Hot Springs Weekly Star

A Sympathetic Oriental

By EUNICE IDA BLAKE

Copyright by American Press Association, 1911.

I am the wife of a United States army officer and have lived a good deal of my time on the Pacific slope, where the only servants to be had are Chinese. There is no doubt but the Chinese make very good servants if they wish to be good, but if they prefer to be bad they can excel at that too.

I married in the infantry and went out with my husband to a station where the Chinese were as thick as blackberries. I had the pride natural to a bride of showing how well I could keep house and appreciated the importance of winning the confidence of my servants, or, rather, at that time my servant, for the wife of a second lieutenant--neither she nor her husband having anything but his pay--is not supposed to keep more than one.

My first Chinese servant was Ti Wang. Ti was the smoothest, softest tongued rascal I ever met. He had enough duplicity in him for an eighteenth century European diplomat. To him words were indeed intended to conceal ideas.

"You velly young wife," he said to me. "You want velly good Chinaman for cook. Muchy Chinamen velly bad. Ti feel solly for Melican lady. Ti he good cook."

All this was spoken with a look of commiseration for a young thing like myself that to one familiar with the man from the Flowery Kingdom would have boded no good. I did not doubt that my servant would be a great comfort to me. It was not long before his true inwardness showed itself. He first made an excuse of having a sick brother who couldn't washy-washy to provide for to wheedle me out of a month's wages in advance. Then he surreptitiously removed under his capacious coat and ample sleeves all the staple kitchen provisions I had bought to last several months. Tea, coffee, sugar and spices disappeared like magic. Then, having received an offer of better wages than I was giving him, he took himself off without so much as saying he was going.

My next servant was Charlie Li. Why so many Chinese are called Charlie I don't know, though Li is an appropriate name for them. Charlie was recommended by the major's wife, who had him in her kitchen for awhile when her regular servant was ill. She told me she would rather have Charlie than the other. I had no fault to find with Charlie except that he stayed with me but a day. He didn't stay long enough to ask for any wages, and since experience had taught me not to pay Chinamen in advance he didn't get any.

After this servants were passing through my kitchen, none staying with me more than a week. In vain I refused to engage one unless he would agree to stay a month. Something must be scaring them away. I didn't see how they could see anything in a young woman of nineteen to frighten them, and I was the only person with whom they came in contact. One of them, who was about to depart after three days of service, I asked why he left.

"You get Melican cook. Chinaman not velly good in this house."

"Why not?"

"Donno. Chinaman won't stay here."

"Why do you go so soon after coming?"

"I am velly well."

He did not seem to care whether I believed him or not. Indeed, he knew he was lying, and I knew it too. However, I had had such bad luck with Chinese servants and there were no others to be had that I made up my mind to do my own cooking for awhile. Meanwhile my husband, who had been making inquiries for me as to servants from brother officers' wives, began to be considerably vexed that I could not keep any of them. There was no such loss of servants among those who sent me mine, and it appeared that I must either be too exacting or have a frightful temper or some other blemish that prevented a servant from working for me, whereas the truth was that after the earlier ones left I simply gave up everything to those who came later, granting all requests and opposing them in nothing. I didn't even dare criticise the cooking of a single dish. The first tiff I had with my husband was when he ventured to remark that perhaps I didn't give them quite free rein enough. I resented the imputation with a fervor that sent him off to the officers' club and prevented his ever making any such suggestion in future.

One day I put the tin bread box out in the sun, turning it up on its side and exposing the bottom. I was surprised to see Chinese characters on it. I wondered what they meant. When a woman begins to wonder what is the meaning of anything it is preparatory to making plans to find out. I called the servant of my next door neighbor, who was beating a rug, to come over and translate the characters. He did so as follows:

"This is a very bad woman. She doesn't pay the servants' wages and gives no extras."

That smooth tongued villain Ti Wang, who had pitied my youth and inexperience and had robbed me beside, had chalked a notice on the bread box warning all other servants against me. I waited patiently till my husband came in from his duties and, showing him the characters on the bottom of the box, handed him a tram-tik.