FARADOX'S NOTIONS, Assistant x" in the Customs, came in to 'A few nights ago young Faradox, 25th
me for a cup of tea. Tea, I say; for Faradox has just made the odd discovery that ten o'clock at night is by far the most reasonable hour for absorbing that be 1 like to humour him in these whi they amuse me, and he never carries them to the point of boredom. Only a month ago, having charge of the Customs' mess, ho caused much excitement by trying to introduce a mixed diet, half Chinese and half foreign. The Chinese, he said, had been in this country a couple of million years, more or less, and ought to know what kind of fare was best suited to the climate; we had much to learn from them, and should try to get rid of our stupid ce" servetism in matters of food; for himself, he was thorough-coing, and meant to touch none but native dishes henceforward, etc., etc. The other members would not be persuaded. On the contrary, they waxed wroth, and with much opprobrious and derisive language, decreed the innovator's retirement. Nor have the angry feelings yet altogether subsided, for, though it took less than a fortnight to make Faradox heartily sick of boiled rice and sharks' fins, he still dines about the fresh anti apart.
Tu truth he is far too unlike the common run of men ever to draw well in harness. Ho is savage in his independence, wedded to his humours, capricious and changeful san April day. There is no telling what he may be up to next; that is what makes him so exasperating to others and ea interesting to me. On this particular evening, for example, he had been invited to a grand dinner at the Trufiletons; but wrote at the last moment to say he felt sleepy and irritable, and so thought it better not to come. 'I hope," says he to me, they will have the goud sense not to be offended."
Whenever yea want to learn Faradox's have to find out what is thought opinion upon " question of the day, you by ordinary, well-regulated people, and take the exact contrary. Nothing in life delights him like falling foul of the estaplished and conventional; and there is surer passport to his favour than the disapproval of others. He has taken half the scamps and eauriens of history under ing. He sneers at the Pyramids and the Great Wall, declares he would travel thousand miles to avoid Niag: will not hill hear of Browning, calls Ri scent prig,"and Dickens a "twaddling showman," G.P.R. James the only great novelist of our century, and Talleyrand the model of a conscientious statesman. Yet such is his mania for contradiction that you can always cure him of a too preposterous craze by the simple process of agreeing with him violently and persistently for hale-an-hour. My friend, the Dostor, who loves" Latin mouthful, calls him not aptly the advocates diaboli.
at light, fantastic genius of Faradox's, so wayward, so sudden, so audacious i movements, often reminds me of the canoe in which he loves to skim and dart about on the river there is the same airy lity, Such mon 3 they are predestined to be throughout life their own worst enemies. After an hour spent in his company I always feel that I have enjoyed myself; and at the same time Iam devoutly thankful to have been born a dullard. Oh, thrice blessed dullness!, true safeguard of respectability, most precious antidote against shallow and now-fangled conceits, imitable talisman, making the poorest of us rich in the hoarded wisdom of elder generations, thou art indeed the best gift of the gods to men.
Subsiding into my deepest armchair, Faradox gave a soft whistle, whereupon his two dogs came tumbling upstairs, thundered in at the door, and sprawled down one on each side of their master, regarding hi with looks of fatuous adoration." John' and "James" he calls these animals respectively, averring that he is sick of the fancy names in vogue for dogs. James always takes tea with mo," he said; "likes his pretty strong, and a slice of buttered toast with it, John's tipple is German beer; the Pechorr brand for choice. I'm making an experiment, you know, on tea versus alcohol: which has the most sustaining power. It's often been tried before; but only on men, Now, with men, you have the subjective element coming in to disturb the calculation, whereas a dog can't come vapouring to you about how he feels; you've got to judge by results. Imean to aift this question to the bottom and settle it once for all, The great test will come in the autumn, when I take them out after pheasant. Teil your boy," he continued, to bring the fixings here, and let mo make the tea. Ihave a theory about tea."
"Keep it for yourself, old chap, I have one of my own. Boy! make tea chop-chop." I spoke with some asperity, having endured, only the night before, 8 demonstration of the Doctor's on coffee, which lasted three quarters of an hour and tesulted in a decoction of unspeakable vileness, "Have a cigarette? You know T suppose "No," said Faradox, "I seldom look at the papers. But I don't wonder in the least at it, of course. I don't know whut you think, but it strikes me we pay a little tuo dear for the privilege of, these saintly people's company, in living perpetually on the verge of a riot. Let them be withdrawn from the country, confound it all; then we shall have peace, Or if that can't be done, at least exclude them from treaty ports, where their presence is a standing menace to everybody else; and let those that choose to live in the interior look out for themselves. Oh! I know very well what you're going to say, about the duty of protection,—the honour of a great nation engaged, elvis Romanus stwn, and all the rest of that bosh; good enough for a newspaper leader, but it doesn't touch the problem. Look at it from a Chinese point of view, as one ought, and you'll see that the rioters, though their methods may be little too rough and ready, are still doing no more than patriotic duty in trying to clear out these pestilent foreign teachers. Here you have a civilisation as old as the ills, founded on principles of reason and justice that we in Europe only came to Tecoguise a century agu—no, we haven't all recognised them yet, for didn't the German Emperor write the other day: Suprema lea regis coluntas, Well, here is this tion, Isay, with its own peculiar institutions and customs, religious and otherwise, that the people find quite gocd enough for them. And here come a set of reckless fanatic who want to tear the whole thing to pieces. It is nothing less, mind you. For the success of Christianity means death to ancestral worship; and death to ancestral worship means the disruption of Chiuesa society. 'The missionaries are your tru'g anarchists out here. Yes, thank', ano jer cup; and pass the matches."
What arrant fudge, my dear follo jw, rejoined impatiently. You, of alt' meu, to be spouting those dismal ply titude Ancestral worship,—allons done What is this, or any other of their say es, but the mere outward indication, the me fe symptom of strong inborn tendencies to conservatism. and cohesion that will go on acting just the same no matter what form of. belief prevail Depend upon it, the genius, of a race is not to be influenced by creeds and ceremonies.
say that the chinese have remained one groat family through pre otising " common cult of the dead, is on a par with saying that Christianity is who t has made the white man master onthe globe. Of course, both statements are the fas'nion, no doubt because: they're such flimsy fallacies, Just look at Mahometanistn, a teally important religion in China. As you know, it is sternly monotheistic, and will hold no truce with pagan observances. Yet what harm has it done, politically?"
"You wouldn't be so confident about that if you knew something; of modern Chinese history," retorts Faridox. Masse kee! The whole subject is a boro, uaprofitable, barren as the wilder ness of Hepsidam. Lead on, Jobskin, to fresh fields and pastures new." While speaking, ho had taken up one of my favourite books, Catlyle's Lifeof Sterling; and after a glance, flung it down again with a contemptuous smile that half nettled, half amused me.
"Fresh woods and pastures new,' is what Milton wrote," I said maliciously, " but perhaps that isn't good enough for you.'"
"You're quite right," he answered imper-tar bably, "it's not good enough for me. Pedantic fellows like you are always going wrong by dint of shoor exactitude, This Mr. Wilton, or Bilton—what's his name did actually write woods, I dare say, for you seem to know; but fields is what he ought to have written, because it is the inevitable word, and therefore the right one. Just so withal the usual misquote tions, so-called. They are corrections, instinctively made by the common dense of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.