The Project Gutenberg eBook, Civilization, by Ellen Newbold La Motte

Title: Civilization

Tales of the Orient

Author: Ellen Newbold La Motte

Release Date: November 24, 2006 [eBook #19916]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVILIZATION***

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CIVILIZATION

TALES OF THE ORIENT

ELLEN N. LA MOTTE

CIVILIZATION

TALES OF THE ORIENT

BY

ELLEN N. LA MOTTE

AUTHOR OF "THE BACKWASH OF WAR," ETC

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1919,
By George H. Doran Company




Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

THE YELLOW STREAK

I

THE YELLOW STREAKToC

He came out to Shanghai a generation ago, in those days when Shanghai was not as respectable as it is now—whatever that says to you. It was, of course, a great change from Home, and its crude pleasures and crude companions gave him somewhat of a shock. For he was of decent stock, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, and the beach-combers, adventurers, rough traders and general riff-raff of the China Coast, gathered in Shanghai, did not offer him the society he desired. He was often obliged to associate with them, however, more or less, in a business way, for his humble position as minor clerk in a big corporation entailed certain responsibilities out of hours, and this responsibility he could not shirk, for fear of losing his position. Thus, by these acts of civility, more or less enforced, he was often led into a loose sort of intimacy, into companionship with people who were distasteful to his rather fastidious nature. But what can you expect on the China Coast? He was rather an upright sort of young man, delicate and abstemious, and the East being new to him, shocked him. He took pleasure in walking along the Bund, marvelling at the great river full of the ships of the world, marvelling at the crowds from the four corners of the world who disembarked from these ships and scattered along the broad and sunny thoroughfare, seeking amusements of a primitive sort. But in these amusements he took no part. For himself, a gentleman, they did not attract. Not for long. The sing-song girls and the "American girls" were coarse, vulgar creatures and he did not like them. It was no better in the back