He waited upon me hand and foot; he burned with
ardor for my personal comfort and well-being; he did not complicate life
by being engrossed in anything which to him was of no concern--his only
concern was the foreigner, and towards me he carried out his duty
faithfully and to the letter. I would wager that that man, ugly of face
and form, but most kindly disposed to one who could communicate little
but dumb approval, was an excellent citizen, an excellent father, an
excellent son.
So very different was another traveler who unceremoniously forced
himself upon me with the inevitable "Ching fan, ching fan," although he
had no food to offer. He commenced with a far-fetched eulogium of my
ambling palfrey Rusty, who limped along leisurely behind me. So far as
he could remember, poor ignorant ass, he had never seen a pony like it
in his extensive travels--probably from Yuen-nan-fu to Tali-fu, if so
far; but as a matter of fact, Rusty had wrenched his right fore fetlock
between a gully in the rocks the day before and was now going lame.
Dressed fairly respectably in the universal blue, my unsought companion
was of middle stature, strongly built, but so clumsily as to border
almost on deformity, and to give all his movements the ungainly
awkwardness of a left-handed, left-legged man.
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