out, you stop reading, get mad, and want to swat the poet.

The paper gets paid for printing the pill poem. It is in cahoots with the poet to put one over on the public, but it pays money for the kind of poetry I have described.

I'm glad I thought to post you about the poetry, because it's just barely possible that the editor may be contemplating a trip himself, in which case his paper won't want your stuff, —he will send in some articles; or that his brother, or his sister, or his cousin, or his aunt, all of them gifted writers, are now on the bounding billows, en route for foreign parts, armed with pencils and pads; or that even now one of the paper's big advertisers is in Europe, and some travel stuff he is writing is just beginning to arrive and space must be found for it somewhere (it's just barely possible, I say barely, that that is one of the editor's problems as you drop in on him at 10 A. M.), so don't forget about the poetry.

This is important, because if you do, in all probability the next issue of that paper will have a scoop in a news story headed: – "Mysterious and Brutal Murder! Unknown Man Found Mutilated Beyond All Possibility of Identification! No Clue to the Perpetrators!"

So, after you've made your offer, and before the editor has time to draw his gun or grab an axe, tell him you can write poetry, which, when set in his paper, will at first sight look just like Johnnie's composition on Spring.

In addition to saving your local paper from publishing a harrowing tale of a mysterious disappearance, you'll land your contract with that hint of some possible poetry. When, I started out to do what I am advising you to do, I made nine towns before I signed up a paper.

There was considerable iron in my soul when I tackled the tenth town, and I had to do something, – so I dropped a hint that I might possibly run in a little poetry. After that it came easy.

With this kindly hint on "How to Make Money Abroad," herein is presented the letters I wrote on my 1914 world tour for a syndicate of papers.

With the kindly aid of the artist to help you over the hard places, "A Yankee in the Far East" for a title (a book must have a title), and good, plain print, the publishers launch this little book.

I

WAR HELL AND BULL FIGHTS

Up in the interior of our country we don't look upon the Mexican situation with the same passionate interest that they do down here on the border – in El Paso, for instance.

Here is a town of sixty thousand. A magnificent city, with everything that goes to make our modern civilization desirable. A city of sky-scrapers, a million-dollar hotel (the one I'm stopping at), with still others that would do credit to a city twice its size. Splendid stores, residences, and railway station, and forty-five miles of fine macadam streets – a city of gimp, go, and bang – a city to make an American citizen proud of his country.

It costs five cents and ten minutes' time to go from the center of El Paso over to Mexico across the Rio Grande – a muddy, dirty stream that one could wade across – into the city of Juarez – a town of about ten thousand – the quickest change from everything desirable to everything undesirable that I have ever experienced. A fit title to the story would be "From Heaven to Hell." I went to see a bull fight in Juarez, the first and last bull fight I shall ever witness.

I wonder if Sherman ever saw a bull fight; I don't believe he did, or he would have said, "War is the vestibule – the real thing is what is called a bull fight." In my humble opinion the Almighty allowed the devil to institute war among men to give us a warning foretaste of hell. The devil, ambitious to outdo himself, made one more try and invented the bull fight (which is a misnomer – it is not a "fight"), and then the devil said: "I'm through, beat it if you can."

War is a fight – men against men, intellect against intellect. A cock fight is a fight – cock against cock. A dog fight is a fight – dog against dog. A prize fight is a fight – bruiser against bruiser, go to it, and may the best side win.

The devil invented all these, but there was an element of fairness in them. The devil looked upon them and saw the element of fairness. It girded him. He tried once more, invented bull torturing, baited his hook by naming it bull "fighting," and fished for a nation to adopt it. Spain bit, and she and her offspring deserve all they've reaped in consequence – and then some.

For a hellish, damnable, brutalizing institution, I place the torturing of bulls for amusement at the head of the class for the double-distilled quintessence of his Satanic Majesty's final and last effort to put one over on the Angel of Light. The horrors and cruelties practiced since time began have back of them ambition, hate, bigotry, ignorance, or supposed justice; but the bull fight has none of these back of it for an excuse. It's done in the name of sport! for pastime!

Ambition? – "It's a glorious cheat," but posterity may reap the benefit. Hate? – It burns itself out. Bigotry? – Darkness, preceding dawn. Ignorance? – It can be cured. Justice? – Blind but sometimes hits the mark. But the bull fight! Invented for sport, pastime – that which is as necessary to man's development as food. A country that lets its children have the bull fight to play with is on the toboggan slide.

I've seen them chop off human being's heads in China, in the name of justice. It jarred me some. I've seen the awful condition of human life in India. That jarred me more. But yesterday I saw five thousand men, women and children gathered to witness bulls tortured for "fun"!

I found myself jammed in with the cruelest, most blood-thirsty, cut-throat gang I've ever seen – and the fact that human beings could be brought to look upon that thing as "sport," "pastime," "pleasure," jarred me most of all – and Juarez is only a little more than a stone's throw from El Paso! El Paso has poignant feelings on the Mexican situation – the nuisance is at her door.

Twenty-five years ago El Paso was a cluster of mud huts. Juarez was a town five hundred years ago, and it's little more than a cluster of mud huts now. Some fair-size two-story brick buildings, but a sorry makeshift of a city, the chief thing in evidence being poverty, vice, and dirt. Its chief pride, and by all odds largest building, is its bull ring – an amphitheater that will seat 10,000, built around an arena. This arena, about 100 feet in diameter, is fenced in with a high-board fence. A gate opens out of the arena, through which first come six gaily-dressed bull baiters on foot, followed by three more riding blindfolded, scarecrow horses, sorry, poor, limping old beasts, which, in man's service have earned a merciful death – their value in the open market would not exceed $2.00 each. Their riders are armed with long-handled spears. They all, on foot and horseback, have official names. I don't know, nor want to know, what their titles are. They are men! – not brutes. It would be an insult to the brutes that go to make up the sketch to call them that. They doff their hats and salaam to the throng, who answer back with lusty cheers.

And now the bull comes from the darkened pen, where he has been kept for twenty-four hours, – a walk of thirty feet through a fenced-in lane. His bovine majesty, a splendid bull, comes walking leisurely along, rejoicing to get into God's sunlight, no thought of malice in his heart. He seems to nod a kindly good-afternoon to the attendants, who drive him towards the gate that opens into the arena. As he is passing through the gate a man perched up out of harm's way jabs a cruel harpoon on the end of a handle decked with gaily colored ribbons between the bull's shoulders.

There is no maddened rush of an angry bull. He stops for an instant with a startled look – surprise, and hurt wonderment, and "what for?" written on his face as plain as man can talk. A baiter inside the ring with a blanket shook out at his side stands just ahead of him. The bull charges the blanket – no danger to the man – the gate is shut, and the baiters with their blankets held out at their sides get the bull more and more into fighting trim.

But the crowd wants blood. So a baiter on a horse, rides up and jabs the bull's shoulder with his spear, and another rider jabs him on the other side. The bull wheels to catch his tormentor, who is out of harm's way on his horse. The bull charges back and forth, from rider to rider, until one of them deliberately reins his blinded horse directly in range of the bull, who rips its entrails out. The rider deftly and easily dismounts; the blinded horse is down, and the bull finishes him with a thrust or two, and the crowd goes mad with "delight." The remaining two riders have played their part, and withdrawn from the ring, and six baiters on foot take up the "sport," and with their blankets draw the bull from the now dead horse. He charges from one to the other, with no more danger to the trained athletes on foot than there would be to a hound after a rabbit.

But the rabbit has a chance for its life – the bull none.

And now another baiter comes with two harpoon spears on handles two feet long decked with ribbons, and tempts the bull to charge him. The bull accepts the challenge, and as he charges the trained baiter side-steps, and, as the bull passes, plants his harpoons in the bull's sides.

Good act! The crowd goes wild again. This sport is kept up for half an hour, till the poor beast's sides are full of barbed spears, and the crowd cries out for blood, more blood, when the lord high executioner steps up with a long, murderous, stiff-bladed sword, about four feet long, and with his blanket tempts the tired bull to lower his head, then he drives the sword to its hilt between the bull's shoulders.

The bull does not drop dead. The matador missed his heart; but with that blade thrust through his body, the bull staggers – braces himself on his four feet. The matador vainly tempts the bull to charge the blanket. The look in the dying bull's eyes would move a heart of stone to pity – he trembles, falls to his knees, drops in a convulsive heap, and dies.

The matador salaams low as he receives the plaudits of the crowd. A team of fine horses, decked in red blankets, is driven on a gallop to the dead bull, a rope is attached to his legs, and the horses gallop out of the arena, snaking the bull in their wake.

The team comes back, and in like theatrical manner the dead horse is snaked off, and the crowd sets up a howl to bring on another bull. Three to five bulls are tortured for an afternoon's "entertainment." They tortured three yesterday, but I was more than satisfied with one, when I left them to their "sport." Carranza's headquarters are at Juarez. He "graced" the bull fight with his presence, and if Huerta had been in Juarez he would probably have been there too.

II

"MISSOURI" AND HIS FALSE TEETH

I labor under a great disadvantage in writing this ship-board letter, en route from San Francisco to Yokohama.

My contract reads that these letters shall tell of personal experiences, and when I discover a new, fresh theme that I am not qualified to tackle, I naturally feel that fate has been unkind to me.

There has recently been discovered a strange malady which attacks travelers at sea. I find competitors in writing travel stuff have me on the hip in this regard. This new malady, in which I know the public must have a breathless interest, is so replete with possibilities from a pencil pusher's standpoint, I more than half suspect that some writers aren't playing fair.

I fear some of them are no more qualified from personal experience to write about it than I am, but they are banging ahead and writing about it anyway, just because it is a new, fresh subject, full of thrilling possibilities for the pen artist, and as for the artist who can draw pictures to illustrate it – honest you'd die laughing, there's so many funny things about it.

The ship's doctor, whom I've interviewed for data, advised me to cut it out; that, like everything new, the writers have already overworked it.

He told me they called it seasickness in the steerage, and mal de mer in first cabin, and that it hits first cabin harder than it does steerage.

I never was strong on fads. The beaten path for me!

I am also under contract to write about the folks I meet. Now there's a subject worth while, – folks. You'll strike them on shipboard. I'm pretty close to one chap so soon. He is on a business trip to China. He is from some place in Missouri – he's from Missouri all right.

I understand he has dealt largely in horses. It's his first trip to Japan and China, and he seems to cling to me, and I have much of his life's history. The first thing I noticed about him was his beautiful teeth – as fine a set of teeth as I ever saw in a man's mouth. The first meal after sailing he got up and left the table abruptly, and I missed him till the next meal, when again he left the table – seemed to be in trouble.

The next time I saw him was at dinner, and I was shocked! He had lost two teeth on one side and three on the other – upper teeth. It made a great difference in his personal appearance – but he seemed to enjoy that meal without any break.

After dinner, on deck, away from anyone else, I commiserated him on the loss of those teeth – felt well enough acquainted – you can make better time getting acquainted on shipboard than anywhere else.

I asked him why he had to sacrifice those teeth; that they looked like fine teeth. Was it really necessary to have them out? Hadn't he taken a chance in having the ship's doctor play dentist? And then he poured out his whole soul to me about those teeth.

"Mr. Allen," he said, "the ship's doctor didn't take them out. I haven't lost them. I'm wearing them in my coat pocket. Those teeth were artificial, Mr. Allen."

"You see," he continued, – it seemed as if he just wanted to talk about those teeth, now that he was started, – "You see, Mr. Allen, I got those teeth to please my wife. I didn't really need them, only for looks. I've got all the rest of my teeth, except those side ones.

"Wife said it was all right while I was home where my friends all knew me – were used to me; but in taking this trip among strangers, I really ought to have those gaps filled in. So I went to a toothsmith, and he shod me up with some new teeth. He talked about bridges, and scaffolding, and roofing, and one thing and another, and owing to the situation he found in his explorations, 'a partial plate,' as he called it, he thought was the best way out.

"When he connected me with those teeth, it felt just like it looks to nail a shoe on a horse. I felt as a colt must feel when it's first hitched up with bit and bridle.

"'Do you mean to tell me,' I asked that dentist, 'that I've got to go through life with that in my mouth?'

"'Oh, no,' he said, 'this is only a partial plate. Some day you'll lose all your teeth and will have to have a double set, upper and lower. Then you will feel as if you were somebody else – this is only a little trouble. You'll get used to this partial plate and not mind it a bit. They look dandy. Just take a peek at yourself. You look ten years younger. You just stick to them for a couple of days and you'll be all right.'

"I went home feeling that the bloom of youth was all rubbed off – felt as if I had a billiard ball in my mouth.

"My wife was delighted, and gave me that same josh the dentist handed me – said I looked ten years younger.

"I felt forty years older, and told her so – and when it came to eating, everything tasted just alike – and all bad.

"I stood it for six hours, and gave up. I went to take them out and got scared. I couldn't get them out. Then I was sure the dentist had nailed them in.

"I called him up and asked him would he go to his office? Told him I was in trouble. When I got there I found him waiting for me.

"He wanted to know where they hurt.

"I told him, 'All over.' That the joy and jounce and bounce of life had all left me. He had filled me full of woe and sadness. That my shoes pinched, my hair pulled, and my collar choked me.

"'Take 'em out, doctor, take 'em out,' I sobbed. 'I don't believe they were made for me. I think you've made a mistake and got some other fellow's teeth in my mouth. I think these teeth were made for a very large man with a very large mouth,' I said.

"He pried me loose from the work of his hands, and took the artificial part of me into his den, put it on his anvil, and ran it over his buzz saw and through his planer, and brought it back to me, and said, 'Open up,' just as if I were a horse; and he bitted and bridled me for another race.

"I wrestled with those teeth for a week before I left for this trip. I kept them in different places – in the bathroom, on top of my chiffonier, and in my pocket. Not all the while, you understand. I got so I could take them out myself, and I alternated them between the place where they made me look ten years younger, and those places I've mentioned; and when I didn't have them in, my wife was giving me Hail Columbia. Said I didn't have as much sand as a Chippy bird; acted as if I were the only person who had ever had to learn to wear false teeth.

"I made a few more trips to the dentist, to ask him if he was dead sure he hadn't got me breaking in some other fellow's teeth; and if he would plane them down a little here and there.

"He growled considerable. Said he'd get them too loose, and then I'd be having trouble the other way.

"Well, I got so I could wear those teeth and think of something else at the same time; and then I started for San Francisco to catch this ship. I can't understand it at all; but somehow or other, those teeth have shrunk. They began to shrink as soon as I struck the Pullman, and when I got aboard this ship the blamed things had shrunk some more. They got so they would drop on me while eating. I'd be going along all right, when all of a sudden, with a mouth-full of victuals, I'd find myself chewing those false teeth with my other teeth. I felt like a cannibal chewing a corpse. I felt like a ghoul robbing a graveyard. It was worse than the neck of a chicken, that any man who has kept house for twenty years or so, knows all about. After you've helped all the rest, all that's left for you is the neck, don't you know?"

"Missouri" had me crying; but I gave three emphatic and sympathetic nods. I've kept house for more than twenty years, and I'm a connoisseur myself on that part of the fowl – and the gizzard.

"Well," "Missouri" continued, "I felt like a Fiji Islander before the missionaries taught them to love their enemies, but not to eat them. So I'm wearing those teeth in my coat pocket.

"I may not look so young, but I don't feel so like a blithering savage. I hate to go home without a full set of teeth, though.

"How are the Japanese on dentistry, Mr. Allen? Do you suppose I could get fixed up over there?"

I told him I didn't know about their dentistry, but that they were clever little beggars. That they were strong on tea and tooth brushes.

"Tea, teeth, and tooth brushes," "Missouri" said, in a speculative and hopeful tone. "Now maybe so, maybe so," and we parted for the night.

"Missouri" is not a half bad sort, and, anyway, his teeth story is different than a yarn on seasickness.

III

WONG LEE – THE HUMAN BELLOWS

This is a fine, large ship – Japanese line.

I don't call to mind any line of ships I have not sailed on prior to this voyage in my chasing up and down the world in search of a "meal ticket," and pleasure; but this is my first voyage on a Japanese liner, and I'm simply delighted with it.

It contrasts delightfully with a ship I sailed on, on one of my former trips across the Pacific.

That boat was all right, too. Good ship, good service – particularly good service – Chinese help; and anyone who has ever sailed with Chinese crews, waiters and room boys, knows what that means – nothing better in that line. I had a fine stateroom and a good room boy – that boy was a treasure.

I cottoned to that boy the minute he grabbed my baggage at the wharf, and blandly said, "You blong my," as he led me to my stateroom.

There was an obnoxious sign in that stateroom which read: "No Smoking in Staterooms." I settled for the long voyage, hung a coat over that sign, and lit up.

Wong Lee flagged me with a word of warning: "No can slmoke stlate room. Slmoke loom, can do."

"Wong," I said, "how fashion you talkee so? 'No can slmoke stlate loom!' No tlouble slmoke stlate loom. Can slmoke stlate loom easy, see?"