Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Sidelights on Chinese Life
He accordingly appears one morning with that blank expressionless visage with which a Chinaman can conceal his thoughts, and asks permission to return to his home in the country. He had just got news, he says, that a brother Of his has suddenly become very ill and is not expected to live, and urgent entreaties have been sent him to come home as speedily at he can. You are rather startled at this sudden demand to be left at a moment's notice without a servant who is necessary to carry on the work of the home and besides, you have the uncomfortable feeling that this may be one of those obscure but oblique ways by which the Yellow mind is working to secure some end that lies concealed within its fathomless recesses.
You ask particulars, but he has none to give. He simply waves before you a letter covered with strange and weird hieroglyphics, and hands it to you for inspection, though he is aware that you can no more decipher it than you could the wedge-shaped symbols of the Assyrian language, and he declares that he knows no more about the illness of his brother than what is contained in it. As you cannot read the letter, and moreover you would get no light from it even if you could, you look him straight in the face to see if you cannot discover some little ray of light on this perplexing question; but no, it is' just as impenetrable as the document he holds in his hands as evidence of the bad news he has received from his home. It is perfectly Sphinx-like, and gives no clue to the thoughts that lie behind it. The eyes are liquid and childlike, and just that touch of sadness that harmonizes with his sorrowful feelings has laid its lightest shadow over his features.
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