The Older Men Talk Of The Days Of The Eureka Stockade
And The Younger Of 'shearing Wars' In North Queensland, While The
Traveller Moves Timidly Among Them Wondering What Under The World Every
Third Word Means.
At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all
right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like,
sort of men speak of sheep, the rabbits, the land-courts, and the
ancient heresies of Sir Julius Vogel; and their more expressive
sentences borrow from the Maori.
And elsewhere, and elsewhere, and
elsewhere among the Outside Men it is the same - the same mixture of
every trade, calling, and profession under the sun; the same clash of
conflicting interests touching the uttermost parts of the earth; the
same intimate, and sometimes appalling knowledge of your neighbour's
business and shortcomings; the same large-palmed hospitality, and the
same interest on the part of the, younger men in the legs of a horse.
Decidedly, it is at the Overseas Club all the world over that you get to
know some little of the life of the community. London is egoistical, and
the world for her ends with the four-mile cab radius. There is no
provincialism like the provincialism of London. That big slack-water
coated with the drift and rubbish of a thousand men's thoughts esteems
itself the open sea because the waves of all the oceans break on her
borders. To those in her midst she is terribly imposing, but they forget
that there is more than one kind of imposition. Look back upon her from
ten thousand miles, when the mail is just in at the Overseas Club, and
she is wondrous tiny. Nine-tenths of her news - so vital, so epoch-making
over there - loses its significance, and the rest is as the scuffling of
ghosts in a back-attic.
Here in Yokohama the Overseas Club has two mails and four sets of
papers - English, French, German, and American, as suits the variety of
its constitution - and the verandah by the sea, where the big telescope
stands, is a perpetual feast of the Pentecost. The population of the
club changes with each steamer in harbour, for the sea-captains swing
in, are met with 'Hello! where did you come from?' and mix at the bar
and billiard-tables for their appointed time and go to sea again. The
white-painted warships supply their contingent of members also, and
there are wonderful men, mines of most fascinating adventure, who have
an interest in sealing-brigs that go to the Kurile Islands, and somehow
get into trouble with the Russian authorities. Consuls and judges of the
Consular Courts meet men over on leave from the China ports, or it may
be Manila, and they all talk tea, silk, banking, and exchange with its
fixed residents. Everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and
everybody is on the verge of ruin. That is why, when they have decided
that life is no longer worth living, they go down to the
skittle-alley - to commit suicide. From the outside, when a cool wind
blows among the papers and there is a sound of smashing ice in an inner
apartment, and every third man is talking about the approaching races,
the life seems to be a desirable one. 'What more could a man need to
make him happy?' says the passer-by. A perfect climate, a lovely
country, plenty of pleasant society, and the politest people on earth to
deal with. The resident smiles and invites the passer-by to stay through
July and August. Further, he presses him to do business with the
politest people on earth, and to continue so doing for a term of years.
Thus the traveller perceives beyond doubt that the resident is
prejudiced by the very fact of his residence, and gives it as his
matured opinion that Japan is a faultless land, marred only by the
presence of the foreign community. And yet, let us consider. It is the
foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come
and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to
telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy
himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country.
Government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the
Overseas Club that keep it open. Their reward (not alone in Japan) is
the bland patronage or the scarcely-veiled contempt of those who profit
by their labours. It is hopeless to explain to a traveller who has been
'ohayoed' into half-a-dozen shops and 'sayonaraed' out of half-a-dozen
more and politely cheated in each one, that the Japanese is an Oriental,
and, therefore, embarrassingly economical of the truth. 'That's his
politeness,' says the traveller. 'He does not wish to hurt your
feelings. Love him and treat him like a brother, and he'll change.' To
treat one of the most secretive of races on a brotherly basis is not
very easy, and the natural politeness that enters into a signed and
sealed contract and undulates out of it so soon as it does not
sufficiently pay is more than embarrassing. It is almost annoying. The
want of fixity or commercial honour may be due to some natural infirmity
of the artistic temperament, or to the manner in which the climate has
affected, and his ruler has ruled, the man himself for untold centuries.
Those who know the East know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is
commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a
groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the
streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next
town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these
things must be so. Those who do not know will not be persuaded till they
have lived there.
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