ONE:"Yes, an American named Ward, who rose to be a high-class mandarin among the Chinese, and since his death temples have been erected to his honor. He came to Shanghai in 1860, and was looking around for something to do. The rebels were within forty miles of the city, and their appearance in front of it was hourly expected. They were holding the city of Soon-keong, and Ward proposed to take this place by contract, as one might propose to build a house or a railway line."
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ONE:Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle, top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.] One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture: the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room, and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.The view up and down the river was an animated one. Many boats were on the water, some of them lying at anchor, or tied up to the bank; while others were slowly threading the stream in one way and another. The banks of the river were lined with gay restaurants and other places of public resort, and from some of them came the sounds of native music, indicating that the patrons were enjoying themselves. The great mountain of Japan was in full view, and was a more welcome sight than the crowds of beggars that lined the bridge and showed altogether too much attention to the strangers. The bridge itself is not the magnificent structure that one might expect to find when he remembers its national importance. It is a rickety affair, built of wood, and showing signs of great antiquity; and its back rises as though somebody had attempted to lift it up by pressing his shoulders beneath and had nearly succeeded in his effort.
