Mrs. Spring Fragrance
green, striped with black. It looks like a giant caterpillar, and all
the little caterpillars are going to hold a festival tonight in its
honor.”
“Deary me! What a great cat!” exclaimed the princess.
A little further on she met one of the chamberlains of the palace. “What
about the cat?” she asked.
“It is dancing in the ballroom in a dress of elegant cobwebs and a
necklace of pearl rice. For partner, she has the yellow dragon in the
hall, come to life, and they take such pretty steps together that all
who behold them shriek in ecstasy. Three little mice hold up her train
as she dances, and another sits perched on the tip of the dragon’s
curled tail.”
At this the princess quivered like a willow tree and was obliged to seek
her apartments. When there, she recovered herself, and placing a blossom
on her exquisite eyebrow, commanded that all those of whom she had
inquired concerning the cat should be brought before her. When they
appeared she looked at them very severely and said:
“You have all told me different stories when I have asked you: ‘What
about the cat?’ Which of these stories is true?”
No one answered. All trembled and paled.
“They are all untrue,” announced the princess.
She lifted her arm and there crawled out of her sleeve her white cat. It
had been there all the time.
Then the courtly chamberlain advanced towards her, kotowing three times.
“Princess,” said he, “would a story be a story if it were true? Would
you have been as well entertained this morning if, instead of our
stories, we, your unworthy servants, had simply told you that the cat
was up your sleeve?”
The princess lost her severity in hilarity. “Thank you, my dear
servants,” said she. “I appreciate your desire to amuse me.”
She looked at her cat, thought of all it had done and been in the minds
of her servants, and laughed like a princess again and again.
THE WILD MAN AND THE GENTLE
BOY
“Will you come with me?” said the Wild Man.
“With pleasure,” replied the Gentle Boy.
The Wild Man took the Gentle Boy by the hand, and together they waded
through rice fields, climbed tea hills, plunged through forests and at
last came to a wide road, shaded on either side by large evergreen
trees, with resting places made of bamboo sticks every mile or so.
“My honorable father provided these resting places for the poor
carriers,” said the Gentle Boy. “Here they can lay their burdens down,
eat betel nuts, and rest.”
“Oh, ho,” laughed the Wild Man. “I don’t think there will be many
carriers resting today. I cleared the road before I brought you.”
“Indeed!” replied the Gentle Boy. “May I ask how?”
“Ate them up.”
“Ah!” sighed the Gentle Boy. He felt the silence and stillness around.
The very leaves had ceased to flutter, and only the soul of a bird
hovered near.
The Wild Man had gigantic arms and legs and a broad, hairy chest. His
mouth was exceeding large and his head was unshaved. He wore a sack of
coarse linen, open in front with holes for arms. On his head was a
rattan cap, besmeared with the blood of a deer.
The Gentle Boy was small and plump; his skin was like silk and the tips
of his little fingers were pink. His queue was neatly braided and
interwoven with silks of many colors. He wore a peach-colored blouse and
azure pantaloons, all richly embroidered, and of the finest material.
The buttons on his tunic were of pure gold, and the sign of the dragon
was worked on his cap. He was of the salt of the earth, a descendant of
Confutze, an aristocrat of aristocrats.
“Of what are you thinking?” asked the Wild Man.
“About the carriers. Did they taste good?” asked the Gentle Boy with
mild curiosity.
“Yes, but there is something that will taste better, younger and
tenderer, you know.”
He surveyed the Gentle Boy with glistening eyes.
The Gentle Boy thought of his father’s mansion, the frescoed ceilings,
the chandeliers hung with pearls, the great blue vases, the dragon’s
smiles, the galleries of glass through which walked his mother and
sisters; but most of all, he thought of his noble ancestors.
“What would Your Excellency be pleased to converse about?” he inquired
after a few minutes, during which the Wild Man had been engaged in
silent contemplation of the Gentle Boy’s chubby cheeks.
“About good things to eat,” promptly replied the Wild Man.
“Very well,” politely replied the Gentle Boy. “There are a great many,”
he dreamily observed, staring into space.
“Tell me about some of the fine dishes in your father’s kitchen. It is
they who have made you.”
The Gentle Boy looked complacently up and down himself.
“I hope in all humility,” he said, “that I do honor to my father’s
cook’s dishes.”
The Wild Man laughed so boisterously that the trees rocked.
“There is iced seaweed jelly, for one thing,” began the Gentle Boy, “and
a ragout of water lilies, pork and chicken dumplings with bamboo shoots,
bird’s-nest soup and boiled almonds, ducks’ eggs one hundred years old,
garnished with strips of sucking pig and heavenly fish fried in paradise
oil, white balls of rice flour stuffed with sweetmeats, honey and
rose-leaves, candied frogs and salted crabs, sugared seaweed and pickled
stars.”
He paused.
“Now, tell me,” said the Wild Man, “which of all things would you like
best to eat?”
The Gentle Boy’s eye wandered musingly over the Wild Man’s gigantic
proportions, his hungry mouth, his fanglike teeth. He flipped a ladybird
insect off his silken cuff and smiled at the Wild Man as he did so.
“Best of all, honorable sir,” he slowly said, “I would like to eat you.”
The Wild Man sat transfixed, staring at the Gentle Boy, his mouth half
open, the hair standing up on his head. And to this day he sits there,
on the high road to Cheang Che, a piece of petrified stone.
THE GARMENTS OF THE FAIRIES
“Why do we never see the fairies?” asked Mermei.
“Because,” replied her mother, “the fairies do not wish to be seen.”
“But why, honorable mother, do they not wish to be seen?”
“Would my jade jewel wish to show herself to strangers if she wore no
tunic or shoes or rosettes?”
Mermei glanced down at her blue silk tunic embroidered in white and
gold, at her scarlet shoes beaded at the tips so as to resemble the
heads of kittens; and looking over to a mirror hung on the side of the
wall where the sun shone, noted the purple rosettes in her hair and the
bright butterfly’s wing.
“Oh, no! honorable mother,” said she, shaking her head with quite a
shocked air.
“Then, when you hear the reason why the fairies do not appear to you
except in your dreams, you will know that they are doing just as you
would do were you in a fairy’s shoes.”
“A story! A story!” cried Mermei, clapping her hands and waving her fan,
and Choy and Fei and Wei and Sui, who were playing battledore and
shuttlecock on the green, ran into the house and grouped themselves
around Mermei and the mother. They all loved stories.
“Many, many years ago,” began the mother of Mermei, “when the sun was a
warm-hearted but mischievous boy, playing all kinds of pranks with
fruits and flowers and growing things, and his sister, the moon, was too
young to be sad and serious, the fairies met together by night. The sun,
of course, was not present, and the moon had withdrawn behind a cloud.
Stars alone shone in the quiet sky. By their light the fairies looked
upon each other, and found themselves so fair and radiant in their robes
of varied hues, all wonderfully fashioned, fringed and laced, some
bright and brilliant, others, delicate and gauzy, but each and all a
perfect dream of loveliness, that they danced for very joy in themselves
and the garments in which they were arrayed.
“The dance being over, the queen of all sighed a fragrant sigh of
happiness upon the air, and bowing to her lovely companions said:
“‘Sweet sisters, the mission of the fairies is to gladden the hearts of
the mortals. Let us, therefore, this night, leave behind us on the earth
the exquisite garments whose hues and fashions have given us so much
pleasure. And because we may not be seen uncovered, let us from
henceforth be invisible.’
“‘We will! We will!’ cried the sister fairies. They were all good and
kind of heart, and much as they loved their dainty robes, they loved
better to give happiness to others.
“And that is why the fairies are invisible, and why we have the
flowers.”
“The flowers!” cried Mermei. “Why the flowers?”
“And the fairies’ garments! Where can we find them?” asked Fei with the
starry eyes.
“In the gardens, in the forests, and by the streams,” answered the
mother. “The flowers, dear children, are the bright-hued garments which
the fairies left behind them when they flew from earth, never to return
again, save invisible.”
THE DREAMS THAT FAILED
Ping Sik and Soon Yen sat by the roadside under a spreading olive tree.
They were on their way to market to sell two little pigs. With the money
to be obtained from the sale of the little pigs, they were to buy caps
and shoes with which to attend school.
“When I get to be a man,” said Ping Sik, “I will be so great and so
glorious that the Emperor will allow me to wear a three-eyed peacock
feather, and whenever I walk abroad, all who meet me will bow to the
ground.”
“And I,” said Soon Yen, “will be a great general. The reins of my steeds
will be purple and scarlet, and in my cap will wave a bright blue
plume.”
“I shall be such a great poet and scholar,” continued Ping Sik, “that
the greatest university in the Middle Kingdom will present me with a
vase encrusted with pearls.”
“And I shall be so valiant and trustworthy that the Pearly Emperor will
appoint me commander-in-chief of his army, and his enemies will tremble
at the sound of my name.”
“I shall wear a yellow jacket with the names of three ancestors
inscribed thereon in seven colors.”
“And I shall wear silk robes spun by princesses, and a cloak of throat
skins of sables.”
“And I shall live in a mansion of marble and gold.”
“And I in halls of jadestone.”
“And I will own silk and tea plantations and tens of thousands of rice
farms.”
“All the bamboo country shall be mine, and the rivers and sea shall be
full of my fishing boats, junks, and craft of all kinds.”
“People will bow down before me and cry: ‘Oh, most excellent, most
gracious, most beautiful!’”
“None will dare offend so mighty a man as I shall be!”
“O ho! You good-for-nothing rascals!” cried the father of Ping Sik.
“What are you doing loafing under a tree when you should be speeding to
market?”
“And the little pigs, where are they?” cried the father of Soon Yen.
The boys looked down at the baskets which had held the little pigs.
While they had been dreaming of future glories, the young porkers had
managed to scramble out of the loosely woven bamboo thatch of which the
baskets were made.
The fathers of Ping Sik and Soon Yen produced canes.
“Without shoes and caps,” said they, “you cannot attend school.
Therefore, back to the farm and feed pigs.”
GLAD YEN
“I’m so glad! so glad!” shouted little Yen.
“Why?” asked Wou. “Has any one given you a gold box with jewels, or a
peacock feather fan, or a coat of many colors, or a purse of gold? Has
your father become rich or been made a high mandarin?”
Wou sighed as he put these questions. He had voiced his own longings.
“No,” answered Yen, giving a hop, skip, and jump.
“Then, why are you glad?” repeated Wou.
“Why?” Yen’s bright face grew brighter. “Oh, because I have such a
beautiful blue sky, such a rippling river, waterfalls that look like
lace and pearls and diamonds, and sun-beams brighter and more radiant